Linguistic variability in the translation of coloratives (based on translations of English folk tales by E. M. Chistyakova-Ver and N. V. Shershevskaya)

The aim of this research is to establish the linguistic variability involved in the translation of color terms (coloratives) in fairy tales, based on English folk tales collected by Joseph Jacobs and their Russian translations by E. M. Chistyakova-Ver and N. V. Shershevskaya. The article examines the translation of coloratives in nine English fairy tales by these two translators and analyzes their variability through several parameters: the choice of equivalent; symbolic-cultural transformation (replacing a symbolically charged color with another appropriate for the target culture); compensation (the redistribution of color semantics within the text when a term is untranslatable in a specific context); and omission (rendering the passage without the use of color lexemes). The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that it is the first to examine the methods of rendering colorative units in these specific fairy tale translations and to identify three distinct types of linguistic variability. The results of the study establish that the analysis of variability in colorative translation reveals how different translators interpret and reconstruct for the recipient not merely words, but the underlying perceptual-semiotic complexes.