Ideological Manipulation of Children’s Literature Through Translation and Rewriting

Travelling Across Times and Places

Vanessa Leonardi

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030477486
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030477493
• Topic: Lingue e linguistica
• Subtopic: Linguistica

This book explores the topic of ideological manipulation in the translation of children's literature by addressing several crucial questions, including how target language norms and conventions affect the quality of a translation, how translations are selected on the basis of what is culturally accepted, who is involved in the selection of what should be translated for children in the target culture, and how this process takes place. The author presents different ways of looking at the translation of children's books, focusing particularly on the practices of intralingual and interlingual translations as a form of rewriting across a selection of European languages. This book will be of interest to Translation Studies and children's literature scholars, as well as those with a wider interest in the impact of ideology on culture. 

© The Author(s) 2020

V. LeonardiIdeological Manipulation of Children’s Literature Through Translation and Rewritinghttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47749-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Vanessa Leonardi¹

(1)

Department of Biomedical and Specialty Surgical Sciences, University of Ferrara, Ferrara, Italy

Vanessa Leonardi

Email: [email protected]

Abstract

This chapter introduces the topic and aims of this work, that is exploring the cultural and ideological shifts that take place when translating children’s literature (ChL). When ChL is translated, the text is inevitably rewritten and recreated by translators from a target-oriented perspective and their mediation may reflect a certain degree of ideological manipulation. Translation, therefore, becomes a form of rewriting and adaptation and this is particularly true in the case of ChL whose stories and fairy tales are known and enjoyed worldwide. This work attempts to present different ways of looking at the translation of ChL from both an intralingual and an interlingual perspective as both types of translation may provide interesting insights into the ideological manipulation of source texts. The term ‘intralingual translation’ is used in this work not only in the strict sense of rewording as proposed by Jakobson in 1959 in his tripartite typology of translation but also as a form of rewriting within the same language in line with Lefevere’s claim that all translations are a form of rewriting. The texts chosen for the case studies were selected on the basis of their relevance to the issue of ideological manipulation and were classified into different types of ideologies, such as political, feminist, cultural and national ideologies as well as naming practices and censorship. This work does not deal with illustrations as it focuses on translation manipulation from a textual perspective rather than from a visual language perspective. The languages used in the illustrative case studies are English, Italian, French, Spanish and German. Yet the case studies are written in such a way as to allow comprehension even to readers who are not familiar with these particular languages through explanations.

Keywords

TranslationRewritingIdeological manipulationChildren’s literature

End Abstract

Although fairy tales are characterised by simplicity and pervasiveness, they also carry with them significantly cultural and ideological elements. Throughout the years, there have been myriads of variations upon variations justified by different historical periods and cultural settings, thus making it rather complex to refer to original stories. Children’s stories and fairy tales have been translated, rewritten and/or adapted to suit the socio-cultural, historical and ideological needs of each single target audience and to fulfil several purposes.

This work explores the issues of ideology and manipulation, and more precisely, the cultural and ideological shifts that take place when translating children’s literature (ChL). When ChL is translated, the text is inevitably rewritten and recreated by translators from a target-oriented perspective and their mediation may reflect a certain degree of ideological manipulation. Translation, therefore, becomes a form of rewriting and adaptation and this is particularly true in the case of ChL whose stories and fairy tales are known and enjoyed worldwide. Due to socio-economic, political, cultural, historical and ideological reasons, children’s stories have gone through many transformations, which have largely contributed to their acceptability and survival throughout the years. However, are the stories and tales that people currently read the same as the original ones? Among the classics, for instance, Snow White and Cinderella have endured hundreds of revisions and retellings, which inevitably reflect specific cultural, historical and ideological aspects of the time when they were translated, rewritten or adapted.

Children’s literature is an umbrella term, which includes nursery rhymes, songs, storybooks, poems, riddles, fairy tales, folk tales and picture books. For the purpose of this work, ChL is used to refer to all those books written specifically for children, bearing in mind both the ambivalence and the dual readership of such texts. Children’s literature is regarded as the Outsider (Hunt 1990: 1) or the Cinderella of literary studies (Shavit 1994: 5) and its translation can be complex and challenging for several reasons. First of all, the translation of children’s literature requires a specific knowledge of all the features and functions of fairy tales as well as a solid understanding of cultural values in both the source culture (SC) and in the target culture (TC). Secondly, translation is a very complex activity and, especially in the case of ChL, more and more attention should be paid in terms of language usage and lexical choices, along with violent or strong content features. Thirdly, ideological and cultural assumptions may lead to translation manipulation of ChL as a result of censorship, taboos and other moral and ethical issues to consider when the target audience is young and innocent.

The translation of ChL is affected by many variables and agents involved in its production. Translation is not a neutral activity and, throughout the years, scholars have largely debated about its role and quality. Translation is a complex activity which is undoubtedly influenced by many factors, such as context, history, politics, target audience, target language conventions and ideology, to mention a few. For years, translations were considered as derivatives and copies. With the emergence of poststructuralist and functionalist approaches, the focus of attention was shifted towards the issues of translators’ subjectivity and agency, thus questioning their (in)visibility and role in the translated work. Bassnett (1996: 22), for instance, called for a reassessment of the translators’ role through an analysis of their intervention in the linguistic transfer process by claiming that ‘once considered a subservient, transparent filter through which a text could and should pass without adulteration, the translation can now be seen as a process in which intervention is crucial’. Álvarez and Vidal (1996: 5) believed that behind any translator’s choice and strategy ‘there is a voluntary act that reveals his history and the socio-political milieu that surrounds him; in other words, his own culture and ideology’. Scholars who view translation as an ideological activity believe that translation is in itself a political act. Tahir-Gürcağlar (2003: 113), for instance, asserted that ‘[t]ranslation is political because, both as activity and product, it displays process of negotiation among different agents. On micro-level, these agents are translators, authors, critics, publishers, editors, and readers’.

This work supports the theory that translation is an ideological activity whose purposes and results may vary on the basis of several factors, such as cultural and linguistic norms and acceptability, and it targets a domestic rather than a foreign audience. In this respect, ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Children’s Literature and Translation
• 3. Ideological Manipulation in Intralingual Translation: Case Studies
• 4. Ideological Manipulation in Interlingual Translation: Case Studies
• 5. Conclusions and Prospects for Future Research
• Back Matter