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Cockney Rhyming Slang, as anyone who has stood at the till in a London souvenir shop could tell you, is a set of slang expressions based on taking the original word (say, "stairs") and rhyming it with the final word of a short phrase ("apples and pears"), and then, in some cases, shortening the new expression ("apples"). This can lead to a sentence such as: "Careful you don't slip and fall down the apples". While the slang is often cited as the "secret language" of the Cockney population of London, many of its expression have entered into general usage, not just in the UK, but throughout the English-speaking world. This is not a translation of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" in the purest sense. It is, rather, the result of a linguistic game-another sort of translation. What Charles Dodgson would have loved most about Cockney Rhyming Slang, and what makes it suited for application to "Alice", is that it is, as John Ayto writes in his introduction to "The Oxford Dictionary of Rhyming Slang", "all really part of a giant ongoing word game, whose product is much more droll artefact that linguists' lexeme". It is with this idea of Cockney Rhyming Slang as word game, and with the goal of creating "droll artefact", that this translation has been approached.
About the author
Charles John Huffam Dickens (7 February 1812 - 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity.
Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.
Dickens was regarded as the literary colossus of his age. His 1843 novella, A Christmas Carol, remains popular and continues to inspire adaptations in every artistic genre. Oliver Twist and Great Expectations are also frequently adapted, and, like many of his novels, evoke images of early Victorian London. His 1859 novel, A Tale of Two Cities, set in London and Paris, is his best-known work of historical fiction.
