THE ISSUE OF INTERMEDIALITY IN MODERN FANTASY TV SHOW TRANSLATION

Abstract

The article has been aimed at the issue of intermediality in modern TV show translation, a currently running US series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power (2022) which is another adaptation and screen version of epic phantasy novel by an outstanding English writer J. R. R. Tolkien. This cinematographic TV text constitutes an organic unity with its literary source and reveals an organised system boasting a unified onomastic landscape, complex of irrealia (a specific set of fictional realia– non-existing realia tied to a fictional setting, whose effect is to define and determine the fictional cultural, geographical and historical settings) as well as internal laws and regularities of the author-designed fictional world. Ukrainian readers and viewers get themselves familiarised with Tolkien’s artistic creation by means of variously devised and variously accessible literary works in translation. Each of the translated texts provides for its own subset of onyms, phantasy irrealia and linguistic phenomena which represent Tolkien’s world-building and have to coincide with similar categories of the cinematographic text. The analysis of the available TV show versions in Ukrainian (both official subtitling provided by the US subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service Prime Video and voice-over translation by the Ukrainian creative association Cikava Ideya) has proved that there are only partial correspondencies and correlations between the Ukrainian language books by J. R. R. Tolkien and their screen versions. It creates some obvious difficulties for the recipient of this kind of intermediality to the Ukrainian readers and TV viewers.