ABSTRACT
The two terms in the title of this chapter, folk tales and fairy tales, are often used interchangeably, but they have different origins. Folk tales were rooted in an oral tradition among ordinary people sharing a common cultural background and customs; they predate fairy tales, a term directly translated from the French name, Les contes de fées, which were stories written in 1697 by a French countess, and translated into English two years later. Today the most common term in the English-speaking world is probably fairy tale, possibly because most of the best-known tales derive from those written in the fairy tale tradition, such as Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty and Beauty and the Beast. The predominance of animated cartoons and films, including the Disney movies, has had a marked impact on the international popularity of the tales, particularly as these films have been dubbed into numerous other languages. In a phenomenon referred to by Jack Zipes as “non-recognition of translation” (Zipes 2013, 198), English speakers rarely recognise the stories as translations and yet translators have played a significant role in the history and development of both folk and fairy tales, and the practice of translation has had a major influence on subsequent rewritings and retellings over several centuries. The history of the translation of folk tales and the existence today of thousands of versions and retellings illustrate the impact made by translators and other agents and highlight the fluid boundaries between the activities of translation, adaptation, rewriting and retelling.
