This site uses cookies.
Some of these cookies are essential to the operation of the site,
while others help to improve your experience by providing insights into how the site is being used.
For more information, please see the ProZ.com privacy policy.
Russian to English translations [PRO] Art/Literary - Poetry & Literature / description of a children's story
Russian term or phrase:авторская сказка
I have the often problematic adjective авторский, in this case in the following context:
Это детская авторская сказка про ________ .
Author's story doesn't sound right because all stories are written by an author. In this case, I believe that they are referring to the fact that they are the ones that created the iPad app and it was also them who wrote the story.
Explanation: I would call it an original fairy tale. That makes it clear that it was written by this individual and is not taken from traditional sources.
"The term "vanity press" is sometimes considered pejorative and is often used to imply that an author who uses such a service is only publishing out of vanity and that his or her work could not be commercially successful. In other words, a work published by a vanity press is typically assumed to be unpublishable elsewhere or not publishable on a timely basis."
Granted a writer may have his own reasons to publish his book and one of them may be out of "vanity." However , I think there is a clear distinction between the two.
All of your answers and the discussion is very helpful to me.
I decided to use both Elizabeth Adams' and skymir's answers in my translation depending on the context. Can I award some points to both of them? Or is this allowed?
stick to your guns. I am not trying to change the world here, not for free anyway. Just making a stray observation, is all. Happy Festivus to you, sir.
Dear Misha, First of all, if you had read the rest of the entries, you would see that your point is irrelevant now. As to whether or not the name of a genre is logical is a moot point. I don't know if I would go so far as to equate a grammatical mistake with a literary genre. Maybe you would also remove Post Modernism as an art movement, arguing something can't be post modern because that is an oxymoron. Or perhaps conceptual art, since a concept is something that does not yet exist whereas art by definition has a form. When we speak about a genre, we speak about a movement that is attributed a name. These names do not have to follow any conventions. In fact by their very definition they break conventions. The examples that you have cited are common expressions and grammatical mistakes in every day speech and have nothing to do with establish genres. The purpose of these forums, I believe, are not to analyze the political or social underpinnings of the English language, but to find the best translation in regards to meaning that we can. The very collocation that we are discussing <<авторская сказа>> taken in a literal way is absurd and hence the "nonsensical" translation.
"Narrative children's stories" is a great example of nonsensical use by the deconstructivist bunch and some such. Think about it: a story, or a tale, is a narrative by definition. Saying "narrative story" is the same as saying "povestvovatelnyi rasskaz", i.e. "maslo maslyanoye". I am not saying it is not being said, but then "more prettier" and "at a high rate of speed" is also being said a lot. That said (man, that's an awful lot of said's:) you do as you see fit, of course.
I have been try to wrap my head around what is really being referred to here and when I really thought about it, in Russian when you say авторский фильм for example, you are referring to the way that it was made. I would translate авторский фильм as an "independent film." The implication being that it is the filmmaker who made all the decisions pertaining to how the film was made. The equivalent for a writer would be self-published and it is already implied of course that it was he/she who wrote the book but has creative control. I decided to verify my hunch and out of curiosity did a search of the some self-published books on both Russian and English websites and lo and behold, the edition notices matched - ООО «Издательство«Авторская книга»
This reply is for "The Misha": Yes they are called folktales. There are millions of references to "narrative children's stories or fairy tales. In fact that is the essence of a narrative - as told in one's own words rather than a retelling of a story i.e. a folktale. An "original fairytale" to me could imply a story written in an original way i.e are different than others and maybe therfore misleading.
This sounds like a "calque" on the French expression "livre d'auteur" as in "cinéma d'auteur" for which English has no exact equivalent. What it means is that the writer was allowed (a certain amount of) free rein to indulge himself.
as in "One touchstone of the authentic fairy tale is that it is presented as wholly credible". Ok, thius is from Wiki, and about Tolkien... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_Fairy-Stories ; or "Assumptions about a good or "authentic" fairy tale created the canon of the genre, a canon that has come to include Perrault but exclude most of his female"; or "I don't think I had a book at that stage that was specifically the fairy tales of the brothers Grimm. But I did learn early to distinguish between them and the authored tales of Hans Christian Andersen (and Walter de la Mare and William Thackeray). I think you have your distinction. Indeed, there is a "folk" and an "äuthored" fairy tale, and you can always tell the difference between the two.
Your welcome. I think that either "a children's narrative tale/story" or "a narrative tale for children" would both work. Perhaps "a children's narration" might sound as if it were the child who was doing the narrating :)) I found a few references for the examples above: http://www.unc.edu/~jarnold/papers/diss/fulldissertation.doc...http://www.kon.org/urc/caton.html. Дейтские скаски could be translated either way I think or simply fairytale.
Automatic update in 00:
Answers
15 mins confidence:
narration or narrative tale
Explanation: авторский here refers to being in the original or in "one's own words." Typically it is translated as authorial but also has the meaning of being a narration.
Explanation: I would call it an original fairy tale. That makes it clear that it was written by this individual and is not taken from traditional sources.
Elizabeth Adams United States Local time: 03:31 Works in field Native speaker of: English PRO pts in category: 8
