Between Transformation and Reconstruction of Folklore

The modern theoretical consensus that “all transmission equals transformation” has become an influential axiom in twentieth-century folklore studies and literary theory. From structuralism to performance theory and post-structuralism, the claim has been repeated multiple times: no act of retelling is neutral; every repetition alters its object. Yet this position, while analytically powerful, risks becoming reductive when it forecloses the possibility of meaningful continuity, stylistic fidelity, intentional reconstruction or even instrumental preservation. Against the dominant view that retelling is merely a form of reception, we could argue that the attempted reconstruction, though theoretically contested, retains both epistemological and cultural legitimacy and value.

The transformation thesis emerges most clearly in the shift from nineteenth-century folkloristics to twentieth-century theory. Early scholars up to Arnold van Gennep conceived folklore as survivals – remnants of earlier cultural stages preserved unevenly within modern societies. This view, associated with evolutionist anthropology, implicitly assumed that tradition could be transmitted with a degree of stability, even if gradually eroded. However, the rise of structuralism and later performance theory displaced this model. In structural anthropology, myth is not a fixed narrative but a system of relations, endlessly transformed across variants, in dynamic relation with the real world. Individual tellings are not any more degrading copies of an original but social instantiations of a generative aesthetic and ethic structure. The very notion of an “authentic version” becomes theoretically redundant.

This move is reinforced by linguistic anthropology and performance studies. Folklore is reconceptualized as an event rather than a text or document, dependent on outside conditions, audience, and situation. Each performance is unique, shaped by pragmatic conditions and communicative intentions. Under this paradigm, any attempt to “preserve” folklore as a stable object from antiquity appears misguided. The act of recording or retelling necessarily removes the narrative from its performative matrix, thereby altering its role, function and meaning. Even the most faithful transcription cannot reproduce gesture, tone, timing, and social interaction. Poststructuralist thought radicalizes this position further by undermining the very notion of origin. If meaning is always deferred, if texts are constituted and reinterpreted through endless chains of difference, then the idea of returning to an authentic source becomes philosophically untenable and opens up opportunities for an authoritarian use while the attempts at fidelity remain defined by language, ideology, and historical context. From this perspective, “authentic reconstruction” appears as a nostalgic illusion or a desire for origin that can never be satisfied.

Yet the above described dominant framework has its limitations. Its central weakness lies in the tendency to collapse all forms of transformation into equivalence. If every transmission is transformation, then the distinction between careful reconstruction or vulgar rewriting, recombination of elements or pastiche becomes analytically invisible. The theory also cannot adequately account for the observable differences between, for instance, a highly stylized literary rewriting that imposes modern sensibilities and a philologically informed retelling that seeks to approximate the features of oral narration.

This is where the notion of reconstruction reenters the discussion. It does not claim to recover an original in a naïve sense, nor does it deny the inevitability of mediation. Rather, it posits that within the field of possible transformations, some are better founded than others. The task is not to eliminate transformation, an impossible goal, but to improve current accessibility, intellectual affinity, emotional contact, or simply diversification through attention to form, motif, rhythm, narrative logic, reader perception and preparedness, without the necessary imposing of an omnipresent narrator.

One can draw an analogy with translation theory. It is widely accepted that translation is not neutral and that perfect equivalence is unattainable. Nevertheless, distinctions are made between more and less faithful translations, adding also formal, pragmatic or literary criteria. There are translations that preserve syntactic structure, semantic nuance, and stylistic tone, and those that freely adapt or domesticate the text. To argue that all translations are transformations does not entail that all translations are equally valid or equally distant from their source. Similarly, in the retelling of folklore, the impossibility of neutrality does not negate the possibility of fidelity.

Hermeneutic philosophy provides a more balanced framework for understanding this issue. Interpretation is always situated within a historical horizon, but this does not preclude the possibility of understanding through time or exercising an influence. Authenticity, in this sense, is not an ontological property but turns out to be a mode of relation to tradition – one characterized by attentiveness, restraint, orientation and responsiveness to heritage. Furthermore, the dismissal of such reconstruction often overlooks the role of intentionality and craft. Not all retellings are produced under the same conditions or with the same aims and results. In certain traditions, particularly in Eastern Europe, writers have developed highly refined techniques for reproducing the features of oral narrative. Identification of invariant functions implicitly supports this claim: if structural constants exist, then they can, in principle, be preserved across multiple media. These are not arbitrary choices but the result of sustained engagement and an attempt to translate tradition.

Critics may argue that such efforts inevitably produce homogenization or even vulgarization, eliminating the variability that characterizes oral tradition. This objection is valid to a point. Any act of writing imposes selection and coherence. However, variability is not the only dimension of folklore worth preserving. There are also structural and stylistic constants that can be meaningfully transmitted or even borrowed by other genres like contemporary fantasy. The loss of performative context could be interpreted as a change and does not directly entail loss of properties and degradation. Indeed, without some degree of stabilization, these properties might disappear entirely from active cultural memory.

Another important consideration is the cultural function of retellings. In societies where oral tradition has been disrupted by historical dynamics and convulsive modernization, retellings often serve as mediators between past and present. They do not function only as a replacement of living tradition but also compensate for its absence, providing access to narratives that would otherwise become inaccessible. To dismiss them as a mere degraded reception is to ignore their sustainable role. They operate not within the original communicative context but within a new one, addressing different audiences while maintaining a link with the past and guaranteeing continuity.

The charge of kitsch, self-glorification and exhaustion through commercialization, often directed at such works, is therefore also too indiscriminate. It fails to distinguish popular abuse and informed preservation, contextual instrumentality and superficial imitation. While it is true that some retellings sentimentalize or distort their sources, others achieve a high degree of artistic and scholarly integrity, therefore evaluation needs to be case-specific.

Most important, even the opposition between transformation and preservation is itself misleading. The more productive approach could be to recognize that preservation is always mediated by transformation, but that transformation can acquire further importance. Authenticity, redefined in this way, is not the absence of change or a simple treachery but a mediated change toward continuity.

The question of whether Robert Burns can be translated into a dialect...

The question of whether Robert Burns can be translated into a dialect is more complex than it first appears, because it touches on issues of language, identity, poetics, and cultural equivalence. Burns is not simply a poet who uses Scots as a medium; rather, his poetry is inseparable from the linguistic, social, and emotional world embedded in that medium. To translate Burns into another dialect, therefore, is not merely to change vocabulary or phonetics, but to attempt a transfer of an entire cultural-linguistic system. Whether such a transfer is possible – or appropriate – depends on how one understands both dialect and translation.

At first glance, Burns may appear especially suited to dialect translation. Unlike poets who write in highly standardized literary English, Burns frequently employs Scots vocabulary, syntax, and idiom, creating a poetic voice rooted in regional speech. This might suggest that translating Burns into another dialect – for example, into a regional variety of English, German dialect, or even a Slavic vernacular – could recreate the same effect: the elevation of a “non-standard” language to poetic dignity. In this sense, dialect-to-dialect translation might preserve what is most essential in Burns: his linguistic intimacy, his immediacy, and his resistance to linguistic hierarchy.

However, this apparent suitability is misleading. Scots is not simply a dialect in the narrow sense; it occupies a historically ambiguous position between dialect and language, with its own literary tradition, phonology, and lexicon. Burns’s use of Scots is therefore not merely local color but a deliberate cultural act. It expresses national identity, social solidarity, and resistance to Anglicization. Translating Burns into another dialect risks flattening and domesticating this historical specificity. A dialect in another language does not carry the same political and cultural resonances as Scots did in eighteenth-century Scotland. What is gained in stylistic equivalence may be lost in historical meaning.

Another major difficulty lies in the relationship between sound and sense in Burns’s poetry. His verse is highly musical, relying on rhyme, rhythm, and phonetic texture that are deeply tied to Scots pronunciation. Words such as “wee,” “bairn,” or “lass” are not merely semantic units; they carry emotional and sonic weight that contributes to the overall effect of the poem. A dialect translation must decide whether to prioritize meaning or sound. If it preserves meaning, it may lose the musicality; if it preserves sound, it risks distortion or artificiality. This tension is particularly acute in songs like “Auld Lang Syne,” where the melody and phonology are inseparable.

There is also the question of audience. Burns wrote for a community that, to varying degrees, understood Scots. Modern readers often encounter his work in annotated editions or translations into standard English, which already mediate the original. Translating Burns into another dialect introduces a second layer of mediation. For readers unfamiliar with that dialect, the translation may become doubly opaque. Thus, while dialect translation might aim to reproduce the experience of reading Burns in Scots, it may instead create a barrier rather than a bridge.

Despite these challenges, dialect translation is not necessarily improper. It can be justified as a creative or experimental approach, particularly if its aims are clearly defined. For example, a translator might seek to explore functional equivalence rather than literal fidelity: to recreate the social positioning of Burns’s voice within a different linguistic context. In this case, the choice of dialect becomes crucial. It should ideally occupy a similar position relative to the standard language – neither purely colloquial nor purely marginal, but capable of literary expression while retaining a sense of locality. Even then, the result would not be a strict translation but a form of adaptation or transposition.

Examples from translation theory support this approach. Translators of vernacular literature often face similar dilemmas, as seen in attempts to render Mark Twain’s regional speech or Dante’s Tuscan into other languages. In many cases, translators choose a neutral or lightly marked variety to avoid unintended associations. Others adopt a specific dialect to emphasize orality and social context. Each strategy involves trade-offs, and none can fully replicate the original. Burns, with his dense integration of language and identity, intensifies these trade-offs.

Ultimately, the question is not simply whether Burns can be translated into a dialect, but what such a translation seeks to achieve. If the goal is philological accuracy or historical fidelity, dialect translation is likely inappropriate. It risks misrepresenting the cultural and linguistic specificity of Burns’s work. If, however, the goal is to evoke a comparable poetic effect – to make Burns feel “native” within another linguistic environment – then dialect translation can be a legitimate, though over demanding and inherently interpretive, strategy.

In conclusion, translating Robert Burns into a dialect is both possible and problematic. It is possible in the sense that one can reproduce certain features of his style – informality, musicality, and regional flavor – through careful selection of a target dialect. Yet it is problematic because Burns’s use of Scots is not merely stylistic but deeply historical and cultural. Any dialect translation must therefore acknowledge its limitations and present itself not as a definitive rendering, but as one interpretation among many. The most responsible approach is to treat dialect translation as a recreative engagement with Burns rather than a transparent transmission of his work. In doing so, one preserves both the integrity of the original and the freedom of the translator.