The “Child ↔ Adult” Relationship Terminology in the Tale of “The Little Gold Key or the Adventures of Burattino” by Alexei Tolstoy in French and Vietnamese

Abstract

The fairy tale “The Adventures of Pinocchio” (1883) by Italian author Carlo Collodi is well known all over the world. However, there is another story for young readers adapted from “The Adventures of Pinocchio” published in 1936, and that is “The Little Gold Key or the Adventures of Burattino” by Russian writer Alexei Tolstoy. In Tolstoyʼs book, the name of Pinocchio is changed to “Burattino”, literally “wooden puppet” in Italian. As Alexei Tolstoy emphasized in “Preface” (1936), his tale was inspired by the story of Pinocchio, but “as the book (“The Adventures of Pinocchio”) got lost”, he told “each time a different story, inventing such adventures that did not exist in the original text.” “The Little Gold Key or the Adventures of Burattino” by Alexei Tolstoy, serves as the main corpus for our study on “child ↔ adult” relationship terminology expressing different positions of “partners”, such as the “inferior ↔ superior” relationship in French and Vietnamese – two entirely opposite language categories. Kinship and social relations are very hierarchical in the Asian peoplesʼ culture and traditions, such as the Vietnamese. Translating relationship expressions or terminology from French, a language which is very limited regarding personal pronouns or substitute pronouns, into Vietnamese is therefore a big challenge for translators.