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Zhuangni Lin
Professor Matt Wilson
Writing 2
Due on May 23, 2016
Translating Genres: From an Academic Article to a Fable
The world we live in is filled with unfairness. People in many places still have a prejudice
against the poor, people of color, and even women. We might consider ourselves as people
who treat others equally without discrimination. However, when we take a serious look at
ourselves, we may realize that such biases more or less can be found in ourselves. In the
process of interpersonal relationship, we are accustomed to evaluating others with our
preconceived opinions. An academic research article written by psychologist Kristin Shutts
shows that even children would use cues that are associated with wealth differences in society
to guide their consideration of others. I think it is a result of the influence of our social
environment on children. If we can imbue them with sound moral values through early
education, it might not be a problem. Therefore, in order to attract young children and teach
them to treat people equally without discrimination, I translated the academic article
Children Use Wealth Cues to Evaluate Others by Shutts to a fable using funny characters
and casual dialogue, reflecting only researchers argument of the primary text.
The first choice I made before translating was to decide my intended audience. Bunn
mentioned in his How to Read Like a Writer that An[an] authors writerly techniques may
seem more effective to reach a very specific group than to a more general audience (Bunn,
76). Since Shutts academic research article is long, dry, full of psychological jargons and
contain prior knowledge that most of us likely dont have, it can only be circulated through
psychological or educational communities, and thus fail in practically contributing to
generate a positive social effect (Rosenberg, 214). In her research, she studied 6-to-9-year-old

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kids and found that they tend to like those who appear to be advantaged more than those who
appear to be disadvantaged. This research just presents us with the result but cant make any
changes in the attitude of children because its incomprehensible to them. Therefore, I chose
to translate it into another genre for pre-school children, making them be aware of that
tendency. Then in the course of interacting with others in the future, they might be able to
treat others without discrimination. After having determined my target audience, I had to
choose a genre that can both attract pre-school children and teach them a lesson, and the fable
came into my mind.
Before I started my translation, I faced a task to figure out the conventions of the fable.
Just as Kerry Dirk wrote in her Navigating Genres that When I started writing this essay,
first I had to determine what this essay might look like, I gathered many examples of fables
for young children and looked for common features (Dirk, 250). I found out that fables are
usually short tales used to teach a moral lesson with animals as characters. Therefore, in my
translation, I used a little donkey, his mother, and a rabbit as the main characters which are
presented with anthropomorphic features such as the ability to speak and to reason. I also
used many vivid dialogues between the animals to help them express their strong emotions
with informal language such as Oh, no, You are a big liar. Considering that my intended
audience are pre-school children who might not be able to read the fable themselves and need
their parents to read for them, I therefore created those characters and dialogues to attract
them, making them more involved in the fable while listening.
While working on the translation, another concern of mine was to think about how to
integrate the main idea from my primary text into the fable, and I referenced McClouds
comic, Writing with Pictures. McCloud says that storys moments should be like a dot-to-dot
puzzle and that if removing a dot doesnt change the shape of a story then maybe that
particular dot wasnt needed in the first place (McCloud). Since I wanted to translate the

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academic research article into a fable, I cannot incorporate all the information from the
original text into it. I chose to only use the argument from the research that Children would
use wealth cue to evaluate others as a main point to be reflected in the fable (Shutts, 1). In
my fable, the little donkey was mocked by a rabbit on his first day of school because of his
grey hair. So he later dressed up as a zebra to school which made him become popular among
the kids. Other kids including the rabbit didnt not realize he was actually the same donkey
they met before until the little donkey took off his socked zebra-patterned coat after saving
the rabbit that fell into the water. It was at that moment did the rabbit realize what a serious
mistake she had made. I connected my fable with the research article by creating the rabbit as
a character that represents the children who use wealth clues to evaluate others as it is shown
in the research. Moreover, my purpose of writing this fable was to teach pre-school children
not to treat others with discrimination.
I think I achieved my purpose of translation by making a dense academic article
understandable to even kids. The academic article is too professional for children or even the
public to understand, while the fable with interesting dialogues, affable characters, and easyto-understand sentences would generate a greater net benefit for society by directly teaching
the pre-school not to judge others by wealth cues or appearances. During the process of genre
translation, some information did get lost, but I think the most necessary and impactful
information to impart to my target audience is retained. It is my hope that the children will be
able to realize the problem discovered by the psychologist through my fable.
Work Cited
Bunn, Mike. How to Read Like a Writer. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing.
Vol.2. Parlor. 71-86. Print.
Dirk, Kerry. Navigating Genres. Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. Vol.1. Parlor,
249-61. Print.

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McCloud, Scott. Writing with Pictures.
Rosenberg, Karen. Reading Games: Strategies for Reading Scholarly Source. Writing
Spaces: Reading on Writing. Vol.2. Parlor. 210-220. Print.
Shutts, Kristin, et al. "Children Use Wealth Cues to Evaluate Others." Plos ONE 11.3
(2016): 1-21. Academic Search Complete. Web. 22 May 2016.