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А ЛИСЭ Т ЕЛЪЫДЖЭЩӀЫМ ЗЭРЫШЫӀАР

the narrative closer to the target audience. For the Mock
Turtle himself, we chose an epithet Тумэ (Tumė ‘half-blood’,
‘parody’), which , in our opinion, is the best rendering of
English ‘Mock’.
Also we introduced a few puns in Circassian such as our
translation of Mad Tea-Party, Шей ефэкӏэ Шейтӏануз (Sheĭ
efėkḣė Sheĭtḣanuz). Here, the first part of the compound word
Шей-ефэкӏэ (Sheĭ-efėkḣė ‘tea-drinking’) is repeated in the first
syllable of the word Шейтӏануз (Sheĭtḣanuz ‘deranged’,
‘mad’). Although Carroll’s text has no such alliteration, we
decided that this word-play visually and phonetically enriches
the text and fits the spirit of the book.
We replaced a number of puns using Circassian wordplay.
For instance, the word яхуэгуэшын (iakhuėguėshyn ‘to
distribute, to share’) is explained by the Gryphon as Я
хуэГуэгуш Ин (Ia khuėGuėgush In ‘to be a large turkey’).
We also replaced the ‘dry’ history lecture by the Mouse by
an episode about the legendary progenitor of the Circassian
dynasty, Prince Inal the Bright (Inal-nėhu) of the fifteenth
century. Here it is in back-translation:

‘Thus the Gyurji [Georgians] were upset and started
to attack the Zichians [Circassians]. Then Inal the
Bright mustered his army and forced the attackers to
retreat. After some time, Dadian, the King of the
Gyurjis, came with his army, but Inal the Bright
defeated them and took Dadian and his princes as
prisoners. Then, in order to liberate Dadian and his
princes, Malakey, the leader of the Azgs, came to Inal
the Bright to pay his tribute…’

In our translation we tried to use numerous synonyms, more
than were used by Carroll, with a goal to bring back to the
reader some lesser-known Circassian words. For example,

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