Diminutives in the Translation of Film Speech of Characters in Children’s Animated Films

Abstract

Diminutive forms of the Russian language are considered by the author of the article from the perspective of their functional-semantic syncretism and communicative-pragmatic potential, manifested in everyday communication with children in the Russian-speaking environment and in the film speech of characters in children’s animated films. The tendency of the prevalence of diminutive forms in Russian-language translations of children's animated films over those in the English-language originals, discovered by the author, is qualified by the author as a translation strategy of emotive replacement. Emotive replacement allows one to solve a number of translation tasks during the process of children’s films localization. These are: stylization of film speech in translation and lending the dialogues of film characters a child-centric coloring, expressivization of film speech through imparting additional effects of irony, appraisal, implicit aggression and jesting.