Cultural Encounters in Translated Children's Literature

Helen Frank

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781905763030
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317640264
• Topic: Sprachen & Linguistik
• Subtopic: Sprachwissenschaft

Cultural Encounters in Translated Children's Literature offers a detailed and innovative model of analysis for examining the complexities of translating children's literature and sheds light on the interpretive choices at work in moving texts from one culture to another. The core of the study addresses the issue of how images of a nation, locale or country are constructed in translated children's literature, with the translation of Australian children's fiction into French serving as a case study. Issues examined include the selection of books for translation, the relationship between children's books and the national and international publishing industry, the packaging of translations and the importance of titles, blurbs and covers, the linguistic and stylistic features specific to translating for children, intertextual references, the function of the translation in the target culture, didactic and pedagogical aims, euphemistic language and explicitation, and literariness in translated texts.

The findings of the case study suggest that the most common constructs of Australia in French translations reveal a preponderance of traditional Eurocentric signifiers that identify Australia with the outback, the antipodes, the exotic, the wild, the unknown, the void, the end of the world, the young and innocent nation, and the Far West. Contemporary signifiers that construct Australia as urban, multicultural, Aboriginal, worldly and inharmonious are seriously under-represented. The study also shows that French translations are conventional, conservative and didactic, showing preference for an exotic rather than local specificity, with systematic manipulation of Australian referents betraying a perception of Australia as antipodean rural exoticism.

The significance of the study lies in underscoring the manner in which a given culture is constructed in another cultural milieu, especially through translated children's literature.

Chapter 1. Translation as Mediation between Cultures

The central moment, the pivot between cultures when a work passes from one culture into the other, is translation. It is here that a product of one linguistic and cultural territory is transformed into one understandable in another.

Emer O’Sullivan (1992: 81)

Introduction

Since Roman times the study of translation has involved a variety of approaches and theories with different assumptions, interests and subject matter. The diversity of theories and approaches is evidence of the intricate relationship between translator, text and reader, and of the function of the translation in the target culture. The choice between emphasizing theoretical prescription or empirical description has resulted in competing views on the relationship between translator and author, domestication (invisible translation) and foreignization (visible translation), result and process, and ethical responsibility (Øverås 1998; Hatim 1999). Translators reach a variety of solutions to linguistic, stylistic and cultural difficulties through recourse to theoretical norms of translation determined by the target text or through pragmatism (Puurtinen 1994; Bassnett and Lefevere 1998; Øverås; Houlind 2001). Whether the act of translation is ‘looping’ (Nord 1991) or ‘spiralling’ (Brossard 1988), translation means problem solving and decision making in the textual transfer between two different audiences.

In the movement of texts between cultures, where transfer and translation involve different or unequal ‘takings’ from one culture to another (Even-Zohar 1990), the translator has a unique opportunity to interpret, improve and create anew for a new audience, resulting in each translation being, by definition, different from the original text (Pym 1997). The requirement for skilful handling of the target material in the translation process grants the translator the status of creator of a new text (Ballard 1997), with new texts at times described as ‘mere refractions’ of the originals (Oittinen 1993). The literary experience gained by children in the process of reading is influenced by the translator’s emphasis on tendencies known as the ‘readerly’ and the ‘writerly’, these terms being the commonly accepted English equivalents for the distinction between lisible and scriptible (Barthes 1964). ‘Readerly’ texts locate the reader as the receiver of a fixed, pre-determined reading rather than as the producer of meaning. In the case of fiction for children, translated texts are characteristically marked by interventions that prioritize the accessibility of the text and that make judgements of the content based on what is perceived as appropriate and understandable in the target culture. In contrast to such overcompensation for the child reader, ‘writerly’ texts do not cater to reader expectation and instead employ alternative conventions that compel readers to produce their own meanings.

Translated texts on the whole tend to be characteristically marked by interventions that attempt to give information to readers and to modify or enlarge their knowledge. Known as explicitation, this type of text may be found in a variety of genres or may occur within a story when the author wishes to inform the reader of certain necessary details crucial to the understanding of the narrative. It is not fully determined as to whether explicitation constitutes a norm or a universal feature of translation. For some scholars, explicitation is not genre-dependent or culture-bound, but may perform the function of transmitting a message or an ideology more succinctly through recourse to a specialized vocabulary (Shavit 1986; Puurtinen 1998). The first part of this chapter therefore presents an overview of translation theory and its application to the specificity of children’s literature. The second part discusses the strategies of normalization and explicitation adopted by translators in responding to the requirement for comprehensibility and readability. It is not unexpected to find that the mandatory norms of sophistication so integral in literature for adults become modified and simplified when writing for children. In adhering to principles of usefulness and appropriateness for children, translators also remain ever mindful of the capacity of literature to socialize children into the dominant or prevailing culture.

Translation and Notions of Faithfulness, Equivalence and Ethics

In reviewing translation theory, a number of major notions may be identified that have influenced translational practice throughout the centuries. The first is the conventional hierarchy of texts where the source text and author are considered to be superior to the translated or foreign text. If translators view the source text as predominant, then the reverence for the original work will result in a literal translation focusing on the words, form and manner of the source text. The notion of ‘faithfulness’ in translation has been interpreted as responsibility to the author through the literal reproduction of the stylistic structures and wording of the source text, or through the production of the same or similar meanings as the source text. Translators as literalists removed themselves from the interpretive process, thus submitting to the authority of the author, but their emphasis on literal translations produced texts that were more visible due to their lack of fluency (Steiner 1975).

Interpretations of the notion of faithfulness by translators in later centuries challenged the adequacy of the translation in conveying the elegance and meaning of the original, and translators moved beyond exactitude in reproduction to interpretative translations based on the literary conventions of the target language, thus privileging the target text over the source text. This second notion of ‘free translation’ focused on the spirit, sense and message of a work (Newmark 1988), and numerous examples appeared throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the latter being the period of ‘les belles infidèles’ where to translate artfully and aesthetically took precedence over concerns for faithfulness. Two individuals, Sir John Denham in England and Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt in France, were representative of prolific and influential translators of the seventeenth century who championed a freer translation method based on the spirit of the text rather than its form. The translator as creative artist continued into the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, with translation theorists such as Goethe, Herder and Schleiermacher debating the choice between making the reader move towards the author (foreignizing method), or the author move towards the reader (domesticating method) (Pym 1997). The choice of a foreignizing method of translation was particularly evident in the work of Schleiermacher, who was successful in recommending emphasis on the cultural ‘Other’, a method strongly influenced by theories of cultural anthropology and linguistic and cultural uniqueness in the nineteenth century.

Theories of translation in the twentieth century have seen a gradual movement from the choice between literal and free translations to the discussion of equivalence, the third notion. The concept of equivalence defines a relationship between two comparable entities in terms of likeness, sameness, similarity and equality (Halverson 1997), with equivalence theory covering the transfer of information, the correctness of the transfer, and the communicative transfer process. Nida (1969) was influential in espousing the notion of dynamic equivalence, a method of translation that stresses a conservative positioning of the translator together with fluency, accuracy, and naturalness of expression. Other proponents within the linguistic tradition who investigated the concept of equivalence and the relationship between source and target texts were Quine (1960), who questioned the nature and degree of sameness; Catford (1965), who defined the equivalence relationship in terms of text pairs; Koller (1995), who concentrated on the qualities that define the nature of equivalence; and Toury (1995), who dealt with relativity and equivalence. Holmes (1988) emphasized the importance of the nature of the full text over its linguistic parts, claiming that the goal of equivalence can never be fulfilled, only textual correspondences or matchings. Pym (1992) refines Even-Zohar’s (1990) proposal of a general theory of transfer by stating that equivalence is the relationship between the translated text and the transferred text as determined by the translator, a position that reflects recent theorizing on the place of the translator within the ethics of translation.

The fourth notion draws on the work of Pym and two further principal translation theorists – Lawrence Venuti and Antoine Berman – who have given priority to translators and their decisions within the framework of an ethics of translation. Their emphasis not so much on the technical aspects of translation but on the ethics of translating has particular significance for the purposes of the current study due to the specificity of translating children’s books. Translating for child readers raises ethical questions of the degree of manipulation and adaptation of the source text, and of the use of strategies that explain and soften the narrative. Pym (1992, 1993) is resolute in the belief that translators, as communicators between cultures, are intercultural subjects who transform distance in an attempt to improve the transferred text rather than the source text. He suggests that cultural equality in translation is purely hypothetical due to the inequality between the positions of author and translator. In asserting that by definition authors and translators are not equal, nor are text flows between senders and receivers, he proposes that improvement should become a guiding force in the process of translation. Pym argues that the values of texts are changed when transferred in place and time, and the meaning for the producer of the original text does not necessarily have the same meaning in reception. The process of interpretation and comparison depends on the intended reader and the purpose of the translation, and accounts for the degree and type of textual elaboration and explicitation required from the translator in order to move texts from the ‘embeddedness’ or ‘collective belonging’ of their familiar environment.

Rules in translation are ethical decisions driven by a concern for the type of reader of the transferred text, for the preservation of the ‘otherness’ of the text, and for the negotiation or ‘struggle with the text’ (Delisle 1988; Valdes 1991; Venuti 1995). Venuti has been the major critic of the notion of the translator’s invisibility within an ethical framework of translation. Venuti (1995:308) espouses the cultural model in translation studies and claims that every part of the translation process is mediated by the cultural values of the target culture, with the translator choosing between submission and resistance to the dominant values in the target culture:

Submission assumes an ideology of assimilation at work in the translation process, locating the same in the cultural other […] Resistance assumes an ideology of autonomy, locating the alien in a cultural other, pursuing cultural diversity, foregrounding the linguistic and cultural differences of the source-language text and transforming the hierarchy of cultural values in the target language.

Venuti observes that the overriding translation strategy over the last three centuries, especially in regard to English language translation, has been the strategy of fluency, whereby emphasis is placed on the style of the text, the invisibility of the translator, and the ‘naturalness’ of the translated text. In Venuti’s reasoning, the historical aim in translation for this combination of fluency, invisibility and textual transparency has sprung from domesticating solutions that attempt “to bring back a cultural other as the same, the recognizable, even the familiar, and this aim always risks a wholesale domestication of the foreign” (1995:18). In referring to the loss and gain of semantic meaning associated with the process of replacement of the ‘chain of signifiers’ in the source and target texts, Venuti stresses the influence of the receiving culture and the illusion of transparency created by domesticating solutions. He argues a case for the importance of the strategy of resistance to mark the precise difference among and within languages.

Berman (1985) has also been influential in formulating the ethical aim of translation. Berman, like Venuti, is insistent on foreignizing strategies centered on the linguistic, stylistic and structural otherness of the source text, rather than on equivalence or domesticating target-language aesthetic and ideological values. In his writings on the translation of ‘high literature’ in Western culture, he frequently presents a negative analytic of translation and claims that historically translation has been characterized by ethnocentrism, hypertextuality and Platonic ideals. Berman’s analytic proposed that translation should be “éthique, poétique et pensante” (1999:27) [ethical, poetic, and thinking; my translation), the exact opposite of the traditional ‘face’ of translation. In making the translated text a place where a cultural other is manifested, Berman emphasizes the deformations that still destroy all texts precisely because the cultural other is constructed in the terms of the target language. Berman thus advocates foreignizing translations – in other words, compelling the reader to come to the text – because of the need he identifies both to resist the domination of target-language cultural values and to emphasize the linguistic and cultural difference of the foreign text.

In arguing that translations are ‘transferred’ texts in a new context, Pym (1992) claims that to translate is to attempt improvement of the transferred text and not the source text, compelling the translator to adapt the text for the new reader. Arguing that rules and regulations for translating tend to reflect nothing more than personal preferences or conventions, Pym recommends that the pursuit of improvement through translation be driven by ethical decisions regarding the reader and the purpose of the text, and be defined by what translators actually do in practice. His emphasis on the translator’s own code of ethics in the translation process is of extreme importance and applicability in the case of children’s books. Conversely, Berman’s refusal of a communication-oriented approach to translation because it would privilege the target reader, and his emphasis on the task of translation as offering the foreign text to the reader in all its foreignness, make his rigid source-oriented ethics inappropriate for the translation of children’s books. Child readers would struggle with the foreignness of the source text precisely because fluency and transparency are replaced by the difference that marks the source text and constitutes its opacity.

In addition to these three major translation theorists, there are a number of commentators who challenge and extend issues raised by Pym, Venuti and Berman, and whose observations may be applied to children’s books. The discussion by Lane-Mercier (1997) on the role of the translator fully acknowledges the presence and mark of the translator within the target text, but extends the notion of an ethics of the translation to include not only semantic responsibility, but also aesthetic, ideological and political responsibility. She refers to the social and cultural representations of the ‘Other’ that linguistic difference presupposes, and to the forces that form the basis of such representations, such as antagonisms, interests and power struggles. In referring to Lefevere’s emphasis on the external determinants of techniques used by translators, she highlights the importance of the translator’s own ethical code and responsibility in making translational choices. Through the negotiation of concepts and practices of equivalence and fidelity, resistance and transparency, sameness and otherness, inclusion and exclusion, translators make interpretive choices and take a position of responsibility with respect to the source text, author, and culture, and the target culture and reader in order to produce meaning. As a contrasting earlier view, Wareham (1991) claims that translators bear no responsibility for the content of text that they accurately translate, but they would be violating their duties by translating inaccurately or deviating from the meaning of the original text. He argues that translators should translate faithfully without pointing out to the reader moral, factual, or any other kinds of errors that they rightly or wrongly identify in the source text. Shreve and colleagues (1993) emphasize the important relationship for translators between reading for comprehension and reading for translation. They suggest that not only do decisions about how to read a text form part of a translator’s overall strategy for translation, but that no single translation process is common to all translators.

This brings me to the linguistic, stylistic and normative constraints that operate in the translation of children’s books, where there is a systematic tendency for translators to prioritize the accessibility of the text for the child reader in another culture. Translation for children is, in effect, pre-consumption of the text; its goal is to make the content as explicit as possible, and as such involves recodification, transfer of meaning, and tailoring of the text to the target audience.

Translation Theory and Children’s Literature

One of the overriding issues in the translation of children’s books is how translating for children is fundamentally different from translating for adults in terms of the approach and strategies used. According to polysystem theory, a term coined by the cultural theorist Even-Zohar (1978), literature is a dynamic system within which texts struggle for domination. Children’s literature and translated literature are incorporated within this framework, but occupy a peripheral position in the literary polysystem, affiliating to existing models. Translated texts tend to conform to models in the target system due to the fact that the system accepts mainly what is conventional and well known (Shavit 1986). The advantage of situating the present study within the extended polysystem framework provided by Toury (1995) is the relevance of his descriptive approach emphasizing the factors that influence the text produced for the reader in the target culture. The target orientation of polysystem theory highlights the distinction between a prescriptive source-oriented approach that works from a notion of ideal equivalence and a descriptive target-oriented approach based on what the translation actually does.

Previous studies show that far more liberties are taken in translating for children than for adults (Klingberg 1986; McGillis 1993; Puurtinen 1998). These liberties primarily take the form of adaptations that occur precisely because translators make judgements of the content of texts based on what they perceive to be appropriate or inappropriate for children in the target culture. A lack of intervention on the part of the translator can simply be the result of the original text ‘delivering the goods’ for the reader in terms of the degree of didacticism and explicitation in the narrative. In such cases, the translator’s role is usurped by the narrator, leaving the translator to simply translate rather than resort to explicitation. If however there is a need for adaptation of the original text, then strategies of translation may reflect a paternalistic didacticism that is cultural, technical or moral, and built into the narrative as an overlay in works for children (Bell 1991; Houlind 2001). Cultural didacticism fills in the gaps or explains what is left unsaid in the source text, and ranges from minor additions to extreme rewritings. Technical didacticism (‘didactisme savant’) adds or prefers terminology of a more erudite nature, and is intent upon teaching children subject-specific terminology. Moral didacticism reflects a judgement on the suitability of the source content for a young reader in a different culture. While these three forms of didacticism are designed to explain, there is also the possibility for mild to extreme deletion to occur in instances where the translator decides that the material is inappropriate in some way for the new readers.

Theoretical reflections on the translation of children’s literature include a concerted focus on the issue of cultural context adaptation. When French translators privilege the French child reader over the ‘authority’ of the original text, this prioritization necessitates both the provision of additional information in the translation and a reasonable degree of adaptation of the cultural context of the source language to the cultural context of the target language. Puurtinen (1997) discusses what Toury (1980) describes as the two contradictory aims of translation – acceptability and adequacy – and cites studies on cultural adaptation in the field of children’s literature that clearly support the tendency towards acceptability rather than adequacy. These two methods are also described by critics as alienation and adaptation, or the source-language versus target-language methods (Oittinen 1993; Lin 2000), and are simply different terms for the methods of foreignization and domestication. In children’s books, there is a tendency to adapt the source text to the target reader’s level of experience and understanding and to move the cultural setting o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Tables
• List of Illustrations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Translation as Mediation between Cultures
• Chapter 2. Australian Children’s Literature and International Trends
• Chapter 3. French Selections of Australian Children’s Fiction
• Chapter 4. Marketing Australian Books in France
• Chapter 5. Translating Australia & Australianness
• Chapter 6. Translation, Literariness and the ‘Readerly’
• Chapter 7. Translation, Literariness and the ‘Writerly’
• Conclusion
• Appendix 1. Twentieth Century Australian Children’s Fiction in French Translation
• Appendix 2. French Translations of Australian Children’s Fiction per Decade
• Appendix 3. French Publishers, Translated Australian Authors and Titles
• Bibliography
• Index