24.02.2026
Russian students shared secrets of adapting cartoons into Hindi
The international seminar “Children's Literature as a Cultural Code, Text and Pedagogy: Russian Text in a Global Context” was held on February 23-25, 2026, at the University of Kerala (Thiruvananthapuram, India).
The organizer was the Russian language department of the University of Kerala.
The seminar brought together over a hundred professionals—teachers, students, graduate students, and translators—among whom stood out renowned names in Russian children's literature:
Natalia Volkova is a Russian children's writer, author of poetry collections and educational children's books about Moscow.
Irina Kraeva is a Russian writer and author of children's fiction.
Irina Bogatyreva is a novelist and translator of Altai folk tales.
A group of third-year students from the Institute of Linguistics at the Russian State University for the Humanities (specializing in Hindi language) – Alina Zvyagintseva, Elena Shakh, Anastasia Burda, Margarita Ermalyuk, and Anastasia Shitikova, presented a report on the adaptation of Russian animation for an Indian audience.
The presentation covered the process of translating the Soviet animated film "Treasure" (1985), based on the fairy tales of Alexander Kostinsky, into Hindi. The students focused on the following aspects:
• difficulties in synchronized dubbing due to differences in the audio and visual components;
• specific cultural and mental characteristics of Indian viewers, which influence the perception of the cartoon's content;
• translation of cultural realities characteristic of the Russian context;
• rendering the musical and poetic parts of the cartoon's script.
The final goal of the report was to create a full-fledged version of the cartoon with Hindi subtitles, accessible to Indian auditorium.
The following universities participated in the events:
Russian State University for the Humanities
Lomonosov Moscow State University
Moscow State Pedagogical University
K. Minin Nizhny Novgorod State Pedagogical University (Nizhny Novgorod)
Donetsk State University (Donetsk, Russia)
Novosibirsk State University
South Ossetian State University named after A.A. Tibilova
Namangan State Institute of Foreign Languages named after Iskhokhon Ibrat (Uzbekistan)
Russian School in Slovenia
Bhagat Phool Singh Mahila Vishwavidyalaya
Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic
Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi)
Delhi University (New Delhi)
The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda (Gujarat)
University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
Amity University (Haryana)
University of Kerala
Panjab University
Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh
B.R. Ambedkar Bihar University
