This one was upon my wife's request. There were a few difficulties in the translation. The narrative builds on various folk-tale characters, such as Baba Yaga and the House on Chicken Legs, Leshy, and Domovoi. I had a choice to either be true to the narrative and call them by their Russian folk names, or to find close alternatives in English. In my translations I usually pick what would be most understandable for a Western/North American viewer, so I decided to go with closest approximations.
I left Baba Yaga untranslated, because she's fairly clearly an "old witch" and doesn't require explanation. For a "Leshy" I used "tree demon" -- largely because the cartoon itself departs fairly far from their traditional forms (there's an allusion to this fact in the cartoon itself). Lastly, for "Domovoi" I had a choice to either use "Brownie" or, thanks to the popularity of Harry Potter books, "House Elf." I picked the latter, though neither of the choices was completely satisfactory. Please read the Wikipedia articles linked above if you're interested in the actual Russian folk characters of Baba Yaga, Leshy, and Domovoi.
The characters also talk in a whimsical folksy language, which is very hard to express using subtitles. All I have to work with are two lines of 40 characters each and a couple of seconds of screen time. :) If I tried to use folksy "old-timey" English, it would have been too hard to read and looked weird coming from Russian folk characters.
Oh, and I should mention that "Kuzya," "Kuzka," "Kuzenka," etc, are all diminutives of the name "Kuzma" (which, I believe, stems from the Greek name "Kosmas"). In Russian, diminutives are formed by piling on suffixes onto the root of the name so a "diminutive" routinely ends up longer than the original name itself. The longer the diminutive, the more endearing it is. :)
Here's the full version, in two parts (stupid YouTube):
Part 1:
Part 2:
Original title: "Приключения Домовёнка"
English title: "Adventures of a House Elf"
Studio: Ekran
Duration: 17 minutes
Download media: arjlover.net
Download subtitles: mricon.com
2 comments: