From Storytelling to Translating: On Some Notable Cases of Translation

This paper deals with some atypical cases of translation, renderings whose authors were accomplished ethnographers and folklorists, collectors of oral lore, or storytellers. We will also refer to bilingual storytellers, reciting tales with equal fluency in two languages. The mentioned types of translators are characteristic of cultures that, alongside homeland storytelling, also have diasporic storytelling communities. Our study is primarily based on “Hazaran Blbul” (The Bird of a Thousand Voices), one of the most popular Armenian fairy tales. The chosen texts are not translations in the traditional sense; they are rendered from oral narratives. Some of the original texts are no longer available. Accordingly, we deal with unique cases with absent source texts.