The ‘little’ problem of Le Petit Prince in translation: Diminutives translated from French to Dutch and Polish
Abstract
The article’s main objective is the analysis of the Dutch and Polish translation of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s novella Le Petit Prince (The Little Prince). After the opening remarks, the theoretical framework (i.e. the formation, classification, and functions of diminutives in French, Dutch, and Polish) is presented, followed by a quantitative analysis of diminutives in the original texts and the two translations. The Little Prince in this French original contains relatively few diminutives, especially given the fact that de Saint-Exupéry’s novella was originally classified as children’s literature, therefore answering the question whether the Dutch and Polish translations contain equally few diminutives as the French original is the main purpose of the analysis. Another issue addressed in the study is how the Polish and Dutch translators of the novel solved the problem of rendering diminutives in translation.
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