The Translation of Children's Literature

A Reader

Edited by Dr. Gillian Lathey

Publication date:

21 September 2006

Publisher

Multilingual Matters

Dimensions:

210x148mm
6x8"

ISBN-13: 9781853599064

Since the late 1970s, scholarly interest in the translation of children’s books has increased at a rapid pace. Research across a number of disciplines has contributed to a developing knowledge and understanding of the cross-cultural transformation and reception of children’s literature. The purpose of this Reader is to reflect the diversity and originality of approaches to the subject by gathering together, for the first time, a range of journal articles and chapters on translation for children published during the last thirty years. From an investigation of linguistic features specific to translation for children, to accounts of the travels of international classics such as the Grimm Brothers’ Household Tales or Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, to a model of narrative communication with the child reader in translated texts and, not least, the long-neglected comments of professional translators, these essays offer new insights into the challenges and difference of translating for the young.

Acknowledgements/ Introduction
I. Translations for Children: Theoretical Approaches and their Application
1. Translating for Children - Eithne O’Connell
2. Translation of Children’s Literature - Zohar Shavit
3. Translation Studies in Contemporary Children’s Literature: A Comparison of Intercultural Ideological Factors - Marisa Fernández López
4. Translating Children’s Literature: Theoretical Approaches and Emprical Studies - Tiina Puurtinen
II. Narrative Communication and the Child Reader
5. How Emil Becomes Michel: On the Translation of Children’s Books - Birgit Stolt
6. The Verbal and the Visual: On the Carnivalism and Dialogics of Translating for Children - Riitta Oittinen
7. Narratology Meets Translation Studies, or The Voice of the Translator - Emer O’Sullivan
III. Translating the Visual
8. Translating Pictures - Emer O’Sullivan
9. Intertextuality/ Intervisuality in Translation: The Jolly Postman’s Intercultural Journey from Britain to the Netherlands - Mieke Desmet
10. Time, Narrative Intimacy and the Child: Implications of Tense Switching in the Translation of Picture Books into English - Gillian Lathey
IV. The Travels of Children’s Books and Cross-cultural Influences
11. Does Pinocchio have an Italian Passport? What is Specifically National and what is International about Classics of Children’s Literature - Emer O’Sullivan
12. The Early Reception of the Grimms’ Kinder- und Hausmärchen in England - David Blamires
13. Nursery Politics: Sleeping Beauty, or the Acculturation of a Tale - Karen Seago
14. Harry Potter and the Tower of Babel: Translating the Magic - Nancy K. Jentsch
V. The Translator’s Voice
15. Mark Twain’s ‘Slovenly Peter’ in the Context of Twain and German Culture - J.D.Stahl
16. Eight Ways To Say You: The Challenges of Translation - Cathy Hirano
17. Translator’s Notebook: Delicate Matters - Anthea Bell
Notes on Contributors
References

In the last few decades a number of European scholars have paid an increasing amount of attention to children’s literature in translation. This book not only provides a synthetic account of what has been achieved in the field, but also makes us fully aware of all the textual, visual and cultural complexities that translating for children entails. Apart from few important Scandinavian studies of children’s literature in translation, students of this subject have had problems in finding a book that attempted an up-to-date and comprehensive review of the field. Gillian Lathey’s Reader does just this; it investigates a whole range of textual, visual and cultural issues that translating literature for children entails.