Humans love meddling with other people’s words. Not many of us can retell a joke or story without changing the details. In the case of folktales such as Cinderella, there are hundreds of versions. A general term for these is adaptations. While adaptations occur in many genres, the focus of this paper is on literary fiction.

Here’s the differential distinction I use:

1. A translation is “a target text where all significant details of meaning have been transferred”.
2. An adaptation is “a derivative text where significant details of meaning have not been transferred which easily could have been”. These definitions make sense etymologically: ‘translate’ means ‘carry across’ (über-setzen), while ‘adapt’ means ‘make suitable’. The term ‘adaptation’ is thus the appropriate one where “considerable changes have been made in order to make the text more suitable for a specific audience” . These changes may be omissions, rewritings or additions. My definitions are an attempt to pinpoint what has been called the “point at which adaptation ceases to be translation at all.”