COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF WORDPLAY IN ROALD DAHL'S THE BFG: STRATEGIES AND CHALLENGES IN LITERARY TRANSLATION

Annotatsiya

This article examines the phenomenon of wordplay in Roald Dahl's novel The BFG and analyzes the strategies available for rendering this wordplay in translation. Dahl's invented idiolect known as Gobblefunk relies on neologism, blending, malapropism, and sound symbolism to construct the voice of the Big Friendly Giant and to generate humor for the child reader. The article applies a comparative framework drawn from translation studies, in particular the work of Newmark, Nida, Venuti, and Delabastita on the translation of wordplay and culture specific lexical creativity. Selected examples from The BFG are analyzed according to the linguistic mechanism that produces the wordplay and the translation strategy that could preserve or compensate for its effect in a target language. The analysis shows that direct lexical equivalence is rarely available for Dahl's invented words and that translators must instead rely on compensatory neologism, phonological substitution, or explanatory paraphrase, each of which carries a different cost for the humor and characterization of the source text. The article concludes that wordplay in children's literature functions as a structural device rather than an ornamental one and that its translation requires a creative and systematic methodology rather than isolated lexical substitution.