NEGOTIATING MEANING IN THE TRANSLATION OF RIDDLES IN J.R.R. TOLKIEN'S THE HOBBIT.

The aim of the present paper is to investigate strategies of translating riddles in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. Taking as framework Pagis' (1996) and Senderovich's (2005) model of analysis for riddles as well as Wagner's (2020) pragma-semantic model of ambiguity, the paper redefines literary riddles as forms of conventionalized ambiguity that are strategically produced, perceived and resolved. The analysis of four target texts reveals that the main strategies employed in preserving a balance between opacity and transparency in literary riddles are equivalence, explicitation, rationalization and omission and that translation loss can be repaired through compensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]