Translating Childrens Literature 9781138803749 9781138803763 9781315753515

Translating Children’s Literature
Translating Children’s Literature is an exploration of the many developmental

and linguistic issues related to writing and translating for children, an
audience that spans a period of enormous intellectual progress and affective
change from birth to adolescence. In this book, Lathey looks at a broad range
of children’s literature, from prose fiction to poetry and picture books. Each
of the seven chapters addresses a different aspect of translation for children,
covering:
• narrative style and the challenges of translating the child’s voice;

• the translation of cultural markers for young readers;
• translation of the modern picture book;
• dialogue, dialect and street language in modern children’s literature;
• read-aloud qualities, wordplay, onomatopoeia and the translation of
children’s poetry;
• retranslation, retelling and reworking;
• the role of translation for children within the global publishing and
translation industries.
This is the first practical guide to address all aspects of translating

children’s literature, featuring extracts from commentaries and interviews with
published translators of children’s literature, as well as examples and case
studies across a range of languages and texts. Each chapter includes a set of
questions and exercises for students.
Translating Children’s Literature is essential reading for
professional
translators, researchers and students on courses in translation studies
or children’s literature.
Gillian Lathey is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University

of Roehampton, UK, and is a co-founder and judge of the Marsh Award
for Children’s Literature in Translation. Publications include The
Translation of Children’s Literature: A Reader (2006) and The Role of
Translators in Children’s Literature: Invisible Storytellers (Routledge,
2010).
Translation Practices Explained
Series Editor: Kelly Washbourne
Translation Practices Explained is a series of coursebooks designed to help

self-learners and students on translation and interpreting courses. Each
volume focuses on a specific aspect of professional translation practice, in
many cases corresponding to courses available in translator-training
institutions. Special volumes are devoted to well-consolidated
professional areas, to areas where labour-market demands are currently
undergoing considerable growth, and to specific aspects of professional
practices on which little teaching and learning material is available. The
authors are practicing translators or translator-trainers in the fields
concerned. Although specialists, they explain their professional insights in a
manner accessible to the wider learning public. These books start from the
recognition that professional translation practices require something more than
elaborate abstraction or fixed methodologies. They are located close to work on
authentic texts, and encourage learners to proceed inductively, solving
problems as they arise from examples and case studies. Each volume
includes activities and exercises designed to help learners consolidate their
knowledge (teachers may also find these useful for direct application in
class, or alternatively as the basis for the design and preparation of their own
material). Updated reading lists and website addresses will also help
individual learners gain further insight into the realities of professional
practice.
Titles in the Series:

Localizing Apps Revising and Editing for
Johann Roturier Translators 3e
Brian Mossop
User-Centered Translation
Tytti Suojanen, Kaisa Koskinen,
Audiovisual Translation
Tiina Tuominen
Frederic Chaume
Translating for the European Union
Institutions 2e Scientific and Technical Translation
Emma Wagner, Svend Bech, Explained
Jesús M. Martínez Jody Byrne
Translation-Driven Corpora Notetaking for Consecutive
Federico Zanettin Interpreting
Andrew Gillies
Subtitling Through Speech
Recognition Translating Official Documents
Pablo Romero-Fresco Roberto Mayoral Asensio
Conference Interpreting Explained

Translating Promotional and
Roderick Jones
Advertising Texts
Ira Torresi
Legal Translation Explained
Enrique Alcaraz, Brian Hughes
Audiovisual Translation,
Subtitling Electronic Tools for Translators
Jorge Diaz-Cintas, Aline Frank Austermuhl
Remael
Medical Translation Step by Step Introduction to Court Interpreting
Vicent Montalt, Maria González-Davies Holly Mikkelson
For more information on any of these titles, or to order, please go to www.

routledge.com/linguistics
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Translating Children’s
Literature
Gillian Lathey
First published 2016
by Routledge
2 Park Square,
Milton Park,
Abingdon, Oxon
OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
711 Third Avenue,
New York, NY
10017
Routledge is an
imprint of the
Taylor & Francis
Group, an informa
business
© 2016 Gillian
Lathey
The right of Gillian Lathey to be identified as author of this work has
been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical,
or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including
photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publishers.
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks
or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification
and explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British
Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lathey, Gillian, 1949-
Translating children's literature / By Gillian Lathey.
pages cm – (Translation Practices Explained.)
Includes bibliographical references.
1. Children's literature – Translating. 2. Translating
and interpreting –
Study and teaching. I. Title.
PN1009.5.T75L38 2015
418.04 – dc23
2015005141
ISBN: 978-1-138-80374-9
(hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-138-80376-3
(pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-75351-5
(ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman

by Florence Production Ltd,
Stoodleigh, Devon, UK
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
Introduction 1
1Narrative communication with the child reader 15
2Meeting the unknown: translating names, cultural

markers and intertextual references 37
3Translating the visual 55
4Translating dialogue and dialect 71
5Translating sound: reading aloud, poetry, wordplay

and onomatopoeia 93
6Retellings, retranslation and relay translation 113
7Children’s publishing, globalization and the child reader 127
Bibliography 145
Index 157
Acknowledgements
My interest in this book arises from a passion for children’s literature in my

early career as a teacher of young children and as an academic, as well as a
deep and lifelong interest in the art of translation. I am not a professional
translator, nor could I possibly cover the range of languages addressed in
these pages. I therefore owe a debt of gratitude to all the translators,
friends and colleagues whose help I have called upon, or whose work I have
cited during the writing of this book. Particular thanks are due to: Sarah
Ardizzone, Mona Baker, Anthea Bell, Nancy and Aidan Chambers,
Estelle Chan, Patricia Crampton, Mieke Desmet, Gunnar Florin, Janet
Garton, Jane Grayson, Daniel Hahn, Cathy Hirano, Nadja Korthals,
Tomoko Masaki, Aoi Matsushima, Noriko Shimoda Netley, Riitta Oittinen,
Emer O’Sullivan and Jehan Zitawi. Every effort has been made to contact
copyright-holders. Please advise the publisher of any errors or omissions, and
these will be corrected in subsequent
editions.
Introduction
The writing of books for children is an underestimated art, and the translation
of books for children doubly so. Creating publishable children’s stories appears
to many to be an easy option, with anyone from popstars to princes able to
produce one. Therefore, the thinking goes, surely a reasonably competent
speaker of source and target languages will be able to translate a book for
children? Yet authors or translators quickly discover the illusory simplicity
of a literature that conveys with a light touch the joys, humour and mischief
of childhood, as well as its more troubling undercurrents. A text written for
children or young adults may be just as demanding in its intellectual com-
plexity, stylistic flair or thematic content as a work for adults, as the cognitive
puzzles of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Swedish author Astrid
Lindgren’s psychologically astute writings for the younger child, or Toshi
Maruki’s disturbing picture book on the aftermath of the nuclear attack on
Japan, Hiroshima No Pika!, all amply demonstrate. Such texts highlight the
diversity and complexity of children’s literature, the translation of which is
no less challenging than translating for adults.
Indeed, the boundaries between children’s and adult literature are fluid and
regularly breached by both adults and children; critical writing on ‘crossover’
fiction (Beckett, 2009; 2012; Falconer, 2009) draws attention to the history,
modern instances and international dimensions of this phenomenon. Some
of the best-known international children’s classics began their existence
either as oral tales for all ages or as texts for adult readers and therefore
include adult themes and preoccupations. The work of Lewis Carroll, the
collection of stories known as The Arabian Nights, the fables of Aesop
(see Lathey, 2010), Grimms’ tales, Cervantes’ Don Quixote and Jonathan
Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels are just a few instances of books that have
travelled from the adult to the children’s canon. Sometimes this journey
takes place in the course of translation, as Zohar Shavit (1986)
demonstrates in her account of Hebrew editions of Gulliver’s Travels and
Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Literature crosses the adult–child
boundary in the opposite direction, too, as adults across the world enjoy
the gentle, philosophical humour of A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh books,
the visual and textual pleasures of Japanese manga, or Belgian and French
comic-strip albums. Assigning children’s literature a
2 Introduction
second-class status, or defining such a wide variety of texts as a ‘genre’ to
rank alongside other strands of popular literature, is, therefore, to trivialize
unjustly the work of children’s authors and their counterparts, those who
translate for children.
The adult–child duality inherent in all books for children originates in the
paradox that – with very few exceptions such as Anne Frank’s diary – only
adults write, publish and edit children’s books. Jacqueline Rose (1984)
investigated this fundamental irony from a psychoanalytic perspective by taking
J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan as a case study of what she has called ‘the impos-
sibility of children’s fiction’. Rose argues that adult self-interest is at stake in
writing for children, whether as part of a cathartic revisiting of childhood
concerns or because the adult has retained certain childhood qualities. This
adult investment in children’s literature – whether creative, financial or affect-
ive – results in an asymmetrical power relationship between writer and
reader that affects every level of the writing process. In many early children’s
books this adult–child relationship is inscribed within the text in the form of
an omniscient adult narrator who inspires or admonishes young readers, while
tacitly or even overtly addressing the adult. Moreover, witty asides or
knowing comments clearly intended to entertain or inform the adult reading
aloud to a child are not uncommon in children’s texts, so that a translator has
to address both layers of meaning.
What is children’s literature?

How, then, is it possible to distinguish clearly between literature for children
and adults? Definitions of children’s literature are plentiful, ranging from a
pragmatic focus on texts intentionally published for children to the unlimited
scope of any text read by a child.1 Some critics seek to identify the stylistic
and thematic qualities of children’s literature, although such blueprints may
be contentious. Today it would be possible to take issue with almost every
aspect of the comparison Myles McDowell made in 1973 between adult and
children’s literature:
[. . .] children’s books are generally shorter; they tend to favour an active

rather than a passive treatment, with dialogue and incident rather than
description and introspection; child protagonists are the rule; conventions
are much used; the story develops with a clear-cut moral schematism
which much adult fiction ignores; children’s books tend to be optimistic
rather than depressive; language is child-oriented [. . .]
(cited in Hollindale, 1997: 36)
Since McDowell made these assertions, longer works with ambiguous

moral messages and passages of introspection, as well as less than optimistic
conclusions, have almost become the norm in the field of young adult fiction.
Moreover, children’s fiction set in the two World Wars quite frequently
Introduction
3
features adult
protagonists either as combatants, refugees, medical personnel or victims of
air raids. Nor is a ‘clear-cut’ moral standpoint evident in many current
novels for the young; readers may be left to draw their own ethical
conclusions. Such definitions described by McDowell fail to encompass the
variety of children’s literature currently available.
In his book
Signs of Childness in Children’s Books (1997), an extended essay
on perceptions
of childhood in adult and children’s literature (highly recommended to
anyone considering translating for children), Peter Hollindale juxtaposes
McDowell’s confident, but limiting, description with that of British novelist
Jill Paton Walsh. Paton Walsh promotes the adult–child tension of writing
for children as a creative spur and source of unique stylistic challenges:
The
children’s book presents a technically most difficult, technically most
interesting problem – that of making a fully serious adult statement, as a
good novel of any kind does, and making it utterly simple and
transparent. It seems to me to be a dereliction of some kind, almost a
betrayal of the young reader, to get out of the difficulty by putting down
the adult’s burden of knowledge and experience, and speaking
childishly; but the need for comprehensibility imposes an emotional
obliqueness, an indirectness of approach, which like elision and partial
statement in poetry is often itself a source of aesthetic power. I imagine
the perfectly achieved children’s book something like a soap-bubble; all
you can see is a surface – a lovely rainbow thing to attract the youngest
onlooker – but the whole is shaped and sustained by the pressure of adult
emotion, present but invisible, like the air within the bubble.
Paton Walsh, cited in Hollindale, 1997: 40)
She refers, of course, to literary writing for children of the highest standard
rather than to the full range of children’s literature, but her comments are an
enlightening encouragement to any writer or translator attempting to
understand the artistic potential of writing for the young.
One children’s author has offered an intriguing example of a
distinction
between writing for children and adults. In a collection of essays on
children and literature published in 1985, Aidan Chambers presents two
versions of the same passage by British children’s author Roald Dahl, one
written for children and one for adults, although each is ‘sustained’, as Paton
Walsh would have it, by an adult sensibility. First, here is the passage from
a short story “The Champion of the World”, from the collection Kiss Kiss,
published 1960:
I wasn’t sure about this, but I had the suspicion that it was none
other than the famous Mr. Victor Hazel himself, the owner of the land
4 Introduction
having once been one of them himself, and he strove desperately to
mingle with what he believed were the right kind of folk. He rode to
hounds and gave shooting-parties and wore fancy waistcoats, and every
weekday he drove an enormous black Rolls-Royce past the filling-
station on his way to the brewery. As he flashed by, we would sometimes
catch a glimpse of the great glistening brewer’s face above the wheel,
pink as ham, all soft and inflamed from drinking too much beer.
(“The Champion of the World”, 1960: 209)
Next, the same passage from Dahl’s children’s novel Danny: The Champion
of the World, published 1975:
I must pause here to tell you something about Mr Victor Hazell. He

was a brewer of beer and he owned a large brewery. He was rich beyond
words, and his property stretched for miles along either side of the
valley. All the land round us belonged to him, everything on both sides
of the road, everything except the small patch of ground on which our
filling-station stood. That patch belonged to my father. It was a little
island in the middle of the vast ocean of Mr Hazell’s estate.
Mr Victor Hazell was a roaring snob and he tried desperately to get in
with what he believed were the right kind of people. He hunted with the
hounds and gave shooting-parties and wore fancy waistcoats. Every week-
day he drove his enormous silver Rolls-Royce past our filling-station on
his way to the brewery. As he flashed by we would sometimes catch a
glimpse of the great glistening beery face above the wheel, pink as ham,
all soft and inflamed from drinking too much beer.
(Danny: The Champion of the World, 1975: 45–
50)
Chambers identifies a number of changes for the younger audience,

including the ‘chopping up’ of longer sentences on the stylistic level and the
removal of a reference to Hazel’s loathing of people of humble station. There
are, however, other significant changes such as the shift from an uncertain
narrator in the first passage (‘I wasn’t sure about this . . .’) to one who is fully
in command of the narrative and addresses his audience directly in the
second. In the passage from the children’s version the frequent use of the
personal pronouns ‘we’, ‘my’ and ‘our’ continuously brings the reader back to
the central emotional bond of the book, that between Danny and his father,
and to their circumstances at the filling-station. Dahl also changes the
antiquated phrase ‘rode to hounds’ into ‘hunted with the hounds’. Whether
such fine linguistic changes and the introduction of an omniscient
narrator are necessary or not – many are debatable – the shift in focus to
the father–son relationship is essential in the revision of the passage for
younger readers. An analysis of this example certainly raises awareness of
the potential narrative and stylistic niceties of writing and translating for
children.
Introduction 5
The emergence of children’s literature
The emergence of a separate ‘children’s literature’ in cultures across the world
naturally depends on an early phase of life that is at least partly devoted to
education and acculturation, and free from the need to participate in the
struggle for survival – a luxury that is not universal. Childhood is a flexible
period adjusted to meet economic necessity. Even in affluent countries, the
parameters of childhood have shifted in recent times: currently in the UK, for
example, the official end of childhood occurs at the age of eighteen rather
than twenty-one as was the case until 1971, and the permissible age for
purchasing cigarettes, alcohol or engaging in sexual activity has also
changed a number of times in the latter half of the twentieth century. In the
global market of the early twenty-first century, concepts of childhood depend
increasingly on the initiatives of the fashion, games and toy industries in
establishing age-related categories. Publishers, too, divide childhood into
phases such as the ‘early years’, the ‘pre-schooler’, the ‘pre-teen’, the
‘adolescent’, the ‘young adult’ and indicate appropriate age ranges on book
covers, or classify books as ‘easy readers’, ‘chapter books’, ‘middle grade’
and similar. Often these categories can be taken with a pinch of salt, since
children develop as readers at vastly different rates.
Where economic conditions favour the establishment of an indigenous
children’s literature, reading matter for the young may begin as a vehicle for
educational, religious and moral instruction, or purely for the teaching of
literacy. In many children’s literatures there is a gradual shift from a purely
instructive medium towards reading for aesthetic pleasure and entertainment;
but not all emergent children’s literatures follow the same pattern. O’Sullivan
(2000) counters Shavit’s (1986) global application of the standard Western
model of development ‘from instruction to delight’ by offering case histories
of the tension between imported colonial and indigenous children’s literatures
in Africa,2 and the recent establishment of a non-imported English-
language children’s literature for the young in Ireland in the 1980s. Both
instances inspire
a fresh look at the international history of children’s literature and focus
the attention of translators on its position and purpose within the source
culture. Translated literature, too, has had profound effects on the
development of national children’s literatures; translations of Grimms’ tales,
for example, have
inspired collectors of indigenous3 tales across the world and their
publication for adults and children (see articles in Joosen and Lathey, 2014).
When adults write for children in either educational or entertaining mode,
they convey a world-view to the next generation that is either in line with the
government-sanctioned investment in the education of the young, or goes
against the grain and makes use of children’s literature as a subversive
medium. Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, for example, includes satirical scenes that
ridicule practices in law and medicine in the Italy of the late-nineteenth
century, just as children’s literature – including adaptations of Pinocchio –
was a vehicle for the expression of opposing political views during the Fascist
period in the 1920s and 1930s in Italy (Gaudino, 2015).
6 Introduction
National governments, as stakeholders in the formation of future citizens,
may intervene in the publication and approval of translated books in an
indirect or overt manner. Indirect control is apparent when officially sanctioned
children’s reading lists or national curricula include or omit translations
from particular countries or languages, according to contemporary political
allegiances. In the case of Brazilian children’s author Monteiro Lobato, an
ideologically motivated reframing of the text in his translation of J.M. Barrie’s
Peter Pan to include criticism of the conservative regime of the late 1930s
resulted in action in the national courts and the banning and confiscation of
that translation. Censorship, didacticism and ideological pressure are at their
most evident, however, in children’s literature published under the aegis of
totalitarian regimes (for example during the Fascist period in Italy as indicated
above, National Socialism in the Germany of the 1930s and 1940s, or the
post- war German Democratic Republic). In the course of painstaking work
in the archives of the former communist German Democratic Republic and
interviews with translators, Gaby Thomson-Wohlgemuth (2003) has
established the ideologically-driven selection of texts and the censorship that
constrained the work of translators during an era when the child was central
to the socialist enterprise. Ironically, and precisely because their work was
regarded as of high ideological importance, translators for children in the
former GDR enjoyed favourable conditions and high social status. To take
an entirely different context, Haidee Kruger’s recent monograph
Postcolonial Polysystems: The production and reception of translated
children’s literature in South Africa (2012) addresses the ideological
aspects of the complex postcolonial and multilingual context for the
translation of children’s literature in South Africa. Translating for children
may therefore include an ideological dimension that requires linguistic and
political finesse on the part of the translator. It is important to ensure that
hidden, encoded messages are not lost to the child (or adult) reader in the
target culture, or that children are made aware in peritextual material
(prefaces, afterwords, annotations, blurbs, etc.) of the
political context from which the book originates.
Developmental issues
As children mature physically, mentally and emotionally, their
requirements concerning the content of reading matter change radically. By
far the most thorough examination of these developments is to be found in
J.A. Appleyard’s Becoming a Reader: The experience of fiction from
childhood to adulthood (1994). Appleyard’s thesis is age-related; he
regards early childhood, for example, as a period when the child reader is a
player exploring the boundaries between reality and fantasy. Early childhood
reading is a numinous experience, generating images we retain throughout
our lives, and has an unpredictable and sustained impact on children’s
imaginative, affective and cognitive development. Translating a text for the
younger child therefore presents subtle and easily overlooked challenges
since there is a temptation to over-explain
Introduction
7
texts for the
young reader or reinterpret them from an adult’s viewpoint. Astrid Lindgren
had little time for translators who harboured preconceived ideas about child
readers and introduced a sentimental tone into translations of her work by
‘prettifying’ the matter-of-fact actions of child characters. She relates an
instance from the German translation of one of the Madicken books where,
in a scene of imaginative play based on the rescue of Moses from the flood,
Lisabet (Moses) puts her arms around the neck of older sister Madicken (the
Pharaoh’s daughter). Madicken, from whose point of view the whole story is
told, is desperate to get out of this stranglehold. The German translator
completely alters the import of this incident by inserting a description of
Lisabet’s arms as ‘little’, ‘podgy’ and ‘round’ (Lindgren, 1969) and thereby
attributing an inappropriate adult sentimentality to Madicken – who at that
moment sees nothing remotely appealing in her sister’s imprisoning arms. It
is often in translating for the younger child that the danger of misjudging the
tone of a text is at its most acute.
Appleyard’s
discussion of the later stages of childhood focuses on the
increasing
complexity of narrative structure necessary to hold the child’s attention,
and the affective need to identify with protagonists. This
development accounts for the many first person and diary narratives for older
children and adolescents, narratives that are highly personal and express the
joys and anxieties of a gradual growth towards adulthood. For the translator,
such texts pose the challenge of replicating the child’s voice in another
language. In later childhood, too, there is an increasing divergence of gender-
related concerns and interests that shift according to cultural and social
changes. Publishers may issue entirely separate series for boys and girls for
example, or libraries may shelve boys’ and girls’ books separately, as happened
until the latter decades of the twentieth century in some European countries.
Translators and editors may well have to make crucial decisions when they
encounter a mismatch between expectations of boys’ and girls’ behaviour in
source and target cultures. Finally, Appleyard characterizes adolescent readers
as thinkers who seek both emotional involvement in realistic scenarios and
answers to philosophical questions in what they read. Other adolescent
readers prefer the detached intellectual excitement of science fiction or
adventure fantasy. No child follows an exact developmental pattern, nor do
children only read fiction written for them, but an understanding of general
trends will enable translators to appreciate both an author’s purpose and the
potential response of a broad age group.
As a result of
children’s cognitive, emotional and literacy development, a
translator of
children’s texts may work on an enormous range of text types, from the
toddler’s board book to a novel for young adults. Writing for a six- year-old
generally demands a quite different stylistic approach from prose that will
appeal to a pre-pubescent twelve-year-old or indeed a young adult of
seventeen – not least because the younger child is an inexperienced reader.
8 Introduction
A translator has to assume that the author of the source text has good reasons
for introducing vocabulary or concepts that may seem demanding: children
must, after all, learn as they read.
Creativity in translating for children

At the 2013 Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation in the UK,
translator and presenter of the prize Daniel Hahn spoke of the creativity inherent
in the act of translation:
If translations are to work – if they are to find a voice for the story, the
voice that weaves the enchantment, they must be the work not of a
mechanical mind, a mind that applies a mechanism to a text – but an
individual, creative mind.
(Hahn, 2013)
One of the most demanding, and at the same time inspiring, aspects
of translating for children is the potential for such creativity that arises from
what Peter Hollindale (1997) has called the ‘childness’ of children’s texts:
‘the quality of being a child – dynamic, imaginative, experimental, interactive
and unstable’ (1997: 46). The ‘unstable’ qualities of childhood that Hollindale
cites require a writer or translator to have an understanding of the freshness
of language to the child’s eye and ear, the child’s affective concerns and the
linguistic and dramatic play of early childhood. Translating sound, for
example, whether in the read-aloud qualities of books for the younger child,
in animal noises, children’s poetry or in nonsense rhymes, demands imagina-
tive solutions – as indeed does working with visual material. Such multi-faceted
creativity has, at times, placed children’s literature in the vanguard of
aesthetic and imaginative experimentation, as Juliet Dusinberre argues in
relation to late- nineteenth and early-twentieth century modernism in Alice to
the Lighthouse: Children’s books and radical experiments in art (1999), and
Kim Reynolds in relation to more recent publications in Radical
Children’s Literature: Future visions and aesthetic transformations in
juvenile fiction (2007). Translating for children may therefore include
experimental texts that will tax even the most competent of translators.
Critical and theoretical interest in translation for children

The last thirty years have seen an enormous increase in the amount of
scholarly and critical writing devoted specifically to the translation of texts for
children. French comparatist Paul Hazard was one of the first to pay
attention to the international exchange of children’s books in Les Livres, Les
Enfants et Les Hommes (1932), where he proposed a romantic vision of the
development of international understanding and the exchange of aesthetic
appreciation through children’s books. Jella Lepman’s equally idealistic
vision recounted in her
Introduction
9
autobiographica
l A Bridge of Children’s Books (1964) of post-Second World War
reconciliation through children’s books led to the foundation of the
International Board of Books for Young People (IBBY). Branches of IBBY
in countries across the globe serve as a useful contact point for translators
wishing to engage with developments in children’s literature.
A move away
from general internationalist – and predominantly idealistic
– statements to
paying serious attention to the linguistic processes, ideology and economics
of translating children’s books was heralded by the proceedings of the third
symposium of the IRSCL (International Research Society for Children’s
Literature), entitled Children’s Books in Translation (Klingberg, Ørvig and
Amor, 1978). At a time when the study of children’s literature – whether
national or international – was only just beginning to gain academic
credibility, Austrian scholar Richard Bamberger claimed at the symposium in
a contentious assertion that the role of translation had ‘hardly been touched
upon . . . in spite of the fact that translations, as a rule, are of even greater
importance in children’s than in adult literature’ (1978: 19). Subsequently, both
children’s literature and translation studies scholars have addressed a variety
of strategies specific to translating for children from ‘cultural context
adaptation’ (Klingberg, 1986) to the significance of read-aloud qualities and
the visual in children’s texts, and have produced numerous case studies on
the translation of children’s texts in academic journals or unpublished PhD
theses.
Two
monographs published at the turn of the millennium, Emer O’Sullivan’s
Kinderliterarisc
he Komparatistik (2000, English translation Comparative Children’s
Literature, 2005) and Finnish scholar Riitta Oittinen’s Translating for
Children (2000), made invaluable contributions to an understanding of the
history and poetics of the translation of children’s books on the one hand, and
the significance of the author’s and translator’s dialogue with the implied
child reader on the other. O’Sullivan’s insights into narrative
communication in translations for children and the translation of visual texts
inform Chapters 1 and 3 of this book and Oittinen, as published translator of
children’s fiction into Finnish, children’s picture book author–illustrator and
academic, has a professional foundation on which to build theoretical
reflection and is therefore cited a number of times in this volume. Current
developments in research into the translation of children’s literature are
interdisciplinary, since comparative literature, translation studies and
children’s literature studies all contribute to an understanding of theoretical
issues, historical developments and professional practice in the translation of
children’s books. Van Coillie and Verschueren’s edited volume Children’s
Literature in Translation: Challenges and strategies (2006), for example,
covers the history and ethics of translating for children, as well as specific
issues such as the translation of names and intertextual and cultural
references. Strands from all of these aspects of research into translating for
10 Introduction
the translation process, inspiring confidence and offering fresh insights into
specific strategies.
Children and translation

Finally, a few words on a neglected area: children’s responses to translations.
As Richard Bamberger argued long ago, ‘children are not interested in a book
because it is a translation, as may be the case for adults, but in the power of
narratives as adventure story, fantasies and so on, just as if the books were
originally written in their own language’ (1978: 19). This is certainly true in
parts of the UK and the US, where adults are often surprised to learn that
their favourite childhood books were in fact translations. On the other hand,
children do sometimes deliberately seek out translations, for example the
latest Harry Potter volume in countries around the world, or may
participate in pre- publication and fan translation via the internet. Globally,
children’s interest and practical involvement in translation is a natural fact of
life. For many who live in multilingual societies, spoken translation is a
daily occurrence and published translations dominate reading material. In
other situations the profile of translation still needs to be raised – for example
in the UK, where initiatives such as those discussed in Chapter 7 are under
way to inspire all pupils to explore literary translation, and to encourage
bilingual children to translate from and into their heritage languages.
Whatever their linguistic experience, children do read translations, but there
is little hard evidence of their responses to the content and context of translated
texts. The time is ripe for further empirical research to build on the work of
Puurtinen (1995), to be discussed in Chapter 1, and the very few small-scale
studies on the reception of translated literature in existence. Children read
differently from adults for reasons already outlined in this introduction and,
therefore, we need to know far more than we do about how they read and
hear translations.
The purpose of this book

Translators new to translating for children include the experienced
professional who occasionally takes on a commission to translate a
children’s book, the children’s writer who turns his or her hand to translation,
and the trainee literary translator who wishes to specialize in translating for
children. It is the purpose of this volume to introduce anyone wishing to
translate for a child audience to stylistic, linguistic, formal, generic and
thematic issues specific to writing for children; to the developmental issues
central to writing for an audience that spans a period of enormous
intellectual progress and affective change from birth to adolescence, and to
the kinds of ideological constraints arising from social expectations of
childhood that translators may encounter. The focus throughout is firmly on
children’s fiction as well as poetry, rather than
Introduction
11
on instructive or
information books. Literary language is therefore in the foreground.
Discussion of the linguistic creativity inherent in representations of non-
standard language in Chapter 4 or figurative language and wordplay in
Chapter 5, for example, illustrates the deviation of literary language from
linguistic norms or educational expectations, while emphasizing its essential
role in children’s developing appreciation of literature.
Above all, the aim of this book is to assist would-be translators to act as
bridges for the young into the worlds of individual writers whose work they
would not otherwise encounter. As Astrid Lindgren memorably wrote in an
article headed ‘Translating for children – is it possible?’:
I believe that children have a marvellous ability to re-experience the

most alien and distant things and circumstances, if a good translator is
there to help them, and I believe that their imagination continues to
build where the translator can go no further.
(Lindgren, 1969, cited in Stolt,
2006)
Organization
Following the pattern of previous volumes in the Translation
Practices Explained series, each chapter addresses a different aspect of
translation for children and is accompanied by a set of exercises or
questions that students studying independently may work through at their
own pace. The book may also be used as the basis for a set of seminars, in
which case tutors will no doubt add exercises and tasks of their own that
meet the needs of their particular student cohort.
Starting with overarching issues pertinent to children’s literature, the first
chapter introduces common modes of addressing the child reader, narrative
style and the challenges of translating the child’s voice, while Chapter 2
addresses the translation of cultural markers for young readers and the
delicate question of the degree of unfamiliarity children can be expected to
assimilate. Chapter 3 tackles the visual dimension that has been of central
importance to the children’s literatures of most cultures, and the translation
of the modern picture book. In Chapter 4, dialogue, dialect and street
language take the lead, since all three have played a dominant role in
modern children’s literature, and have been subject to didactic constraints
in some eras and countries. Chapter 5 turns to a crucial creative element
in translating for children, particularly for the younger child: read-aloud
qualities, wordplay, onomatopoeia and the translation of children’s poetry.
Chapters 6 and 7 return to broader topics. Chapter 6 addresses the continuum
between a translation and a retelling as well as the retranslation and reworking
of children’s classics and fairy tales, while the focus in Chapter 7 is on the
current role of translation in the global children’s publishing industry, virtual
translation and translators working with children.
12 Introduction
Discussion points
• Based on your own reading experience, what do you consider to be the

differences between fiction written for adults and for children?
• Which topics might you consider to be ‘taboo’ or inappropriate in
children’s or young adult fiction?
Exercises
• Discuss the passages from “The Champion of the World” and Danny:
The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl, reprinted above. Compile a
list of the changes Dahl makes and discuss which ones you consider to
be necessary and what kind of assumptions Dahl makes about the adult
and child reader.
• Read at least two recently established ‘modern classics’ or prize-winning
books for children in your working language and make brief notes on
stylistic and formal qualities as well as subject matter that have, in your
opinion, ensured each book’s success.
• Read as widely as possible across the different genres and formats,
including picture books, used by well-known children’s authors writing
in your working language.
• Set yourself a schedule for reading the international classics of children’s
literature in their source languages or, where that is not possible, in
reputable translations. Children’s authors frequently make intertextual
references, for example, to The Arabian Nights, Grimms’ tales, Carroll’s
Alice in Wonderland, Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio or, more recently, to the
Harry Potter series, so it is important to recognize and do justice to such
allusions in a translation.
Notes
1 For a more detailed discussion of this open-ended definition and the general
difficulty of pinning down ‘children’s literature’, see Chapter 3 in Peter Hunt’s
Criticism, Theory and Children’s Literature (1991).
2 See also Haidee Kruger (2012), Postcolonial Polysystems: The production and
reception of translated children’s literature in South Africa.
3 ‘Indigenous’ is used throughout this volume to refer to works or translations
originating in the country under discussion.
Further reading
Appleyard, J.A. (1994) Becoming a Reader: The experience of fiction from childhood
to adulthood (2nd edn), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Chambers, Aidan (1985) Booktalk: Occasional writing on literature and children,
Stroud: Thimble Press.
Hollindale, Peter (1997) Signs of Childness in Children’s Books, Stroud: Thimble Press.
Introduction 13
Hunt, Peter, ed. (2004) The International Companion Encyclopaedia of Children’s
Literature (2nd edn), London: Routledge.
Lathey, Gillian, ed. (2006a) The Translation of Children’s Literature: A reader,
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Oittinen, Riitta (2000) Translating for Children, New York and London: Garland
Publishing.
O’Sullivan, Emer (2000) Kinderliterarische Komparatistik, Heidleberg: Winter.
O’Sullivan, Emer (2005) Kinderliterarische Komparatistik; trans. A. Bell as
Comparative Children’s Literature, 2005, Abingdon and New York: Routledge.
van Coillie, Jan and Verschueren, Walter, eds. (2006) Children’s Literature in
Translation: Challenges and strategies, Manchester: St. Jerome Press.
1Narrative communication
with the child reader
When adults write for children, they instinctively attune the storytelling voice
to the sensibilities of a young readership, an act of adult-to-child communica-
tion that lies at the heart of all successful writing and translating for the
young. Riitta Oittinen (2000) believes that to communicate with a child
reader is to enter into an imaginary dialogue with sharper and fresher readers
than adults, and that the translator should therefore reach out to children of the
target culture by attempting to re-experience the dynamic intensity of
childhood. She argues that translators of children’s books hold a
discussion with the history of childhood, the child of their time and ‘the
former and present child within themselves’ (2000: 26). With reference to
Bakhtin’s concept of the anti- authoritarian freedom of ‘carnival’, she
therefore advocates an approach to translation that entails both a dialogue
with and immersion in the anarchic world of the child. Oittinen’s
recommendation is a radical one. Not all translators will aspire to the
fulfillment of her demands, but an understanding of children’s imaginative,
spiritual and emotional concerns, whether through direct contact as a parent
or carer, as a children’s author, or through a revival of childhood memory, is
certainly an inestimable advantage to a translator writing for a young
audience.
Communication with the child reader takes many forms, and was not
always
considered to be the two-way process that Oittinen describes. In her historical
investigation into the role of the narrator in English-language children’s
fiction, Barbara Wall (1991) identifies a number of modes of address to
the child reader, including the distant, omniscient and didactic narrator of
many pre-twentieth century texts. Asides to the child reader or comments on
characters’ actions set a firm line for social behaviour as part of the enterprise
to tame and socialize the young child, much as the Widow Douglas was
determined to ‘sivilize’ Huckleberry Finn. Authors working under the
sponsorship of authoritarian or totalitarian regimes, too, have produced texts
where the conversation is distinctly one-sided and ideological messages
unmistakable. On the other hand, the subversive role of children’s literature
– its function as an apparently innocuous channel for satirical social
observation – has led to a conspiratorial voice that seeks to ally the child with
16 Narrative communication with the child reader
the author’s critical perspective. In fiction of this kind, the narrative voice is
persuasive rather than straightforwardly didactic. Wall also offers examples
of dual address, where an author either directly or indirectly speaks to adults
as well as to children. It is the primary task of the translator to identify the
quality of the narrative voice in a children’s text, whether overtly didactic,
subversive or characterized by duality. Translators with a theoretical interest
in the intricacies of the layers of communication in translations for children
will find illuminating examples, analysis and representation in diagrammatic
form in O’Sullivan’s work on comparative children’s literature (2000).
This chapter will begin by focusing on the translator’s response to variation
in narrative voice, beginning with dual address to adult and child. Discussion
will go on to focus on the particularities of the narrator’s voice in children’s
fiction, as well as the voice of the child narrator. Examples from texts where
the translator’s voice is evident in addressing and informing the child reader
will lead to suggestions as to where such intervention might be necessary. Next,
a discussion of theoretical insights into reader response highlights the role of
the third party, the child, in the triangle author–translator–child, with an
additional discussion of Oittinen’s application of reader response theory to
the process of translating for children. Finally, selected linguistic aspects of
narrative communication – syntax; the age-related usage of Japanese
characters; the use of gendered nouns and varying cultural practices in the use
of tense – raise general translation issues as well as those pertinent to specific
languages and language pairs.
Dual address in children’s literature

Children’s authors, as Wall demonstrates, often write for a second,
adult readership, either covertly in the form of moral instruction or ideological
content that seeks the approval of the adult reading over the child’s shoulder, or
overtly as in A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh. In this well-known instance of
a text designed to appeal to both adult and child, Milne includes
sophisticated witticisms that children could not be expected to understand.
Any adult who has read Milne’s books aloud to children will know how
tricky it is to explain sudden fits of laughter, for example, at the existential
musings of the gloomy donkey Eeyore. Both layers of meaning should be as
apparent in the translation as in the source text, a task requiring considerable
finesse on the part of the translator. O’Sullivan’s article on the fate of the
dual addressee in the first published German translation of Winnie-the-Pooh
highlights the omission of this strand of adult humour, and acts as a warning
to any translator seeking to simplify the sophisticated ambiguity of a
classic children’s text that is intentionally designed to produce divergent
readings. O’Sullivan offers the following example of this change of tone in
E.L. Schiffer’s first translation, as compared to a subsequent version by
Harry Rowohlt (see O’Sullivan, 1993: 116–7; I have added a back translation
of the German in square brackets):
Narrative communication with the child reader 17
Owl lived at The Chestnuts, an old-world residence
of great charm, which was grander than anybody else’s, or seemed so to
Bear, because it had both a knocker and a bell-pull.
(Milne, Winnie-
the-Pooh, 1926: 43)
Eule lebte in den Kastanien in einem alten, schönen

Palast, der prächtiger war als alles, was der Bär je gesehen hatte, denn
vor der Tür hinge ein Klopfer und ein Klingelzug.
[Owl lived in the chestnut trees in an old and
beautiful palace that was more splendid than anything the Bear had ever
seen, because by the door hung both a knocker and a bell-pull.]
(Milne, 1926; Pu der Bär, trans E.L.
Schiffer, 1928: 65)
Eule wohnte an einer Adresse namens ‘Zu den

Kastanien’, einem Landsitz von grossem Zauber, wie man ihn aus der
Alten Welt kennt, und diese Adresse war grossartiger als alle anderen;
zumindest kame es dem Bären so vor, denn sie hatte sowohl einen
Türklopfer als auch einen Klingelzug.
[Owl lived at an address with the name ‘At the
Chestnuts’, a country seat of great charm like those in the Old World,
and this address was grander than all the rest; at least so it appeared to
the Bear, for it had both a door knocker and a bell-pull.]
(Milne, 1926; Pu der Bär, trans Harry
Rowohlt, 1987: 54)
Schiffer omits both the parody of estate agent hyperbole in ‘old-world

residence of great charm’ and the nod to the British habit of naming houses
in the cliché ‘The Chestnuts’, both likely to be appreciated by the adult
reader. Fortunately, in the later translation, Rowohlt reinstates the italicized
emphasis and, as O’Sullivan puts it, gives the German adult reader more to
smile about. Unlike Schiffer, Rowohlt attends to both child and adult readers.
Narrative voice
Finding the voice of a children’s text in order to replicate it in
translation requires particularly careful reading; even the traditional
omniscient adult narrative voice assumes a number of guises and may be
used ironically. Many authors adopt the voice of the oral storyteller, as is the
case in Carlo Collodi’s Pinocchio, where in the opening lines of the tale
Collodi predicts his readers’ response in an imaginary dialogue:
C’era una volta . . .

–Un re! – diranno subito I miei piccolo lettori.
No, ragazzi, avete sbagliato. C’era una volta un pezzo di legno.
(Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio, 2002:
Once upon a time there was . . .
‘A king!’ my little readers will say straight away. No, children, you are
mistaken. Once upon a time there was a piece of wood.
(Collodi, 2002; The Adventures of Pinocchio,
trans Lawson Lucas, 1996: 1)
In such instances the translator has to imagine telling the story to an

audience of children, using the intimacy of spoken language and standard
storyteller’s phrases in the target language. A more distant, omniscient and
didactic narrative stance may be the subject of parody in modern children’s
fiction. C.S. Lewis, for example, warns readers four times within the first
three chapters of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe of the dangers of
the wardrobe on which his plot depends, inserting a bracketed and tongue-in-
cheek comment on Lucy ‘(She had, of course, left the door open, for she
knew that it is a very silly thing to shut oneself into a wardrobe)’ (Lewis,
1950: 14) in a reference to the avuncular narrator of the nineteenth century.
Seeking the appropriate voice to replicate, for example, the double-
layered
address of A.A. Milne, the storyteller’s voice adopted by Collodi or
the knowing aside of Lewis is an essential challenge for the translator. This
may sometimes involve reading other fiction by the author of the source
text or research into his or her biography to gain a stronger sense of that
unique voice and the face behind the page. German author Erich Kästner
speaks to young readers in a conspiratorial tone that debunks the adult world
both in prefaces to the child reader and as his narratives unfold. Knowing that
he wrote bitingly satirical poetry during the Weimar Republic, lived through
the Third Reich under a publication ban and placed all his faith in children
assists readers and translators to understand the satirical edge to his
narratives. Kästner’s famous
– if sometimes longwinded – prefaces to children are often missing
from
translations, as they are from the early Swedish and English versions of
his international hit Emil und die Detektive (1929). This represents a
considerable loss, since a preface of this kind establishes the tone of the rest
of the narrative. It is worth noting that a translator’s discussions with editors
should therefore include the role of an author’s preface or afterword.
An example of the kind of authorial irony that characterizes
Kästner’s
prefaces is embedded in the text of his Das doppelte Lottchen
(literally ‘double Lotte’), the basis of the multiple Hollywood ‘parent trap’
films. The novel was at the time of its first publication in 1949 a
groundbreaking, light- hearted tale of the effects on children of parental
divorce. Kästner pre-empts criticism of his treatment of this controversial
subject by advising his young readers to tell any disapproving adult the
following story:
Als Shirley Temple ein kleines Mädchen von sieben, acht Jahren war,
war sie doch schon ein auf der ganzen Erde berühmter Filmstar, und
die Firmen verdienten viele Millionen Dollar mit ihr. Wenn Shirley aber
anzuschauen, liess man sie nicht hinein. Sie war
noch zu jung. Es war verboten. Sie durfte nur Filme drehen. Das war
erlaubt.
(Kästner, Das doppelte
Lottchen, 1949: 64–5)
When Shirley Temple was no more than seven or

eight she was already a film star, famous all over the world. And she
earned many millions of dollars for the film companies. But when
Shirley wished to go with her mother to a cinema and take a look at a
Shirley Temple film, she was not admitted. She was still too young. It
was forbidden. She could only make films. That was not forbidden.
(Kästner, 1949; Lottie and Lisa, trans
Cyrus Brooks, 1950: 52–3)
Kästner trusts his young reader’s ability to appreciate an implicit comment

on the paradoxical attitude of adults and, fortunately, the English translator
follows suit; indeed, Brooks emphasizes the point of the story through the
judicious use of italics. Children appreciate such comments on adult
inconsist- encies, and must learn to appreciate ironic undertones if they are
to become sophisticated readers.
Kästner is not the only children’s author to point out adult folly,
since
Swedish author Astrid Lindgren does exactly that throughout her classic
story Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking). When Lindgren
introduces the children of Pippi’s neighbours, who act as foils to the
outrageous Pippi, she emphasizes their good behaviour in a dry little
comment:
Aldrig bet Tommy pånaglarna, nästan alltid gjorde han det hans
mamma bad honom. Annika bråkade inte när hon inte fick sin vilja
fram.
[Literal translation by Gunnar Florin: Never did Tommy bite his nails;
he nearly always did what his mother asked him. Annika didn’t fuss
when she didn’t get her way]
(Lindgren, Pippi Långstrump, 1945:
9)
The translator of the published English version again resorts to italics to

assist those reading the story aloud:
Tommy never bit his nails, and always did what his mother asked.
Annika
never fussed when she didn’t get her own way.
(Lindgren, 1945; Pippi Longstocking,
trans Edna Hurup, 1954: 12–14)
Thus the translator draws attention to the humour inherent in Lindgren’s

description of behaviour that is too good to be true: the conduct of other real
however, linguistic constraints in some languages that may affect the manner
in which the narrating subject conveys this subversive tone. Noriko Shimoda
Netley (1992) has analyzed narrative stance in Roald Dahl’s Matilda (1988)
in order to make a comparison with the Japanese translation by Mineo
Miyashita. Netley demonstrates how Dahl shifts perspective from the use of
‘we’ on the first page of the novel, thus aligning the narrator with the child’s
point of view, to ‘I’, a cynical adult narrator on the second and subsequent
appearances of the narrating subject. A third narrating subject also appears,
signalled by the neutral pronoun ‘one’ that could include the child reader, but
is certainly more distant than the inclusive ‘we’. Netley found that in the
Japanese version, the narrating subjects ‘we’ and ‘one’ are eliminated because
the subject (especially first and second person) is often omitted in Japanese
sentences, and the Japanese first person plural equivalent of ‘we’ ( 私達
‘ watashitachi’) is lengthy and awkward. Moreover, the Japanese
equivalent of ‘one’ would sound odd. The translator uses only the first
person pronoun. Dahl’s subtle alterations of narrative perspective are
therefore lost. In cases where linguistic differences hinder the replication of
an author’s narrative stance, a translator may have to compensate in other
ways to maintain the shift from distant to cynical narrative voice.
Child narrators
When the narrator of a children’s book is a child, the translator has the task
of recreating the illusion that a child is speaking directly to his or her peers.
This is a necessary skill because of the marked increase in the adoption of the
child’s voice in first person and diary narratives in contemporary children’s
literature. During his presentation speech for the British Marsh Award for
Children’s Literature in translation in January 2013, professional translator
Daniel Hahn touched on this question while identifying a fundamental
difference between translating for children and adults:
If the translation process is a two-part thing – reading, writing (inhaling,

exhaling) – then working for children seems to me to make the first
easier, the second harder. The reading is easier – entering the original
text and ascertaining what it’s doing. What it means, what it wants, where
it’s going. So, the reading: ‘Je m’appelle Arthur. J’ai sept ans et,
l’autre jour, derrière la maison de mes grands-parents, j’ai trouvé un
œuf. Un œuf tout blanc . . .’
But even with my schoolboy French, that’s easily read.
But then there’s the writing.
I’ve grappled with some difficult writers in my time – awkward, tricksy,
famously tangled-up European novelists with Nobel prizes, say – but I’m
not sure I’ve ever been back and forth quite so many times trying to get
the words right as I have for that deceptively uncomplicated little opening
introducing young Arthur.
Narrative communication with the child reader
21
I can read the original – easy as falling off a, um, you know, cliché.
But writing my own seven-year-old voice . . . It’s a skill our best
children’s writers have.
The Marsh Award recognises that some of the people with
that
extraordinary and peculiar writerly skill are translators.
(Hahn,
2013)
Hahn refers here to his own translation of French-Canadian children’s

author Johanne Mercier’s Arthur et le mystère de l’œuf, published as Arthur
and the Mystery of the Egg in 2013. His version of these opening lines reads:
I’m Arthur and I’m seven, and the other day, round the back of
my grandparents’ house, I found an egg. A completely white egg [. . .]
(Mercier, 2007; Arthur and the Mystery of
the Egg, trans Hahn, 2013: 1)
A child of seven would indeed proudly announce his name, age and what
he had to tell all in one breath, as Hahn’s punctuation (different from the
French) indicates. But would he use the word ‘completely’? Possibly, if he
had just discovered it and was relishing frequent repetition of the new word
as small children do, otherwise ‘an egg that was all white’ or ‘white all over’
would be acceptable alternatives.
An example of a child narrator in a more extended piece of fiction is
found
in Astrid Lindgren’s Bröderna Lejonhjärta (1973). The story, told by
the younger of the two brothers of the title, is punctuated by gasps and
exclamations that convey young Karl’s excitement or anxiety as events
unfold. At a point when Karl remembers his brother’s death, the translator
has to replicate the rhythms and pace of a highly expressive narrative:
Jag mindes plötsligt hur det var, den där tiden när Jonatan låg i
min kökssoffa och inte visste säkert om jag skulle få se honom mer, å,
det var som att titta ner I ett svart hål att tänka på det!
(Lindgren, Bröderna Lejonhjärta, 1973:
55)
I suddenly remembered how it was, that time when Jonatan was dead
and away from me and I lay in my kitchen settee and didn’t know for
sure if I’d ever see him again, oh, it was like looking down a black hole
thinking about it!
(Literal translation by Gunnar
Florin)
I remembered suddenly how things had been that time when Jonathan
was dead and away from me, and I was lying in my sofa-bed, not
knowing whether I’d ever see him again; oh, it was like looking down
into a black hole, just thinking about it.
Lindgren’s ‘å’ (pronounced as ‘o’ in the British word ‘more’) is a char-
acteristic voicing of overwhelming emotion for which words are inadequate,
and which overcomes Karl as he lies inside his typical (and womb-like)
Swedish kitchen settee with its removable lid and sleeping-box. Tate retains
the expression of feeling, but drops the additional impact of Lindgren’s
exclamation mark and, through the addition of punctuation in the form of
commas and a semi colon, reduces the breathless effect of Karl’s outburst.
A translator attempting to take on the voice of a young child narrator needs
to bear in mind ways in which an author harmonizes syntactic and emotional
rhythms in a passage such as this one.
How, then, is it possible to achieve an apparently effortless transition
to
the words and sensibility of a child, that ‘peculiar writerly skill’ that
Hahn identifies? Spending time with children and talking to them certainly
helps but – as Hahn points out – the skill is a literary one: in other words
child narrators have stylized voices that convince without actually being
authentic. A good test of the difference is to read a children’s novel in diary
form and an actual child’s diary (possibly your own from childhood days!)
to see how
– in all likelihood – the latter is far too awkward or dull to warrant an
audience
beyond its author and his or her family. The best strategy by far is to read
as many children’s novels featuring child narrators as possible in the
language into which you intend to translate. Note down specific phrases,
vocabulary and narrative techniques that you might adapt or re-use in a
translation and, if you have a commission to translate a first person
narrative, try to find a published tale with a narrator of roughly the same
age. The voice will differ from that of the narrator in the text you are to
translate, of course, but that contrast may well help you to pinpoint the
idiosyncrasies and idiolect (an individual’s own distinctive language use) of
the voice in the source text. And, of course, narrative voice naturally varies
according to age and social milieu, aspects that will be discussed in the
sections on dialect, social register and dialogue in Chapter 4.
To sum up, the following are points to bear in mind when seeking to
translate
narrative voice in children’s fiction:
• Maintain dual address to the adult and child when this is integral to the
style and tone of the narrative.
• Read other works by the author of the text to be translated or undertake
biographical research to assist in an understanding of his or her political
or ideological perspective in the text in question.
• Discuss with editors the translation of an author’s preface or afterword
when this is in your opinion an essential element in the work as a whole
and likely to be read by children.
• The use of italics in a translation is often an effective strategy for
conveying an ironic tone present in the source text.
• When translating a child narrator’s voice, spend time with children of the
same age if possible, but also read children’s fiction narrated by a child
in the language into which you are translating to
familiarize yourself with the stylized, fictional child’s voice; make a note
of phrases, vocabulary, expressive use of punctuation (cf. the example
from Lindgren’s Bröderna Lejonhjärta above) and narrative techniques.
The translator’s voice: interventions

Omissions such as that of the adult addressee in
Winnie-the-Pooh in Emer O’Sullivan’s example indicate a manipulation or
rewriting of the source text, and therefore the executive function of the
translator that is invisible to all who do not know the source text. Cultural
difference between the source and target texts may also call for the visible
intervention of the translator to add material or to address the young reader
directly. Since the translator is writing for an implied child reader living in
different cultural and social circumstances from those of the implied reader of
the source text, he or she may omit, rewrite or insert passages of text in order
to aid the child’s understanding or to follow trends and adhere to norms in
children’s publishing in the target culture. A translator may even add text
to explain a phenomenon that is entirely unfamiliar to young readers in
the target culture, and which is important to a full understanding of the story
in question, as in the following example.
Cathy Hirano is the translator of Kazumi Yumoto’s
The Friends, a story
about three twelve-year-old boys who stalk an old man
in order to find out what really happens when someone dies. In an article
on her experience of translating young adult fiction from Japanese to
English, Hirano (2006) describes the difficulty of translating the concept of
juku ( 学習塾 ), a typical Japanese after-school learning centre. A direct
translation such as ‘cram school’ alone would not convey to American
readers the manner in which juku affects the rhythm of the boys’ daily lives,
and therefore the time available to follow the old man. Hirano consulted the
author for further details of this aspect of Japanese education, finally
agreeing with her American editor that the best solution was to insert
explanatory passages into the translation. Hirano reproduces the longest of
these:
Every day, Monday to Friday, we have cram school

after regular school. We’re there from six until eight and sometimes
even until nine o’clock at night, trying to cram in everything we’ll
need to know to pass the entrance exams for junior high school next
year. By the time we get out, we’re exhausted, not to mention starving.
(
Hirano, 2006: 228)
Here the translator’s voice blends with that of the young narrator as
unobtrusively as possible in a few sentences that give the essential
information on the timing and purpose of juku. A translator’s footnote is
another possible solution in such a situation, but footnotes in a text for young
readers are both alienating and likely to be ignored.
Translators reveal themselves even more directly in prefaces or afterwords.
Historically, translators’ prefaces were often addressed to the parent or teacher
(Lathey, 2006b), so that Emma Stelter Hopkins, translator of Johann Spyri’s
Heimatlos (Homeless) from German into English in 1912, could express in
tight-lipped fashion the hope that Spyri’s stories would teach children to
appreciate home comforts: ‘to which they grow so accustomed as often to
take them for granted, with little evidence of gratitude’ (Spyri, 1912: iii).
Today publishers and editors may encourage translators – or a translator may
insist upon the opportunity – to address children directly for a variety of
purposes. This is, however, a risky strategy, since children are not keen
readers of prefaces. One solution is to spin an enticing story from the
translation’s origins, as British author Joan Aiken did in her edition of the
Comtesse de Ségur’s L’Auberge de L’Ange – Gardien (published as The Angel
Inn in 1976). This is how she begins:
When I was five or six my mother decided that it was time I learned
French, so she bought a book of French fairy-tales and read them aloud,
translating as she went. They were wonderful stories – about a small
princess whose carriage was pulled by ostriches, a boy turned into a bear,
a little girl lost in a forest of lilacs, wicked queens, good fairies
disguised as white cats, marvellous feasts and dazzling palaces. The
author of the book was a lady called the Comtesse de Ségur. We
enjoyed the stories so much that we bought all the other books of hers
that we could find, and soon had half a dozen or so. One of my
favourites was L’Auberge de l’Ange-Gardien, the Inn of the Guardian
Angel . . . Unfortunately I lost the copy I had as a child, but I found
another years later, read it again with just as much pleasure, and
thought what fun it would be to translate. And so it was.
(Aiken, 1976:
7)
Where appropriate, storytelling of this kind is likely to encourage a younger

child to read a preface; it certainly expresses a positive attitude to the stories
and indeed towards the process of translation.
Peritextual material may also provide historical or cultural context
to
a narrative. Patricia Crampton’s translation from German of
Gudrun Pausewang’s Reise im August (published as The Last Journey in
1996) has an afterword that is not present in the German source text. As the
journey of the title is that of a young Jewish girl, Alice, travelling with her
grandfather in a cattle truck to Auschwitz, Crampton adds half a page of
basic information on the concentration camps which begins thus:
The Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in

the 1930s. The regime dealt brutally with all forms of opposition.
In 1938 Hitler declared that ‘one of these days the Jews will
disappear
from Europe’ and in Germany and Occupied Europe his regime
began systematically to round up Jewish people and transport
concentration camps. In the camps, special
equipment for mass murder had been set up, including gas chambers
disguised as showers.
(Pausewang, 1995; The Final Journey,
trans P. Crampton, 1996: 153)
Crampton, who began her career as a translator at the Nuremberg trials of

Nazi war criminals, goes on to describe the selection process separating those
fit for work from those destined for the gas chambers which Alice has just
undergone, and to name other victims of the Holocaust including ‘gypsies,
homosexuals, people with disabilities and dissidents of all kinds’ (1996: 153).
When working with texts of this kind set in the recent past, discussion with
editors may be the impetus for the decision to add such information. Its exact
placement as a foreword or afterword requires some thought. Crampton or her
editor clearly considered that the moment after the shock of Alice’s fate (in
the final scene she enters the infamous shower room, still believing that she
will encounter ‘the water of life’) was the time to present young readers with
the facts of what actually took place. Young readers are likely to feel
compelled to read Crampton’s bald account of the holocaust following that
final shocking scene.
Censorship and ideological messages

Crampton’s insertion of historical information or Hirano’s explanation of
juku are indicative of the distinction between the implied child readers
inscribed in the source and target texts. Both translators have inserted
material intended for the child reader in the target culture to explain cultural
practices or convey facts already familiar to the young reader of the source
text. But what are the implications for the mediating translator of differing
expectations of what is appropriate for the child reader, or questions
concerning the ideological content of children’s literature?
First, there is the issue of censorship. Historically, censorship was
widely
practiced in the course of translation for children, as demonstrated in
international versions of Grimms’ tales (Joosen and Lathey, 2014). One
scene commonly mitigated or omitted from translations of
Aschenputtel (the Grimms’ Cinderella) for a child audience is the
mutilation of the feet of Aschenputtel’s sisters. In the Grimms’ version, the
first sister slices off her toe and the second her heel to make the golden
slipper fit, so that the prince only realizes he has the wrong woman when
blood overflows from the shoe of one and creeps up the stocking of the
other. Translators or their editors frequently alter or omit this drastic act,
just as the pecking out of the sisters’ eyes by doves at the end of the tale is
missing from many versions. Cruelty and gore are subject to censorship,
as indeed are sexual and scurrilous references. Remaining with the
Grimms, in English translations the ‘Pissputt’ (pisspot) in which the
fisherman and his wife live at the beginning of the Grimms’ tale The
Fisherman and his Wife is often changed to ‘pigsty’
or ‘hovel’. Indeed, the tradition of toning down the more gruesome and
scatological aspects of Grimms’ tales continues into the twentieth century in
the retellings by Wanda Gág discussed in Chapter 6.
The desire to shield children from aspects of life openly discussed in
juvenile literature in one country but deemed to be profane or harmful by
another is an issue to which translators and their editors have to be sensitive,
but which should not lead to choices contrary to a realistic assessment of
child behaviour and understanding. In a well-known example, Stolt (2006:
72) cites an American publisher’s attempt to censor one of Astrid Lindgren’s
stories. Young Lotta, desperate as all young children are to grow up, stands
steadfastly on a dung heap, knowing that manure makes plants grow and
hoping that it will accelerate the process for her. When American editors
wanted to replace the dung heap with a pile of withered leaves, Lindgren
sent them a caustic observation. If American children really didn’t understand
that there were more effective means to hasten growth than withered leaves,
she wrote, then she didn’t think much of American agriculture. The editors
were duly shamed into reinstating the natural fertilizer. More importantly, from
the child reader’s point of view, much of the delight and amusement at a
toddler standing on a stinking pile of dung hoping to grow – children
hearing or reading this story would be slightly older and would therefore
thoroughly enjoy a sense of superior knowledge – is lost if leaves are
substituted for manure.
Nonetheless, translators and editors respond to a cultural climate
concerning
children’s reading material that is powerful, pervasive and persistent. Author
and publisher Aidan Chambers (2001: 113–37) relates an incident where a
second-year undergraduate student, after browsing through a translation from
the Swedish of Maud Reuterswärd’s Noah is my Name (1991), ventured a
negative opinion of the book because of an illustration where seven-year-old
Noah sits on the toilet talking to his mother while she is naked in the bath.
When asked why this disturbed him, the student replied ‘We don’t do things
like that!’ Fortunately Chambers, publisher of the translation, and the
translator, Joan Tate, had decided not to take account of such objections. Even
more recently, the 2010 English translation by Joanne Moriarty of the first
volume of the hugely popular series of books by Elvira Lindo about Manolito
Gafotas, a young boy living in a working-class area of Madrid, removes
references to drug addicts and AIDS, while a syringe found lying on the
ground in the Spanish version becomes a knife in English.
As these examples demonstrate, differing cultural sensitivities are particu-
larly acute in relation to children’s reading matter, where there is regular
media outrage at authors who seek to break the boundaries of what is deemed
to be acceptable in children’s fiction within a given culture or country.
Questions of religious and political allegiance, too, have long been significant
in children’s literature and ideological control in the form of censorship is at
its most transparent when monolithic, totalitarian regimes seek to indoctrinate
the young and subject children’s literature, including translations, to varying
degrees of manipulation. Fernández López (2006) has examined censorship
27
in translations during the Franco dictatorship in
Spain 1936–75, when references to sex, politics and religion were removed
from children’s books. Conservative publishing policies continued into the
post-Franco era from 1975 and – in an intriguing example of intercultural
ideological difference – Fernández López indicates that, whereas books by
Enid Blyton and Roald Dahl were purified of purported racist and
xenophobic elements in Britain in the 1980s, Spanish translations of the
1990s reverted to first, ‘unpurified’ editions of the English texts. In the early
decades of the post-Franco era, attention in Spain was still focused on the
legacy of political censorship rather than on racism, a preoccupation of
British publishers at the time. Translators have acted as mediators, either in
accordance with contemporary expectations of childhood in the target
culture, or by making their own decisions in relation to the transmission,
alteration or omission of ideological messages from elsewhere. For anyone
new to translating for children, it is important to be aware of potential
pressures from publishers, government agencies or religious bodies
concerned with children’s welfare or political education, and to make informed
and sometimes politically astute decisions on translation strategies.
Discussion of the translator’s voice and presence
in translated texts will
continue in subsequent chapters, but the following is a
summary of preliminary points:
• Integrate contextual explanation (explicitation) into a text as seamlessly

as possible (cf. the Hirano example above).
• An introduction to fiction from another country can be written as a story
to capture children’s interest (see Joan Aiken example).
• It is sometimes necessary for the translator to add information on the
context of a historical novel to aid children’s understanding of the
narrative.
• Any suggestion to censor a children’s book requires editorial discussion
and debate.
Narrative communication and reader response theory

Narrative communication, as Riitta Oittinen constantly reminds us, is a form
of dialogue. In most research to date on translation for children, the child
reader has largely been left out of the picture, except as an implied reader
inscribed within the text as in the opening of Collodi’s Pinocchio cited above,
or posited as an ideal or shadowy child reader by academics. Reader
response theory, to be introduced briefly here, may assist translators to
understand potential responses of young readers and the strategies authors use
when addressing them; Chapter 7 takes this discussion further in its focus on
evidence of children’s reactions to translations, children as translators
and practical strategies translators have developed for engaging with their
child audience.
Chesterman’s (1998) plea for the application of the reader response theories
of Wolfgang Iser (1974; 1978) and Louise Rosenblatt (1978) to the reception
of translations is of great relevance in exploring children’s responses, since
both argue that meaning does not reside solely in a text and its author’s
intentions, but in a dialogue between reader and text. Cristina Sousa (2002)
has applied reader response theories in an evaluation of the translator’s
assessment of receptivity when translating children’s literature, and Riitta
Oittinen (2000) has adopted Rosenblatt’s concepts of the ‘efferent’ and
‘aesthetic’ to explain her own practical approach to the translation task.
According to Rosenblatt, who regarded reading as a ‘transactional’ exchange
between a text and the reader’s expectations and context, there are two kinds
of reading: the ‘aesthetic’ reading that generates associations, feelings, attitudes
and aesthetic pleasure; and the ‘efferent’ reading, where the reader focuses
primarily on a particular objective, whether information to be acquired, actions
to be carried out or a problem to be solved. A translator’s first reading,
Oittinen argues, falls into the first category, and the translation process itself
into the second. Although translators probably find it impossible to avoid
attending at least minimally to potential translation issues during a first
reading, Patricia Crampton and Anthea Bell – both highly experienced and
respected translators of children’s literature into English and recipients of the
Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in Translation in the UK – refer to
their own two-stage reading process. Their first reading (often for a reader’s
report commissioned by a publisher) gives a sense of the voice and tone of
the whole text, and there is a second reading as the act of translation takes
place (see interviews in Lathey, 2010). This double reading applies to literature
for children or adults, of course, but the first, ‘aesthetic’ reading is a useful
way of engaging with a child’s outlook and sensibilities before starting the
translation process.
Chesterman (1998) cites studies of comprehension and sociological surveys
as sources of information on responses to translations. Indeed existing
qualitative studies on children’s reading at different ages – for example a set
of interviews with children conducted by Fry (1985), a developmental survey
such as that of Appleyard (outlined in the Introduction to this book), or
indeed a personal account such as that of Francis Spufford in The Child that
Books Built (2002) – offer insights into children’s requirements of and
responses to the books they read, as well as a starting point for the design of
research projects on children’s responses to translations. Quantitative
surveys of children’s reading habits such as those by Maynard, Mackay,
Smyth and Reynolds (2007) are additional, invaluable sources of
information. Comparable studies in countries where translations are read far
more widely than in the UK or US are likely to yield useful material. Where
digests of such studies are readily available – and children’s reading
material is often the stuff of newspaper headlines and articles – translators
can keep themselves informed of trends and controversies in children’s
reading choices.
Nonetheless, children’s responses to translations remain largely a matter of
speculation, a knowledge gap that has implications for the translator. Those
translating for children for the first time may be tempted to fall back on
received
29
wisdom on questions of readability or contextual
adaptation, but they would do well to take note of the work of critics and
educators with experience of interacting directly with young readers. A
reading of Aidan Chambers’ Booktalk (1985), which addresses the role of
predictability and indeterminacy in texts in educating children to become
intellectually and imaginatively active readers, should assist trainee
translators to avoid filling in gaps an author has created deliberately. Over-
explanation for the child reader is a pitfall to be avoided, as will be
demonstrated later in this book, since a child needs stimulating challenges
to become an experienced and discerning reader. Indeed, it would be
advisable to incorporate sessions on understanding the child reader into the
professional training of translators who wish to specialize in children’s texts.
Trainee translators and those new to translating for children should therefore
take every opportunity to try out their drafts on child readers, whether they
are older silent readers or younger children to whom the text can be read
aloud. Reading a draft aloud is a good test of any literary translation, but
particularly of literature for the younger child that will be read to children.
Interviews with three translators of children’s books (Lathey, 2010) revealed
that two of the three use aural techniques, and that even the third, Anthea
Bell, who always types her translations, acknowledges a reading aloud ‘in
my head’ as she searches for the new voice for each book (see Chapter 5 for
further discussion of this strategy). These are not techniques specific to
children’s literature. Indeed, Bell insists that, whether translating for adults or
children, it is a matter of finding the right voice for each book, but there can
be little doubt that when reading aloud a draft translation of a children’s
book each translator is engaging with an imagined child reader.
To sum up:
• Oittinen’s application of Rosenblatt’s ‘aesthetic’ and ‘efferent’ reading

echoes the development of a two-stage reading process adopted by a
number of translators.
• Practical applications of reader response theory as outlined in Chambers’
Booktalk are a useful reminder that a translator should replicate gaps and
indeterminacies in a children’s text where these have been created
deliberately.
• Reading accounts or digests of research on children’s reading tastes and
histories will assist translators by throwing some light on children’s
responses to fiction.
• A translator of children’s fiction needs to be up to date with children’s
reading tastes by reading relevant journals, taking note of children’s book
prizes, publishers’ catalogues and websites, book blogs by young people,
etc.
• Whenever possible, read draft translations aloud to children or ask
children to read drafts of your work.
Stylistic and linguistic issues
In translating for children between languages with different syntactic struc-
tures, scripts and modes of communication with young readers, issues arise
that may have universal relevance or be specific to one language as already
seen in Netley’s analysis of the Japanese translation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda.
Since young children are inexperienced readers, authors in any language
adapt their written style, vocabulary and syntax to the relevant age group. Three
examples – a stylistic point that has broad relevance, the question of gendered
animal pronouns and a linguistic feature unique to Japanese – will exemplify
the specific linguistic demands of addressing the child reader.
Writing for children requires the ability to express complex ideas with clarity
and simplicity. Younger readers may be confused by multiple embedded
clauses, non-finite constructions or the use of the passive voice, although
none of these stylistic features should be ruled out completely, since there
may be instances that warrant their use. Finnish scholar Tiina Puurtinen
(1995) has investigated the stylistic acceptability to child readers, and to
adults reading the texts aloud, of two translations of The Wonderful
Wizard of Oz into Finnish. Results generally confirmed an initial hypothesis
that the translation with a more fluent, dynamic style would prove to be more
acceptable to child readers and listeners than a version with more complex
syntactic constructions. One example Puurtinen cites is the translation of a
phrase using the past participle in English:
[. . .] but surely there is no use for a Scarecrow stuck on a pole in the

middle of the river.
(Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, 1900)
The first translation, by Marja Helanen-Ahtola, reads:
[. . .] mutta keskelle jokea seipään päähän joutuneella Variksenpelättimellä

eitodellakaan ole mitään merkitystä.
[but in the middle of the river on a pole stuck scarecrow is really of no
significance]
The second, by Kersti Juva:
[. . .] mutta sellaisesta variksenpelätistä, joka roikkuu kepin nenässä

keskellä jokea, ei ole mitään hyötyä.
[but such a scarecrow, which hangs on a stick in the middle of a river, is
of no use]
(Puurtinen, 2006: 58; back translations by Puurtinen)
Puurtinen comments that Helanen-Ahtola uses the Finnish premodified

participial attribute, thus leading to ‘a heavy left-branching structure, unfit for
31
children’s literature’, whereas Juva uses a more
easily identified relative clause. By examining a corpus of Finnish children’s
literature, Puurtinen found that overall Juva’s translation with its natural,
more fluent style was a closer match to the prevailing conventions and
expectations of style in Finnish children’s fiction than Helanen-Ahtola’s
with its use of more complex constructions. She did, however, discover in
a small-scale test of readability a degree of differentiation according to age
group and reader expectation, a result that highlights the need for further
empirical research into children’s responses to differences in written style.
Puurtinen’s findings are informative, but should not be misinterpreted.
Translators should at all costs avoid the danger of simplifying syntax to the
point of monotony in the manner of basal reading schemes. Puurtinen’s
research shows, rather, that variation in phrasing and rhythm, indications of
emphasis and a choice between verbal or nominal constructions are all
important factors for both reading aloud and readability. It may indeed be the
case that the occasional use of just such a left-branching structure as the one
in Puurtinen’s example may be appropriate, for example in replicating
stylistic experimentation in source texts for young adult readers. A second
linguistic point is the use of gendered nouns, particularly in the many
children’s books that feature animals. From animal fables (Aesop and La
Fontaine) to Puss in Boots, the menacing fox and cat in Pinocchio,
Paddington Bear or the many tales and rhymes for younger children with an
entire cast of farmyard, domestic or wild animal characters, children’s fiction
hums with the sounds of beasts (animal cries are discussed in Chapter 5).
Translating between language pairs with and without gendered nouns is tricky
when animals are given human characteristics and require, as Anthea Bell –
translator into English from German and French – puts it, ‘a pronoun more
personal than just “it” ’ (Bell, 1986). Bell gives an account of her translation
of a collection of folk and fairy tales featuring cats from German into English.
Sometimes the biological sex of the cat was evident, for example when the
noun used was ‘der Kater’ (tomcat); when humans clearly treated the cat as
male or female; when a cat had kittens, or when she was enchanted and
ultimately changed back into a beautiful woman. In a third of the stories,
however, there was no such indication and ‘it was up to the translator to
make a choice’ (1986: 21). In one instance a dog’s behaviour is contrasted
with that of a cat, so Bell and her editor agreed to make the dog masculine
and the cat feminine in line with conventions of the ‘outgoing,
straightforward’ dog and the ‘sly, unpredictable’ cat (1986: 21). Yet Bell points
to the sexist implications of this decision, and argues that the choice of
pronoun makes a much more definite statement in the target than in the
source language. Choices should therefore be made with great care, taking
into account cultural contexts, social conventions concerning gender in the
source language and their acceptability in the target language, and indeed
the status of particular animals within
different cultures as pets, a source of food or vermin.
For anyone translating children’s fiction into Japanese, the Japanese
language poses an age-related challenge. Translators need to consider the age
range and level of education of young readers carefully, since this will make
a difference to the Japanese characters they use. In addition to Kanji, the
adopted Chinese pictograms that form the basis of the Japanese written
language, there are two additional sets of characters that are used in books for
children. Hiragana is used for indigenous Japanese words and grammatical
elements, and Katakana for the phonetic representation of foreign words, names
and onomatopoeia. Hiragana is important in children’s literature, particularly
in picture books for the younger child, since the ideographs are visually less
complex than standard Kanji characters. Children learn Hiragana characters
first, and then gradually, between the ages of six and twelve, they learn
one thousand and five Kanji characters. To assist children in this immense
learning task, Hiragana equivalents may be placed above (for horizontal
text) or beside (for vertical text) Kanji characters as a pronunciation aid.
Children who do not recognize certain Kanji characters will then be able to
understand the Hiragana version. Yuko Matsuoka’s translation of Harry Potter
and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling, 1997; ハリーポッターと賢者の石 ,
trans by Matsuoka, 1999) has standard Kanji characters in vertical lines, but
it also has a number of Hiragana characters in a smaller font to the right of
some of the vertical lines. Moreover, foreign words such as Harry’s name are
written in Katakana so that children know how to pronounce them. The use
of Katakana to render foreign words or names phonetically is also valuable
as a means of representing onomatopoeic sounds in the source text. Other
languages also have features that have been adapted across time to the
young learner, so that vocalization marks in Hebrew, for instance, assist in
pronunciation and the early stages of reading.
Tense
A further linguistic point to which translators of children’s fiction and picture
books should pay particular attention is the manner in which a writer
communicates the unfolding of narrative time to a young audience and,
specifically, the varying use of the present or the past tense as a basic
narrative mode in children’s literature. In many European languages the
present tense is commonly used, particularly in writing for the younger child.
Anthea Bell has commented on the ‘delicate matter’ of translating the
historic present – that is the present tense as basic narrative mode – of
French and German children’s stories into English. In Bell’s opinion the
historic present in English is an exciting, but unusual, narrative strategy:
I am most reluctant to use the historic present in English in a middle-of-

the-road kind of children’s novel, even if it is the main tense of a French
or German original. In English, the historic present seems more a tense
for a stylist than is necessarily the case in other languages. I like it
myself; I like its immediacy. But I feel it needs to be approached with
caution in translating children’s fiction.
(Bell, 1986: 17)
33
Tense in narratives is linked to dominant literary conventions within
languages, so the shifting of tenses in the process of translation may be one
means by which a text is assimilated into the target culture. Bell is not alone
in transposing tenses in children’s fiction. Joan Tate changes the basic narrative
tense of Maud Reuterswärd’s Flickan och dockskåpet (1979), a Swedish
novel with memories aroused by a doll’s house as its central theme, into the
past in her English version (Tate, A Way from Home, 1990). She does,
however, retain the present tense for interspersed passages where the dolls air
their thoughts about successive owners.
The imaginative and aesthetic effects of the narrative present in children’s
texts certainly deserve close attention – particularly in the picture book. Even
Bell cites visual narratives as an exception to her general wariness of the
historic present in English. As co-translator with Derek Hockridge of the
Asterix series into English, she regards the strip cartoon as a present tense
genre because it resembles: ‘a dramatic performance unfolding before the
reader’s eyes’ (Bell, 1986: 17). As the adult reads the text of a picture
book, pointing to and commenting on illustrations, the child becomes an
equally active participant in a three-way exchange (adult, book, child) that
has all the qualities of a dramatic performance that takes place in the
present.
A striking example of the role tense plays in the reading aloud of a picture
book to a very young child is to be found in the English translations of Jean
de Brunhoff’s picture book Histoire de Babar (1931), a present tense
narrative in French that was first published in English in two separate
editions. Merle Haas, translator of the American version of 1933, retained
the present tense of the original whereas Olive Jones, translator of the
British Babar, opted for the past tense in an edition that appeared a year
later. Two translators, translating into the English language at about the
same time, made entirely different choices. Haas aligned her translation with
the French cultural practice of using the present tense in children’s stories,
while Jones appears to have shared the unease Anthea Bell expresses at
using the present tense as a basic narrative mode.
The death of Babar’s mother on the fourth and fifth pages of Histoire de
Babar is one of the most memorable and shocking moments in literature for
the youngest children. A child listening to a reading of the French original
effectively watches as the huntsman shoots thanks to the present tense, ‘tire’
(shoots):
Babar se promène tres

heureux sur le dos de sa
maman,
quand un villain
chasseur, caché derrière
un buisson, tire sur eux.
(de Brunhoff, Histoire de Babar
le petit elephant, 1931: 10)
[Babar is riding happily on his mother’s back when
A wicked hunter, hidden behind some bushes
Shoots at them.]
(de Brunhoff, 1931;
The Story of Babar the
Little Elephant, trans
Merle Haas, 1933: 3)
One day Babar was having a lovely ride

on his mother’s back,
when a cruel hunter,
hiding behind a bush,
shot at them.
(
d
e
B
r
u
n
h
o
f
f
,
1
9
3
1
;
T
h
e
S
t
o
r
y
o
f
B
a
b
a
r
35
i.e. is a translator more or less likely to mediate a text for younger
children than for young adults? Or is it the social and political content of
the text rather than the target age group that determines the degree of
mediation necessary?
• Should a translator ever censor a children’s book in the process of
translation?
• What are the conditions that might make it appropriate to write a
translator’s preface to a children’s book, and how might a translator
address the child reader?
• Is an ‘aesthetic’ followed by an ‘efferent’ reading a useful strategy in
your
opinion? Does a busy translator have time for both? Would you read
through a novel first before translating it?
Exercises
• Identify and discuss the qualities of the narrative voice present in the
following three extracts. Consider conspiracy with the child reader,
didacticism, subversion, irony and dual address. How might an adult’s
response to the third extract differ from that of a young child? How might
you replicate the narrator’s voice in each case when translating the
extracts?
Diamond learned to drive all the sooner that he had been accustomed
to do what he was told, and could obey the smallest hint in a
moment. Nothing helps one to get on like that. Some people don’t
know how to do what they are told; they have not been used to it, and
they neither understand quickly nor are able to turn what they do
understand into action quickly. With an obedient mind one learns the
right things fast enough.
(George Macdonald, At the Back of the
North Wind, 1984: 141)
But in the streets, where the blades of grass don’t grow, everything
is like everything else. This is why many children who live in towns
are so extremely naughty. They do not know what is the matter with
them, and no more do their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles,
cousins, tutors, governesses and nurses; but I know. And so do you,
now.
(E. Nesbit, Five Children and It, 2004: 3)
It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in
all his life, and he was goodness knows how old – three, was it, or
four? – never had he seen so much rain.
(A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926: 117)
• Read a children’s novel written in your working language and featuring
a child narrator. Try to pinpoint the idiosyncrasies and idiolect of the
narrator’s voice. Note down specific phrases, vocabulary and narrative
techniques that might be helpful when working a translation of your own.
• Translate the following passage into your working language and consider
how you might replicate the child’s voice. Tracy Beaker lives in a
children’s home and the narrative is her diary:
My Book About Me.
About Me
My name is Tracy Beaker. I am 10 years 2 months old. My birthday
is on 8 May. It’s not fair, because that dopey Peter Ingham has his
birthday then too, so we just got the one cake between us. And we
had to hold the knife to cut the cake together. Which meant we only
had half a wish each. Wishing is for babies anyway. They don’t come
true.
I was born at some hospital somewhere. I looked cute when I was
a little baby but I bet I yelled a lot.
I am cms tall. I don’t know. I’ve tried measuring with a ruler but
it keeps wobbling about and I can’t reach properly. I don’t want to
get any of the other children to help me. This is my private book.
(Jacqueline Wilson The Story of Tracy Beaker, 1991:
1)
• Choose a historical novel for children written in any language to which
you have access and set in its country of origin, and consider in what
form you, as translator of the novel, might convey information essential
to an understanding of the plot and historical context to a young reader
of a translation.
• Conduct a small-scale research project on picture books (ten or more books
with a few lines of text per page, not illustrated books) or stories for the
younger reader written in any language to which you have access.
Compare the use of tense in each book and consider its effects and how
you might address the issue of tense. (See also Chapter 3 on translating
the visual.)
Further reading
Bell, Anthea (1986) ‘Translator’s notebook: Delicate matters’. Signal, 49: 17–26.
O’Sullivan, Emer (1993) ‘The fate of the dual addressee in the translation of
children’s literature’. New Comparison, 16: 109–19.
O’Sullivan, Emer (2000) Kinderliterarische Komparatistik, Heidleberg: Winter; trans.
A. Bell as Comparative Children’s Literature, 2005, Abingdon and New York:
Routledge. See Chapter 5 on ‘The implied translator and the implied reader in
translated children’s literature’.
Puurtinen, Tiina (1995) Linguistic Acceptability in Translated Children’s Literature,
Joensuu: University of Joensuu.
Wall, Barbara (1991) The Narrator’s Voice: The dilemma of children’s fiction, London:
Macmillan.
2Meeting the unknown
Translating names, cultural markers
and intertextual references
Editors and translators have often made changes to translated texts, fearing
that children may be alienated by ‘difficult’ names, new foods or unfamiliar
cultural practices. Just how far a translator should mediate a work of fiction
depends on the breadth of reading experience in the target audience: young
people who rarely encounter other cultures in their reading material may
indeed be wary of the unknown. The student of Aidan Chambers
mentioned in Chapter 1 who was affronted by the naked mother and child in
a Swedish book also complained that the text had not been ‘culturally
translated’ and that ‘the money and suchlike were all Swedish’ (Chambers,
2001: 113). An expectation that a book should be adapted to the social
context of the target language arises in this case because translations into
English account for only a small fraction of annual publications for children
(estimated at around two per cent in the UK, for example). In such
situations a pragmatic degree of adaptation may be necessary to ensure that
children read translations at all. Anthea Bell draws on her extensive
experience as a translator of books for children into English to suggest that
there are occasions when it is important to assess ‘the precise degree of
foreignness, and how far it is acceptable and can be preserved’ (Bell, 1985a:
7).
The British student’s demand for ‘cultural translation’ is unlikely to be
shared, on the other hand, by a young person in Finland, where up to eighty
per cent of books for the young are translations, or in many other countries
where reading translated material is the norm. Cultural mediation is hardly
necessary when readers have read translations from an early age, or when
young readers are already familiar with a book’s country of origin because
of close economic or cultural ties. Translators of British and American
young adult fiction into other languages, for example, will be aware that
because of the global domination of the English language, young readers
will recognize culture-specific items from songs, films and TV series
readily available via the internet or television. At the other end of the
spectrum, translations from minority languages will often require a degree of
mediation to introduce the language, culture and geographical location of the
source text.
Göte Klingberg (1986) was one of the first scholars to address the issue
of cultural mediation in relation to child readers. In Children’s Fiction in the
38 Meeting the unknown
Hands of the Translators, Klingberg used the phrase ‘cultural context adapta-
tion’ to describe the transformation of aspects of local culture in order to
aid children’s understanding of the translated text. Lawrence Venuti’s (2008)
broader concepts of ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’ are also often
applied to children’s literature. A domesticating translator alters cultural
markers to bring the text closer to the target culture, while a foreignizing
translator leaves cultural terms and names untranslated and retains
references to cultural practices that may be new to the child reader. Venuti’s
argument against domestication – that it represents a kind of appropriation
or cultural colonialism – is a powerful one but has to be reviewed with care
in the context of books for the young where children’s lack of experience
may require a greater degree of adaptation than is necessary in adult fiction.
Opinion on the cultural adaptation and mediation of children’s texts
remains
divided. Historically there has been a generally agreed practice that translators
and editors localize names, coinage, foodstuffs, intertextual references or
even, in rare instances, the settings of children’s stories and novels.
Klingberg, however, is prescriptive in rejecting adaptation; he
recommends that the source text should enjoy priority and that the cultural
context adaptation in children’s books should be kept to a minimum. In
recent decades, translators have generally demonstrated a greater faith in
children’s ability to accom- modate difference than is evident in earlier
translated texts. Nonetheless, the adaptation of cultural detail is still evident,
for example in changes made to English foodstuffs in translations of J.K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Such domestication ignores both the
developmental factor that children have to digest new concepts and information
on a daily basis even within their own localities, and the argument that
adaptation of a foreign milieu removes an element of challenge and
excitement from children’s reading.
Relocation
Klingberg designated the most extreme form of adaptation as ‘localization’
(1986: 15), namely the deliberate and wholesale relocation of an entire text.
Several historical instances of relocation did come to light during a rare
opportunity to compare multiple translations of the work of a single children’s
author at a symposium held in 1999 to mark the centenary of the birth of
Erich Kästner, German author of the twentieth century classic Emil und die
Detektive (1929). Published proceedings cite transpositions of Emil from its
essential Berlin setting to the centre of Stockholm in the first Swedish
translation (Boëthius, 2002); Pest in the first Hungarian version (Lipóczi,
2002) and Krakow in the Polish edition (Hałub, 2002). Radical localization
of this kind compromises the integrity of a novel where the Berlin of the
Weimar Republic with its exciting electric trams, overhead railways, cafés
and cinemas are as essential to the novel’s impact as the quirky characters of
provincial Emil and his streetwise Berlin gang. Although it is unlikely that
publishers will insist on wholesale relocation in the twenty-first century,
translators should be aware of precedents.
Meeting the unknown 39
Mediation: cultural explanation
Fortunately, radical relocation, as Klingberg defined it, has all but disappeared
as a translation strategy, but the mediation of a cultural setting begins with
the ‘packaging’ of a book from cover illustration and design to the
composition of a blurb, an introduction and other peritextual material. Editors
and publishers have invented a number of strategies for bridging the cultural
hiatus between source and target texts. To reassure young readers and
their parents, for example, the name of quintessentially English children’s
poet Walter de la Mare appears on the dustjacket of the first British edition
of Emil and the Detectives (Kästner, 1929; trans Goldsmith, 1931). De la
Mare’s status was a guarantee that attention would be paid to the
unknown – and foreign – Kästner, and his preface to the novel both
assisted the passage of a German author into the English cultural scene and
gently assured young readers that nothing happened in the story ‘that might
not happen (in pretty much the same way as it does happen in the book) in
London or Manchester or Glasgow tomorrow afternoon’ (Kästner, 1929;
trans Goldsmith, 1931: 10). Similarly, the cachet of a preface by A.A. Milne
(author of Winnie-the-Pooh) to the first British edition of The Story of
Babar the Little Elephant (de Brunhoff, 1931; Jones, 1934) reassures young
readers and their parents that de Brunhoff’s French creation is worthy of
its ‘naturalization papers’ (Milne, cited in de Brunhoff, 1931, trans 1934).
When a publisher calls on the services of a well- established children’s
author in the target culture for an endorsement of a translation, the result is
likely to be positive in terms of sales (see Chapter 7 for further discussion
of the marketing of translations in the children’s publishing industry).
What, then, is the role of the translator in easing the transition between
cultures? First, there are moments when an explanatory addition to the text is
necessary. As outlined in Chapter 1, Cathy Hirano’s deft insertion of an
explanation of juku ( 学習塾 , cram school) is essential to Kazumi Yumoto’s
narrative. Cultural explanation within a work of fiction is a subtle art, however,
since there is always a risk of delaying narrative momentum, detracting from
the narrator’s voice or creating an unwieldy digression. As a contrast to
Hirano’s seamless insertion, O’Sullivan’s (2000: 324–5) example of Franz
Sester’s addition of a detailed recipe for mock turtle soup to his 1949
translation into German of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland even includes
an educational context. In Sester’s text, the German Alice is learning English
and the teacher has just introduced ‘mock’ and ‘turtle’ as new vocabulary.
The result is a lengthy and tedious passage that is at odds with Carroll’s wit
and style.
Specific cultural markers: food

Carroll’s mock turtle soup highlights one of the most common and significant
challenges in translating fiction and poetry for children, that of translating
foodstuffs. Wendy Katz’s frequently cited statement that ‘Food may be, in
fact, the sex of children’s literature’ (1980: 192) makes it clear that food is
an object of desire and has sensual and magical qualities in children’s fiction.
It is, after all, Turkish delight that tempts Edmund into the power of the White
Witch in C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and the labels
‘Eat me’ and ‘Drink me’ that lead Alice astray in Wonderland. International
trade and the universality of certain dishes such as American hamburgers,
Italian pizzas or Japanese sushi ensure that many children today are familiar
with a far more varied cuisine than in the past, but there will always be foods
that require a search for an equivalent or an alternative that has the same
impact on the child’s tastebuds.
Take, for example, the sherbet lemon Dumbledore offers Professor
McGonagall in the opening chapter of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s
Stone. In this instance, and indeed in many other examples to be cited
throughout this book, the Harry Potter series offers an extremely useful basis
for comparison since it is a contemporary classic that has been translated into
many languages. In view of the essential Britishness of the boarding-school
setting and Rowling’s nostalgic glance at the foods and culture of the twentieth
century, it also has a range of culture-specific content. A sherbet lemon is a
hard-boiled, lemon-flavoured sweet filled with sherbet powder. Sherbet lemons
were popular in J.K. Rowling’s childhood, so her intention is to call to mind
the lemon taste together with the anticipation and actuality of the fizzing
Table 2.1
Language and translator Sherbet lemon English back translation

French: Jean-François un esquimau au citron lemon-flavoured ice-cream
Ménard, 1998 (there has probably been a
misinterpretation of
‘sherbet’ as ‘sorbet’, a
flavoured water ice – a
mistake also made in
translations into other
languages)
Spanish: Alicia un caramelo de limón tangy lemon sweet (lemon
Dellepiane, 1999 sherbet in Spanish might be
‘polvos de Limón’, and in
Catalan ‘sidral de llimona’)
Japanese: Yuko レモン•キャンディー lemon candy
Matsuoka, 1999
Chinese (Taiwanese 檸檬雪寶 ‘lemon’ ‘snow’ ‘treasure’
edition): 彭倩文
(Peng Qianwen),
2000 ein Zitronenbrausebonbon lemon sherbet; literally:
German: Klaus Fritz, ‘lemon fizzing sweet’
1998
Meeting the unknown
41
sensation on the tongue as
the sweet gradually dissolves. The five renderings of ‘sherbet lemon’ in
Table 2.1 above reveal a range of strategies at work.
Only the German
translator seems to have found an exact match; others
replicate the acidic
lemon taste but not the sherbet centre (Spanish and Japanese), while in
French and Taiwanese editions the sherbet/sorbet confusion determines the
unlikely introduction of a frozen confection: Dumbledore is in a street at
night and nowhere near a fridge or shop. Sometimes favourite childhood
tastes are easily translated because there is a culinary equivalent in the target
language, as in the case of the German ‘Zitronenbrausebonbon’ (above), or
Pippi Långstrump’s batch of five hundred ‘pepparkakor’ – a thin and spicy
Swedish biscuit that every Swedish child would know – which become
gingersnaps in both Edna Hurup’s (1954) and Tiina Nunnally’s (2007) English
versions. Some confections, however, simply do not exist in the target
culture. Foods, and in particular sweet treats or drinks, matter enormously
to young children and constitute an important part of the affective content of
any children’s book. It is therefore well worth taking the time to research the
precise type of sweet, candy or dessert cited in the source text and seeking
either an equivalent, or an alternative that is equally evocative for readers of
the translation.
Retaining elements of
the source language: glossaries
Cultural markers do not
have to be translated. A translator may decide to retain words or expressions
denoting foodstuffs, cultural practices or phrases of greeting in the source
language, in line with Venuti’s advocacy of the ‘foreignization’ of the
translated text. Borrowing terms from a source language, often
highlighted in italics, is a strategy also found in adult fiction and readers will
often deduce meaning from the context. Provided that the strategy is not
overused, the retention of potent vocabulary either in a context that makes its
sense obvious, or for the pleasure of an encounter with the new – or indeed
simply as a reminder that the child is reading a narrative originally written in
another language – will add to the linguistic and cultural experience of
reading a translated book. Children do, after all, enjoy the sound of and sight
of words that differ from the familiar letter patterns of their own language.
Even Beatrix Potter, author of The Tale of Peter Rabbit, was well aware of
the intriguing visual and aural qualities of unfamiliar vocabulary when she
included words such as ‘soporific’ and ‘galoshes’ in her tiny picture books
for the youngest children.
A glossary may,
however, be necessary in some circumstances, particularly
in translations of longer
works of fiction for older children and young adults where a considerable
amount of vocabulary is retained in the source language. In 1996, Dutch
words and phrases in what was then known as ‘Yugoslavian’ to emphasize
the cultural and linguistic setting of the action. Translator Patricia Crampton
(1997) decided to retain the glossary that Dutch author Els de Groen added
to No Roof in Bosnia (1996). Crampton translated the definitions of terms taken
from languages spoken in the region from Dutch into English, thus maintaining
de Groen’s ‘alienation’ effect designed to remind the young Dutch reader of
the Yugoslavian setting of the book, see Table 2.2 below.
In the wartime setting of de Groen’s novel, the glossary and pronunciation
guide – situated at the end of the novel – fulfill a range of functions. Young
readers learn the pejorative names used by the various factions to designate
their enemies, thus adding an emotional edge to the narrative. In items of
cultural and topographical information, de Groen also offers a vivid reminder
of both the novel’s cultural and wartime settings. The occasional addition of
a guide to pronunciation may seem superfluous when a young reader is not
learning the language in question, but there will be some children –
potential future linguists and translators perhaps – who will want to know
how to speak these intriguing words out loud. It is also worth noting that at
the time of the book’s publication in 1997, the conflict was still in the news
and the consciousness of most readers. Today de Groen’s text has already
become a historical novel, so that future editions or translations may
require a preface or afterword explaining the origins of the conflict. Rachel
Ward’s explanatory glossary to
Table 2.2
Balija term of abuse for Muslims
C, c pronounced ts
Ć, ć pronounced tsh
Č, č pronounced ch
Chetnik Serbian nationalist
djuveć rice dish
gusle one-stringed
icon instrument
Jedan portrait of saints in eastern Orthodox church
peva one sings, the other plays (from gypsy song)
drugi svira bar room of an inn
kafana pronounced ‘hodja’: Islamic teacher
khoja circle dance, in which participants hold hands
kolodans fundamentalist Muslim guerrillas
mujaheddin Serbs besieging Sarajevo
papaks field, plain
polje pronounced sh
Š, š derogatory
Serbofor nickname for
stara groblja UNPROFOR
Stećak, stećci old graveyard
UNPROFOR Bogomil
Ustasha stones
Ž, ž (singular and
plural)157)
(No Roof in Bosnia, 1997:
UN peace-keeping force in former Yugoslavia
Croat nationalist
pronounced j
Meeting the unknown
43
her translation of Gudrun Pausewang’s Traitor (Pausewang, 1995; trans by
Ward, 2004) is an instance of the use of this strategy for historical contextual-
ization, where the protagonist’s actions in Germany during the Third Reich
require detailed annotations to concepts such as ‘Führer’ and ‘Hitlerjugend’.
Sarah Ardizzone also makes use of an appendix to the narrative when
highlighting nuances of a migrant culture in her translation from French into
English of Faïza Guène’s young adult novel Kiffe kiffe demain (2004; Just
Like Tomorrow, trans by Ardizzone, 2006). The French of the young narrator
of Moroccan heritage, fifteen-year-old Doria, is enlivened by vocabulary and
expressions taken from North African Arabic that are essential to the fictional
milieu of the Paradise Estate on the outskirts of Paris where she lives.
Ardizzone retains and explains many of these items in a glossary that ranges
from slippers, ‘babouches’ and foods such as ‘Merguez’ (a spicy North
African sausage), to the origins of the term ‘kif-kif ’:
Kif, meaning hash or marijuana, derives from the Arabic kaif for
wellbeing and good humour. ‘C’est du kif’ meaning ‘it’s the same thing’,
is a related phrase with its origin in the term ‘kif-kif’, or ‘more of the
same’, brought back to France by soldiers who served in North Africa
at the end of the nineteenth century. Faïza Guène’s original title, Kiffe
kiffe demain, plays on both the downbeat sense of kif-kif and the
enthusiasm behind kiffer, a contemporary ‘street’ verb meaning to feel
high or to fancy somebody. Kiffer is hybrid French, the k giving it a
deliberately Arabic feel. So Guène’s title means both ‘different day,
same shit’ and ‘perhaps I might just like tomorrow’
(Ardizzone, 2006: 181–2)
In view of the significance of ‘kif’ within the title of the source text and its
link to marijuana, Ardizzone wanted to convey to young readers the
ambivalence and edginess of its use on the streets in the Parisian high-rise
suburbs. A gloss on specific terms at the end of the novel will certainly be of
interest to young adult readers as they digest the impact of Doria’s sharp-eyed
assessment of life on the estate.
Strategies for translating cultural items include:
• Consider leaving cultural markers – coins, foodstuffs, settings – untrans-

lated so that young readers can enjoy and appreciate difference.
• If necessary, replace culture-specific items with carefully researched local
ones that are likely to have a similar impact on the young reader.
• Where a cultural reference is unlikely to be understood, but is essential
to the narrative, create an intratextual gloss by weaving an explanation
into the text.
• In cases where specific terms from the source language are used frequently,
or are necessary to provide a social or historical context to the narrative,
the addition of a glossary may be helpful to the reader.
• Where necessary (for example in a translation from a minority language
or culture likely to be entirely unknown to young readers) introduce the
source text in a preface that is likely to appeal to the target audience,
preferably by addressing child readers directly.
• Footnotes are best avoided, but may occasionally be useful where an
explanation cannot easily be included in the narrative.
• On rare occasions it may be necessary to omit a cultural reference that
would involve lengthy and tedious explanation.
Translating names
Whereas characters’ names are rarely changed in the translation of adult fiction,
translators writing for children often adapt them, for example by using equival-
ents in the target language such as Hans/John/Jean, William/Guillermo/
Guillaume, Alice/Alicia. This is a contentious issue, however, since names
are a powerful signal of social and cultural context. If left untranslated, names
constantly remind young readers that they are reading a story set in another
country, whereas the use of an equivalent name or an alternative in the target
language may lead to an incongruous relationship between names and setting.
Nonetheless, editors and translators fear that children might struggle with
foreign names, thus giving rise to a dilemma that Anthea Bell cites in her
‘Translator’s notebook’:
The idea behind all this is to avoid putting young readers off by
presenting them with an impenetrable-looking set of foreign names the
moment they open a book. It’s the kind of problem that constantly
besets a translator of children’s literature.
(Bell, 1985a: 7)
Publisher Aidan Chambers’ account of the translation of names in Laurie

Thompson’s English-language version of Peter Pohl’s (1985) Swedish novel
for young people, Johnny, my Friend (1991), indicates similar anxieties, as
well as editorial disagreement and compromise:
I was anxious that young readers should not be disconcerted by

characters’ names when I knew they would have to face other textual
unfamiliarities of a fairly complex order. So my opinion, though
reluctant, was that we should anglicize any names that were totally
unfamiliar but retain any that were readable and recognizable [. . .]
(Chambers, 2001:
129)
According to Chambers, his Swedish language advisor Katarina Kuick

was against this domesticating strategy, arguing that it was time English-
speaking children got used to foreign names. In support of Kuick’s argument,
generations of English-speaking children have accommodated the names of
Meeting the unknown
45
Hansel (with or without
umlaut) and Gretel or Pinocchio, as well as invented names in fantasy
fiction. When highly motivated by a compelling narrative, even the
youngest children will remember the visual appearance or sound patterns
of unknown names. During the craze in the 1980s for spin-off books from
the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles TV series, for example, many five- and
six-year-olds in British schools could read (and sometimes write) the names of
‘Turtles’ Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael. Chambers’ final
decision, however, was to choose ‘Johnny’ as the name for the androgynous
‘Janne’ (the name can denote a male or female in Swedish) in Johnny, my
Friend. Given the ambiguity in Swedish as to the sex of the protagonist
throughout the novel, the use of a definitively male name in the English
version was not altogether successful. When debating the translation of
names, then, the age-range of readers, their likely familiarity with
translations and the author’s intentions in naming characters all have to be
taken into account: there are no universal solutions.
Children’s authors put a
great deal of thought into the creation of names,
whether these are extant,
proper names of protagonists and locations, or magical, invented ones.
J.R.R. Tolkien, author of The Hobbit, even went so far as to write a guide
for translators to the names of his characters in The Lord of the Rings,
including philological notes.1 Names of fictional children or adults may
carry semantic content, aural associations, or express traits associated with
particular characters. Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Långstrump immediately
evokes the image of a tall and gangly physique. Fortunately, ‘Pippi’ is
usually retained in international editions of the book and her surname is
translated literally, for example as ‘Longstocking’ (English) or
‘Langstrumpf ’ (German). Roald Dahl, too, creates meaningful and amusing
names in his quest to convey the grotesque absurdity of adult behaviour. In
Matilda Dahl uses this technique to invoke a fearsome headmistress, Miss
Trunchbull, a name chosen to contrast with the sweet and self-effacing teacher,
Miss Honey. ‘Trunchbull’, with its echoes of a police ‘truncheon’ or cudgel
and the school ‘bully’ or a fearsome ‘bull’, highlights the necessity to convey
the message in a name. B.J. Epstein’s personal communication with the
Swedish translator of Matilda, Meta Ottosson, reveals how childhood
memory plays a part in conveying the negative freight of ‘Trunchbull’:
How did it come

about that I translated Miss Trunchbull with Domderas- sonskan? I think
it was this way: I had an impression of how she was after I read the book
for the first time. When I was a child, there was a film called
‘Anderssonskans Kalle’. Kalle was a naughty boy and Anderssonskan
was a real matron, a bitch who was both angry and grim [. . .]
Epstein, 2009: 202)
This strategy was not applied in the Japanese version, however; Noriko
Netley laments the loss of meaning resulting from the use of Katakana (used
Occasionally luck and verbal finesse combine to present a perfect solution.
The French translator of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone achieved
just such a coup with his ‘Choixpeau’ for the Sorting Hat used to select
pupils to belong to a particular ‘house’ at Hogwarts (‘choix’ as a translation
of choice designates the selection process indicated by ‘Sorting’ and the
whole word is aurally analogous to ‘chapeau’, ‘hat’). Similarly, Anthea Bell
has often spoken of the proud moment when she rendered Obelix’s dog in
the Asterix series, ‘Idéfix’, as ‘Dogmatix’ in English. Such serendipity is
rare, however, and it is much more likely that the translation of names
will involve a complex orchestration of meaning and sound. Torstein Bugge
Høverstad, translator of the Harry Potter series into Norwegian, describes
the process of identifying ‘individual meaningful elements’ in a name, then
finding equivalents ‘with similar lexicographical and/or associational
values’ and reassembling these Norwegian elements in a way that ‘doesn’t
clash too obviously with Norwegian naming traditions’ (2003–4: 14).
Høverstad offers a detailed example of his search for a translation of the
name Dumbledore, a dialect word for bumblebee:
The Norwegian word is humle, which must obviously be part of

any solution, but on its own it’s too short to convey entirely the original,
which is a tiny sort of word painting of the sound this pleasant insect
makes. The Norwegian word for this sound is surr, so could we
call him Humlesurr? The right number and sequence of sounds, so
we’re getting there . . . but he’s not the most straightforward person you
could think of, so what about getting a little twist into the name as
well? Snurr in Norwegian sounds nearly the same as the bumblebee’s
surr, but actually means something like ‘turning rapidly’ – so we end up
with Humlesnurr conveying the original idea and sound of the
bumblebee, while adding a touch of nimbleness.
(2003–4:
14)
Høverstad’s thought-processes are indicative of the detailed linguistic

creativity that may be involved in translating a name; in his version young
Norwegian readers have the pleasure of an insect reference that may well, in
fact, have been lost on many English-language readers.
Høverstad also cites the need for consistency in naming multiple
characters,
some of them with only minor roles in the narrative, across the whole
series of seven Harry Potter books. Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge rose to a
similar challenge by keeping handwritten folders (now replaceable by an
electronic database) to keep track of names of over three hundred
characters as they translated successive Asterix albums from French into
English. Uderzo and Goscinny’s particular brand of comedy makes great
use of Latinate names. Bell relates how she and Hockridge discussed the
problem of word order in the name of a young centurion, Gazpachoandalus,
in the translation of Asterix en Corse, where the reversal of the adjective-
noun combination in English would result in the loss of the Roman ‘us’
ending. A glance at their file listing ‘Names Not Yet Used’ revealed
‘Hippopotamus’: ‘We’ve never yet called
Meeting the unknown
47
anyone Hippopotamus;
he’s a big hefty fellow, and it would be a simple one; quite small children
might like it’ (Bell, 1980: 133). Keeping the child audience in mind, noting
potential future names – these are strategies that resulted in a lugubrious
change of name that loses the Spanish reference, but maintains the comic
tone.
In cases where names
from the source language are retained, a decision that
is more likely in fiction
for older readers, a cast list in the opening pages of a book with a brief
indication of the role of each character will assist readers to keep track of
names they find it hard to memorize. In Alastair McEwen’s translation from
Italian into English of Prima di Lasciarsi (Ambrosio, 2004; Before We Say
Goodbye, trans McEwen, 2010), Gabriella Ambrosio’s novel about a suicide
bombing in twenty-first-century Jerusalem, an alphabetical list of the main
characters begins as follows:
Abdelin, 38, Dima’s

aunt and her fiancé’s mother; Palestinian
Abraham, 59, a
security guard; an Israeli Jew who was breast-fed by an Arab woman
Adum a haulage
contractor, Palestinian
(Ambrosio, 2004;
Before We Say Goodbye,
McEwen, 2010: 7–8)
Each character’s relationship with others is explained in this ready

reference point – although in this case it is the setting of Jerusalem rather than
the source language of Italian that determines characters’ names. May Massee,
in her 1930 translation of Erich Kästner’s German classic Emil und die
Detektive, took the concept of the cast list a stage further in a preface
entitled ‘This Explains About Some of the Names’. Massee alerts her
young readers to Kästner’s playful creativity to justify her retention of the
German names: ‘We thought you might like to pronounce them’ (Kästner,
1929; Emil and the Detectives, Massee, 1930: ix). To assist young readers
to do so, she adds explanations that act as both a glossary and dictionary:
First you must know that Herr is Mr., Frau is Mrs., and Fräu-lein is
Miss. Then you must remember that e is often pronounced like long a
and that
i is often pronounced like long e so that Emil is pronounced as if it began
with a long a. It’s a good name. Pe-ter-sil-ie means Parsley – a nice silly
name in any language. . . . Kurzhals is short neck. Neu-stadt is New city.
Diens-tag is Tuesday and means service day or sort of office day.
(Kästner, 1929; Emil and the Detectives,
Translating place names: a case study from the
Harry Potter series
Place names, too, may resonate throughout a novel by contributing to
a depiction of its social milieu. The opening line of J.K. Rowling’s Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, for example, establishes the Dursleys as
conventional, middle-of-the-road Englanders who live in the suburban
conformity that is instantly recognizable to most British readers in the name
‘Privet Drive’:
Mr and Mrs Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that
they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
(Rowling, 1997: 7)
‘Privet Drive’ signals to an English reader the orderliness and monotony of

a suburban English childhood of the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, where neatly
trimmed privet hedges around the edge of a garden were a common sight, and
living in a ‘Drive’ certainly indicated a higher social status than living in a
‘Street’ or ‘Road’. Like so many features of the Potter books, ‘Privet Drive’
represents a return to the conventional England of the early and mid-twentieth
century, and therefore contributes to an image of the Dursleys as arch
conformists. Familiarity with this setting is also a factor in the success of the
series with adults, since not all children will appreciate the full implications
of Rowling’s reference.
So how have translators addressed the ironic reverberations of
‘Privet
Drive’? One choice is to leave the street name in English, as Jean-
François Ménard does in the French translation, even though French readers are
unlikely to be privy to the associations of the name. An alternative is to use
the botanical equivalent of the privet bush, for example ‘Ligusterweg’
(literally: ‘Privet Way’) in the German version by Klaus Fritz. Given the
Latinate nomenclature of the plant world, it is no surprise to find
‘Gestationis Ligustrorum’ in the Latin version too. Either way, the social
associations of Privet Drive are lost. As in the case of Dahl’s ‘Miss
Trunchbull’, ‘Privet Drive’ in the Japanese translation is simply a Katakana
or phonetic equivalent プリベット通り (the more complex Kanji character
denotes ‘street’) that also fails to convey a sense of the suburban milieu to the
Japanese reader. The most radical change in social status, however, occurs in an
early Russian translation by I.V. Oranskii (2001). Oranskii seems to have
understood ‘Privet’ as ‘Private’, then transliterated ‘Private’ and ‘Drive’ as
П райв ет Д р айв (with thanks to Russian scholar Jane Grayson for this
clarification). The relevant section of the first sentence of the novel,
в доме номер четыре по улице Прайвет Драйв
therefore translates literally as:

at house number 4 on the street Private Drive
Unless the Russian reader knows what ‘private’ and ‘drive’ mean in
English the street name is simply a name, and ‘private’ would, of course, at
a stroke elevate the social status of the suburban setting to that of the private
estate.
It is almost impossible to convey the connotations of ‘privet’
without
resorting to cumbersome explanations or footnotes that would halt the
narrative flow, so an additional emphasis on the conventional behaviour of the
Dursleys elsewhere is necessary to compensate for the loss of the ‘privet’
effect. What matters, as Eirlys E. Davies argues in her article on the
translations of culture- specific references in the Harry Potter books
(Davies, 2003), is the overall effect that translators achieve through the
knowledge and craft of the practiced wordsmith.
The following is a list of strategies available to the translator when
working
on names of characters and other proper nouns in children’s fiction:
• Leaving names untranslated will offer young readers a sense of difference,

although this strategy may lead to difficulties in pronunciation when a
text is read aloud, and any semantic content in names will be lost to the
reader of the target text.
• When young people are very familiar with the culture of the source
language, there is no reason at all to seek alternative names. Many young
people in Taiwan, for example, readily adopt a Western name when they
travel outside the country, so many English-language names in contempor-
ary fiction can be left untranslated.
• Where young readers are faced with a large number of names in the
source
language, a cast list at the beginning of a book – or even printed as a
book mark if costs allow – will assist them to keep track of characters.
• The transliteration or phonetic representation of names between languages
with different scripts will retain an aural sense of the source culture, for
example the representation of Japanese names ‘Tomomo’ and ‘Kinko’ in
Cathy Hirano’s English translation of Kazumi Yumoto’s The Friends;
in translations into Japanese from other languages, the use of Katakana
assists this strategy.
• Place names should be translated according to accepted conventions of
transliteration, for example Beijing as the accepted English rendering of
the capital of China.
• A translator may decide to domesticate by choosing alternative names
familiar to readers of the target language. This has significant disadvan-
tages: the wholesale replacement of names in the source language with
common names in the target language will seem very odd in the cultural
and geographical setting of the source text.
• Direct translation of the semantic elements of a name may be necessary
in order to convey an element of characterization or a message significant
to the narrative (for example Pippi Långstrump).
• In some instances the selection of alternatives that replicate the effect
of names in the source text, for example Bell and Hockridge’s substitu-
tion of the humorous ‘Hippopotamus’ for ‘Gazpachoandalus’, may be
advisable.
• Occasionally it is possible to make a radical change while still retaining
a flavour of the source language. Astrid Lindgren’s young Swedish
detective Kalle Blomqvist becomes Bill Bergson in English, retaining in
‘Bergson’ a Swedish element that is both easily read and pronounced by
English-speaking children.
Intertextuality and intervisuality

Authors naturally make conscious or unconscious reference to other books in
their own (or sometimes other) languages; the recent international success of
Stieg Larsson’s trilogy that begins with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, for
instance, presents a case of intertextual reference across age boundaries.
Astrid Lindgren’s anarchic Pippi Longstocking, a revered icon in Sweden, was
undoubtedly one model for the character of Larsson’s Lisbeth Salander, just
as Lindgren’s sleuth Kalle Blomqvist furnished the name for Larsson’s
detective Mikael Blomkvist. Children’s authors, too, use intertextual and
international reference to add to the playfulness or nuances of meaning in a
story. Lindgren herself drew on the roof-climbing exploits and red hair of her
own favourite childhood heroine, L.M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables,
when she created Pippi.
In children’s fiction, then, references to fairy tales, classic children’s texts,
rhymes and songs may form a significant strand of meaning in a longer narra-
tive or a picture book. But just as Larsson’s references to Pippi and Blomqvist
were lost on many non-Swedish readers of the translations of Larsson’s
trilogy, so translated children’s texts risk losing the resonance of allusions that
become meaningless because of readers’ limited knowledge of the source
culture. Translators have to decide whether to omit such references, to find
equivalents, to translate them literally, or to offer explanations.
Finding equivalents to intertextual allusions in a source text requires an
understanding of which texts are likely to be familiar to children in a
particular age group in the target culture. Three translators of Collodi’s
Pinocchio into English have adopted differing strategies when translating the
titles of Italian books mentioned in a particular scene. On one of his many
ill-fated attempts to reform and attend school, Pinocchio is tempted to the
beach to see a shark by his fellow pupils. When there is no shark to be seen,
Pinocchio reacts angrily to the realization that he has been tricked and a fight
ensues. The puppet’s hard wooden feet cause many bruises, so his enemies
keep their distance and hurl schoolbook missiles at him. At this point Collodi
wryly seizes the opportunity to insert two books of his own authorship
(Giannettini and Minuzzoli) into the narrative. Translators of Collodi’s
classic into English are aware that child readers will not know the Italian
texts listed and adopt a range of solutions:
Allora i ragazzi,
indispettiti do non potersi misurare col burattino a corpo a corpo,
pensarono bene di metter mano ai proiettili e, scioltii fagotti de’ loro libri
di scualoa, cominciarono a scagliare contro di lui i Sillabari, le
Grammatiche, i Giannettini, i Minuzzoli, i Raconti del Thoar, il Pulcino
della Baccini e altri libri scolastici.
(Collodi, Le avventure di Pinocchio.
Edizione illustrate, 2002: 144–5)
[The boys, becoming furious at not being able to measure themselves hand to
hand with the puppet, had recourse to other weapons. Loosening their
satchels they commenced throwing their school-books at him – grammars,
dictionaries, spelling-books, geography books and other scholastic works.]
(Collodi, 2002; The Story of a Puppet or the Adventures
of Pinocchio, trans by Murray, 1891: 146)
[The bad boys, angry because they could not get near Pinocchio, began to
use other weapons. They unstrapped their schoolbags, and began to
throw their books, primers and grammars, dictionaries, geography and other
school books.]
(Collodi, 2002; Pinocchio, trans by Harden, 1944: 143)
[Therefore the boys, who were annoyed at not being able to fight with the
puppet hand-to-hand, decided to use missiles. Untying their bundles of
schoolbooks, they began to hurl at him their Primers and Grammars,
their Alices and Huckleberry Finns, their Lamb’s Tales and Black
Beauties, as well as other schoolbooks.]
(Collodi, 2002; The Adventures of Pinocchio,
trans by Lawson Lucas, 1996: 98)
[The gang, frustrated at not being able to confront the puppet at close
quarters, opted for aerial bombardment. They untied their bundles of
schoolbooks and began to pelt Pinocchio with grammars and dictionaries,
maths books and Histories of the Nation.]
(Collodi, 2002; Pinocchio, trans by Rose, 2003: 117–18)
Mary Alice Murray, the first translator of Pinocchio into English, sets a
pattern followed by Ernest Harden in 1944, and indeed by Emma Rose in
2003, by retaining Collodi’s neutral ‘grammars and dictionaries’ or
adding the equally non-specific geography, maths books or ‘Histories of
the Nation’. Lawson Lucas, too, begins with untitled primers and grammars,
also illustrating the phenomenon of the borrowing of phrases from previous
translations (see discussion of retranslation in Chapter 6). Subsequently,
however, she resorts to her own childhood and a general knowledge of
British children’s literature. The titles she chooses are inappropriate: boys
would be most unlikely to carry around copies of Black Beauty, the story of a
horse that has always been highly popular with girls, and Twain’s Tom
Sawyer would have been a better choice
than Huckleberry Finn, which – although Twain began writing it as a child’s
book – is a lengthy, satirical narrative that became an adult classic. In this
instance it is probably safer to opt for neutral dictionaries or textbooks to
avoid choosing titles that may date quickly or seem out of place in an Italian
setting. A second example where a translator has taken great pains to
find appropriate references or to compensate is the Dutch translation by
Ernst van Altena of the picture book The Jolly Postman and its sequels by
Janet and Allan Ahlberg (1986), as analyzed by Mieke Desmet (2006).
The Jolly Postman is a physically interactive text. Certain pages form
envelopes that contain letters, an advertisement, a birthday card and even
money (a pound note as a birthday gift for Goldilocks), all delivered by a
postman to characters from a range of fairy tales and nursery rhymes familiar
to British and English-
speaking children.
Desmet discusses in detail van Altena’s strategies for rendering these
essential intertextual references to culture-specific tales, songs and verse,
arguing that he has achieved a commendable balance ‘between rendering the
Britishness and local colour of the source texts and positioning the target texts
in the target literary culture’ (2006: 127). Van Altena uses substitution, for
example by replacing a reference to the rhyme “Little Miss Muffet” with
“Biebelbonse Berg”, a poem by the famous Dutch children’s poet and author
Annie M.G. Schmidt, and the lawyers Meeny, Miny, Mo & Co – named after
the English counting rhyme “Eeny, Meeny, Miny Mo” – become “Olleke,
Bolleke, Rubisolleke & Co” as in the Dutch nursery rhyme. On the other
hand, literal translation rather than substitution is appropriate for the titles
of the international classics Alice in Wonderland and The Wizard of Oz, both
likely to be known by the target readership. In an instance of
compensation, van Altena adds ‘Engel-land’ to the postmark of one of the
letters which, as Desmet point out, both translates as ‘angel’ land and
constitutes an ‘intertextual and metatextual reference to the country of origin of
the source text’ (Desmet, 2006: 129). Desmet also adopts the term
‘intervisuality’ to cover visual references to illustrations in earlier children’s
books or to other cultural phenomena; intervisual references cannot be
ignored or omitted in visual texts including picturebooks and comic strips.
Jehan Zitawi (2008), for example, discovered footnotes explaining visual
references to characters from R.L. Stevenson’s Treasure Island and The
Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas in an Egyptian comic-strip version
of a Disney story. Indeed, written text often makes reference to visual
allusions and vice versa, thus presenting translators with an additional
challenge.
The Jolly Postman books include multiple references to a range of
English-
language rhymes and fairy tales for which van Altena is able to substitute
Dutch children’s rhymes, songs and stories. However, in cases where just
one well- known text from the source culture is the subject of frequent
references that form an essential strand in the narrative, as in Mikael
Engström’s Isdraken (2007), a different strategy is necessary. Engström’s
novel tells the story of Mik’s escape from an inhospitable home, even
though it means leaving his adored older brother behind. As Mik battles his
way across Sweden’s icy winter
Meeting the unknown
53
landscape to the haven of
his favourite aunt’s house, Engström reminds his young Swedish readers
of Astrid Lindgren’s Bröderna Lejonhjärta (The Brothers Lionheart).
Susan Beard, translator of the English edition of Isdraken (Thin Ice, 2011),
recognized the significance of this reference, and introduces the novel with a
preface headed ‘The Brothers Lionheart’:
While you are

reading this story, you will notice that it sometimes mentions a book
called The Brothers Lionheart, which is by the famous Swedish author
Astrid Lindgren. You don’t really need to know the story of the
Lionheart brothers to understand this one, but here’s some information
about it, which you might like to check out as you go along.
(
Engström, 2007; Thin Ice, trans by Beard, 2011)
What follows is a précis of the novel’s plot, with salient facts about the
relationship between the two brothers who both die, enter a new world and
battle with a dragon (hence the reference to a dragon in the Swedish title of
Engström’s novel), before dying a second time to enter yet another afterlife.
Although the addition of a preface is not an ideal solution to the problem
caused by a potent intertextual reference, it does provide essential
information and reassure young readers faced with numerous allusions to
Lindgren’s novel that ‘you don’t really need to know the story of the
Lionheart brothers’.
To sum up, strategies for addressing intertextual references in a
children’s
book include:
• Deletion of intertextual references when an equivalent cannot be found,

with the option of compensation.
• Compensation through the introduction at a different point in the text of
an intertextual reference to a work familiar in the target culture.
• Substitution of well-known stories or rhymes from the target culture.
• Literal translation of a title even when there is no equivalent, in order to
indicate the type of story referred to in the source text, for example van
Altena’s translation in The Jolly Postman books of the story title “Jack
and the Giant” as Jack en de reus where no such story exists in Dutch
(Desmet, 2006: 125).
• Retaining references to the titles of international classics or the names of
their protagonists, for example Pinocchio, Heidi, Alice in Wonderland, etc.
• Explanation of an essential intertextual reference in a preface, a footnote
or woven into the narrative where possible.
• When translating intertextual references within a picture book, be careful
to maintain the relationship between text and pictures and to attend to text
within images (see also discussion of this issue in the next chapter).
In each translation project it is imperative to consider the likely reading

Discussion points
• Is the balance of foreignization and domestication likely to be different
in a translation for children from that in a translation intended for adults?
What have you noticed about this balance in the translations for children
and adults you have read and how might you as a translator adjust your
practice (if at all) for a child readership?
• In cases such as that of The Jolly Postman, a book intended for younger
readers and listeners familiar with a wealth of songs, rhymes and stories
from a specific culture and visual clues that confirm those references, might
it simply be impossible to achieve a satisfactory translation? Would it be
necessary (or desirable) to add an introduction to such extensive references
for adults reading the book to a child?
Exercises
• Choose a children’s book with plenty of references to food (meals in the
Harry Potter series for those translating from English, for example) as a
source text and decide how you would render those foodstuffs, including
particular flavours and associations, in your working language.
• Choose a children’s book in any language you can read and decide how
you might (or might not) translate characters’ names throughout the
text.
• Find a source text written for children that includes intertextual allusions
and decide how to render them in your working language.
Note
1 ‘Guide to the Names in The Lord of the Rings’ Tolkien Gateway http://tolkiengate
way.net/wiki/Guide_to_the_Names_in_The_Lord_of_the_Rings [accessed 12 April
2015].
Further reading
Bell, Anthea (1985a) ‘Translator’s notebook: The naming of names’. Signal, 46: 3–11.
Desmet, Mieke (2006) ‘Intertextuality/intervisuality in translation: “The Jolly
Postman’s” intercultural journey from Britain to the Netherlands’. In The Translation
of Children’s Literature: A reader, edited by G. Lathey, Clevedon: Multilingual
Matters, 122–33.
Epstein, B.J. (2012) Translating Expressive Language in Children’s Literature:
Problems and solutions, Bern: Peter Lang.
González Cascallana, Belén (2006) ‘Translating cultural intertextuality in children’s
literature’. In Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and strategies,
edited by J. van Coillie and W. Verschueren, Manchester, St. Jerome, 97–110.
Nord, Christiane (2003) ‘Proper names in translations for children: Alice in Wonderland
as a case in point’. Meta, 48(1–2): 182–96.
van Coillie, Jan (2006) ‘Character names in translation: A functional approach’. In
Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges and strategies, edited by J. van
Coillie and W. Verschueren, Manchester: St. Jerome, 123–40.
Yamazaki, Akiko (2002) ‘Why change names? On the translation of children’s books’.
Children’s Literature in Education, 33(1): 53–62.
3Translating the visual
What is the use of a book without pictures or conversation?

(Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland)
Illustration, together with the visual impact of lettering and text, has been a
significant aspect of children’s reading matter from the earliest days of a
separate literature for children. Booksellers, publishers and authors have long
been aware that pictures, decorative additions or a striking page layout will
attract and retain the attention of young readers. References to illustrations in
the translation of Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar books in Chapter 1 and the
Ahlbergs’ The Jolly Postman in Chapter 2 have already drawn attention to
the creative demands that the aesthetic and visual aspects of children’s
literature place on the translator.
As early as 1659 Charles Hoole, translator into English of the influential
German–Latin pictorial encyclopedia Orbis Pictus by Czech educator Johann
Comenius, identified in his translator’s preface a three-way tension between
source language, target language and illustrations. Hoole expresses regret that
‘the book being writ in high-Dutch, doth express many things in reference to
that Countrey and Speech, which cannot without alteration of some Pictures,
as well as words, be expressed in ours’ (Comenius, 1659, tenth page of the
unpaginated preface). Pictures and target-language text have to be brought into
line without the ‘alteration’ of pictures to which Hoole refers – although pictures
are sometimes changed to a greater or lesser degree, as examples in this
chapter will indicate. More than three centuries after Hoole’s comments,
translator Anthea Bell describes images in a similar manner as a third
dimension that comes into play when translating an illustrated or picture
book, making the translator’s ‘tightrope walk’ (Bell, 2006) even more
precarious than usual.
Translators have to engage with a complex orchestration of text and image,
both in illustrated books and in the modern picture book, that requires an
informed understanding of the illustrator’s art, multimediality and semiotics.
Finnish translator Riitta Oittinen (2000), keenly aware of this issue in her role
as a professional children’s author and illustrator, goes so far as to suggest
that translating all forms of illustrated literature requires a specialization in
translation studies combined with art appreciation. Such specialized training
56 Translating the visual
is likely to remain an ideal, but what are the issues that arise during the
translation of an illustrated book that lead Oittinen to make such a
suggestion? Much depends on how the book is conceived, whether as an
illustrated book where text dominates, or as a picture book where the
relationship between text and image creates a satisfying whole.
Translating the illustrated book

To begin with illustrated books and their impact on the child reader, author
Russell Hoban recounts a powerful memory of illustrations:
What the best book illustration always does, is to take the mind to a
special and peculiar place where mystery lives and words can’t go, then
return it to the word place sensitized, responsive, and newly perceptive of
the world.
(Hoban, 1991: 9)
The effect of artwork in children’s books may last a lifetime, and is not
simply a dispensible or decorative accessory to text. Longer prose fiction for
children – novels and collections of stories as well as poetry anthologies –
includes line drawings, decorative vignettes or full-page colour plates. Artists,
editors and authors pay considerable attention to choosing the illustrative
moment in a narrative and to the placement of pictures. One instance of a
carefully planned relationship between text and images, the kind of symbiosis
present in E.H. Shepard’s illustration of Winnie-the-Pooh, is found in Erich
Kästner’s Emil und die Detektive (1929). Walter Trier’s set of line drawings
with captions by Kästner, strategically placed before the novel begins,
introduces key players in the novel as well as several of the Berlin sites
where dramatic scenes occur, thus exciting the anticipation of the young
reader. Two different British versions (Kästner, 1929; Emil and the
Detectives, trans by Goldsmith, 1931; Hall, 1959) lose this visual dramatis
personae, since Trier’s images are scattered throughout the narrative in
translations, sometimes in positions that make little sense. In the translation
of Emil published in the US in 1930, on the other hand, Trier’s arresting
drawings are placed exactly as in the original German edition, as indeed is
the case in a new US translation published in 2014. It may seem that the
translator has little say in such editorial decisions and that May Massee, as
both translator and commissioning editor of the 1930 US version, was in a
privileged position, but the lesson to be learned from the impoverished British
edition is that it is worth campaigning for the optimal placement of
illustrations and the translation of captions. If an editor considers tampering
with existing artwork, as happened with the first Swedish translation of
Emil that was relocated to Stockholm and Trier’s pictures altered
accordingly (Boëthius, 2002: 120), then a translator should certainly protest.
An alternative to altering or repositioning existing artwork is for
the
publisher of a translation to commission an entirely new set of
illustrations.
Translating the visual
57
This has long been
common practice in the case of retranslations of classics or of fairy tales.
Indeed, one of the best-known historical translation howlers arose from one
of the nineteenth-century illustrated English-language versions of selected
tales by the Brothers Grimm. Lucy Crane’s mistranslation of ‘Geisslein’
into English as ‘goslings’ in the tale ‘Der Wolf und die sieben jungen
Geisslein’ (literally: the wolf and the seven young goats) resulted in a
vignette drawn by her brother, the renowned illustrator Walter Crane, of geese
rather than goats, although this was corrected in subsequent editions. Fortun-
ately, such aberrations are rare. Indeed, re-illustration may offer new insights
or alter the tone of a book entirely, so that cooperation between translator and
illustrator can only be beneficial. Sara Fanelli’s collage illustrations to the
English retranslation of Pinocchio (Collodi, 2002; trans by Rose, 2003) offer
a fresh, quirky visual interpretation of the story that perfectly matches Emma
Rose’s modern translation. On the other hand, it is hard to imagine that there
was any contact between artist and translator in the re-illustrated German
version of Astrid Lindgren’s Emil stories. Birgit Stolt (2006) describes how
these tales about a young boy in rural Sweden in the early-twentieth century
changed in two significant ways in German translation. First, Emil was re-
named Michel to avoid confusion with Kästner’s Emil, and second the
bourgeois small-town milieu in illustrations to the German edition entirely
misrepresents Lindgren’s down-to-earth descriptions of rural life.
When a translator is
working on an edition of illustrated stories where images
are as important as written
text, for example a picture book edition of a single fairy tale, the challenge
lies in coordinating text and illustrations. Everything depends on which
scenes the artist has chosen to illustrate and how these moments are
spaced throughout the narrative. If the translation is longer or shorter than
the source text, some manipulation of the relationship between text and
images may be necessary. When translating a German prose version of
Robert Browning’s narrative poem “The Pied Piper” in an edition beauti-
fully illustrated by Annegret Fuchshuber, Anthea Bell found that her preferred
solution – to reintroduce the original English text – simply would not work:
The first thing I did

was to try to do myself out of a job by looking carefully at the
illustrations and layout, to see if there was any chance that the
publishers could possibly print Browning’s poem with them, but there
wasn’t: the arrangement of pictures just didn’t fit.
Bell, 1985a: 7)
The result would have been a very uneven redistribution of Browning’s text
across the book, so Bell had to translate the German prose version of
Browning’s poem in a decision dictated by the illustrations. In a similar
instance, Bell (1985b) relates how she had been ‘providing the text’ (1985b:
140) in English to a Japanese picturebook version of the Grimms’ Snow
a limited number of words across no less than four illustrated double-spreads
covering the queen’s wish for a child white as snow, red as blood and black
as ebony, and the birth of that child. The placement and positioning of text in
relation to pictures may, then, require some thought and juggling on the part
of the translator.
The modern picture book

The picture book as we know it today gradually emerged from a visual tradi-
tion dating back to didactic texts such as the Orbis Pictus by Comenius, to
caption books and visual narratives in the form of broadsheets that were
eagerly viewed by children in many cultures from the sixteenth century
onwards. In the late-nineteenth century, new processes of colour printing
replaced hand- coloured editions and paved the way for the picture book for
the younger child; in the early-twentieth century artists began to integrate
text and pictures to create an artistic whole that was not just an illustrated
version of a pre-existing tale. Thanks largely to the influence of Russian
graphic artists, the modern picture book gradually emerged in the 1920s and
‘30s, with the Babar books of Jean de Brunhoff as seminal examples.
In How Picturebooks Work, Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott attempt to
codify the genre, using the single word ‘picturebook’ to separate it from the
illustrated book, or the book with pictures where the text is predominant
and constitutes a meaningful story without any artwork. A picturebook is the
result of a relationship between text and images such that neither would make
sense in isolation. Text is often, though not always, minimal and limited to a
few lines per page; narrative momentum may be generated through an ironic
commentary of images on text or vice versa. Nikolajeva and Scott’s (2001)
analysis of ‘the dynamics of the picturebook, how the text and image, two
different forms of communication, work together to create a form unlike any
other’ (2001: 2) offers an invaluable introduction to anyone wishing to
undertake a translation of a book of this kind, as indeed does Riitta Oittinen’s
(2000) discussion of the translator’s response to images in Translating for
Children.
The constraints of the contemporary children’s book market may affect
both
the nature and sequence of the translation process in the case of the picture
book. Because of the expensive colour printing involved, modern picture
books are often co-productions between publishing houses in different
countries, with text in the appropriate language inserted at the last stage
of the printing process. As a result, there is some evidence that publishers
have instructed illustrators to avoid obvious visual cultural markers such as
street furniture or police uniforms (O’Sullivan, 2000: 292), a development
that is likely to result in an unwelcome homogeneity in the picture book
market. In books with minimal text, editors have even resorted to the in-
house replacement of the source text with a narrative to accompany each
full-page illustration without recourse to a translator. This practice is
exemplified by the English translation
59
of the Japanese picture
book known in English as Momoko’s Birthday (1973) by Chihiro Iwasaki, the
illustrator of Snow White mentioned above. Tomoko Masaki, then a Japanese
student in a translation class I taught many years ago, informed me that what
appeared to be a joyous account of a birthday party was in fact a tragic little
tale. The heroine of the source text (Momoko in the English version)
accidentally blows out the candles on her friend’s birthday cake and runs
away from the party in great distress, a mood reflected in the pale, washed-
out colours of the relevant illustrations. In the text of the English version,
however, it is the birthday child who happily blows out the candles during
the party as the reader might expect, so that nothing untoward has
occurred. An anonymous ‘translation’ has completely misrepresented the
content of the book so that there is a mismatch between the upbeat text and
the melancholy tone of Iwasaki’s illustrations.1
Further examples of both
successful and unsuccessful practice highlight the
finesse required to translate
visual texts. Desmet’s discussion of intertextuality and intervisuality as cited
in Chapter 2, for example, offers a positive example of a Dutch translator’s
solutions to visual references to English nursery tales and rhymes. On the
other hand, O’Sullivan (2000) reveals what can happen to the integrity of a
picture book when a translator is not sensitive to the relationship between
text and image. A grandfather’s empty chair on the final, deliberately textless,
double spread of John Burningham’s Granpa (1984), an elliptical dialogue
between a grandfather and granddaughter, may or may not signify that
Granpa has died. The addition of text in the form of a sentimental reflection
on death in the first German translation of the book limits that ambiguity,
and curtails the openness of an image that invites a range of potential responses
from the child reader.
The opportunity for a
young reader to make his or her own interpretation
of the spaces between text
and illustrations in a book such as Granpa, or in some instances to
appreciate the ironic counterpoint between the two, is essential to
children’s developing appreciation of literature. Children learn invaluable
reading lessons from picture books that are not just about improving basic
literacy, but also teach young readers to participate in the creation of
meaning. Irony is inherent in a book where illustrations indicate narrative
developments that the text does not, or dramatic irony when the reader,
through close observation of the images in a picture book, knows more than
the protagonist of the story. Adding text to explain these strategies does a
disservice to the book and to the child reader. It is therefore essential that a
translator should reproduce the counterpoint between text and pictures that
allows children to fill these gaps and to understand the interplay between the
visual and the verbal.
An example where the
translator has successfully resisted the urge to add
extraneous information is
Joseph K), is waiting for his father to bring home his mother and new baby
sister. Before leaving to fetch them, Joseph’s father says a few momentous
words to his son:
he’d said that things were going to change

(Browne: 1990: 6)
which Baumann translates straightforwardly as:
hatte er gesagt, dass jetzt alles anders werde

[he had said that now everything would be different]
(Browne, 1990; Alles wird anders,
trans by Baumann, 1990: 6)
Neither Browne nor Baumann makes any reference to the fact that Browne’s
images have already begun to change in a surreal manner: on the very first
page the kettle sprouts a cat’s tail, ears and paws. After Joseph’s father leaves,
the only text is Joseph’s question on the left-hand side of the double spread
‘Was this what he had meant?’ (Browne, 1990: 8) as the sofa slowly turns
into a faintly drawn crocodile beneath him. On the textless right-hand page
of the spread the armchair grows hands, a crocodile’s tail is visible, and the
cat stalks by with a snake’s head. Replicating Browne’s text, Baumann’s ‘War
es das, was er gemeint hatte?’ ignores the extraordinary occurrences in
Browne’s hyper-realistic, enthralling and disturbing pictures. Baumann has
allowed the images to speak for themselves, just as Browne does in the
source text, so that they resonate as signs of Joseph’s anxiety about the new
addition to the family. Thus Browne creates, and Baumann maintains, a
thought- provoking puzzle for young viewers without any adult
interpretation. Unlike the translator of Granpa, Baumann demonstrates
respect for the subtlety of a dialogue between text and pictures.
Strategies for translating visual texts

• In an illustrated book, examine the role and placement of illustrations in
the source text and make suggestions to potential editors concerning the
replication of that relationship in the translated version.
• When working for a publisher who has commissioned a new set of illus-
trations, discuss at the start of the project the possibility of collaboration
with the illustrator.
• Before translating a picture book for the first time, read prize-winning
examples of the genre in languages to which you have access and, if
possible, share them with children.
• When translating a modern picture book, take into account the harmony
or counterpoint between text and image on each double spread of the
source text.
61
• Take care not to add text to a page where the author and/or illustrator
deemed it to be unnecessary, and avoid the temptation to insert text to
explain what is happening in the pictures.
Translating the comic strip and the picture book

The modern picture book with its minimal text, high-quality artwork and high
expectations of the young viewer and reader has developed alongside popular
visual narratives such as the comic strip and graphic novel. Indeed, the
unfolding visual narrative in all its guises, from Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struw-
welpeter to Japanese manga, has played a significant role in the development
of a visual literacy in young readers that is essential in the twenty-first-century
era of film, TV, computer icons, apps and video games. Interpreting images
as well as text, learning conventional and innovative symbols for expressing
movement, mood and salience are all promoted by the picture book and the
comic strip, so that translation strategies are common to both genres.
The term ‘comic strip’ indicates the humorous origins of the genre in
newspaper cartoons. Anthea Bell’s instructive list of the principles she and
Derek Hockridge adopted when working on English versions of the Asterix
albums of Albert Uderzo and René Goscinny therefore emphasizes the
translation of jokes as well as the interaction of dialogue and drawings:
a. The idea is to render, as faithfully as possible, the feel of the original.

b. With humour of this intensely verbal nature, the translation must
follow the spirit rather than the letter of the original; we must
therefore often find jokes which are different, though we hope along
the same lines as the French jokes.
c. They must, of course, suit Albert Uderzo’s wittily detailed drawings,
in particular they must fit the expressions on the speakers’ faces.
d. From the purely technical point of view, they must be about the same
length as the original wording, or we shall create difficulties for the
letterer trying to get the English text into the speech bubbles.
e. Very important: we will try for the same kind of mixture of jokes as
in the French . . . there is simple knockabout humour, both verbal and
visual, which goes down well with quite young children; there are
puns and passages of wordplay for older children; and there is some
distinctly sophisticated humour . . . for the adult or near-adult.
f. We will also have the same number of jokes as in the French. If we
just can’t get one in at the same point as in the original, we’ll make
up for it somewhere else.
(Bell, 1980: 132)
Visual narratives are not always so light-hearted. Whereas for younger

children comic books may well depend to a great degree on wordplay and
slapstick humour conveyed both verbally and visually, the market in graphic
novels for young adults sometimes addresses rather more serious or darker
themes. The graphic novels Persepolis (2000) and its sequels by Marjane
Satrapi, for example, depict the struggle for independence of a young girl who
leaves her homeland of Iran and have been translated from French into a number
of languages.
Whatever the subject matter, the specific constraints of translating the
comic-strip format are well documented in Klaus Kaindl’s article ‘Thump,
Whizz, Poom: A framework for the study of comics under translation’
(1999a), or the collection of papers edited by Federico Zanettin in Comics in
Translation (2008). Challenges listed in these works include the necessity,
prior to recent technological advances, of fitting translated text into the
space available in speech bubbles; the exclusivity or predominance of
dialogue in the written text and the frequent use of onomatopoeia in action
sequences. In common with the picture book, comic strips require
translators to match text and image, requiring some adjustment in the target
language. Finally, in some comic strips, including the Tintin and Asterix
series or picture books such as Jean de Brunhoff’s Histoire de Babar, there
is an additional editorial challenge in the recreation of a hand-lettered look
to the text. In an attempt to present a ‘translation relevant anatomy of
comics’, Kaindl (1999a) groups these aspects into the three basic elements
of the comic strip, namely the linguistic, the pictorial and the typographic.
Selected aspects of all three categories will be discussed in relation to comic
strips, graphic novels and the picture book.
Linguistic elements: dialogue

In the comic strip, extradiegetic narration from outside the story may be
minimal; in the Belgian-French Tintin albums by Hergé, for example, an
occasional phrase such as ‘Quelques instants plus tard . . .’ or ‘Et peu après
. . .’ (Hergé, 1960: 7) enclosed in a pale yellow panel and distinguished from
speech bubbles by a different script, indicates the passage of time, but this is
the full extent of a narrator’s intervention. On the other hand, Marjane Satrapi
includes a good deal of first person narrative at the top of each frame at the
beginning of her graphic novels in order to set the political scene in her
Persepolis books. Nevertheless, here too dialogue is the primary linguistic and
narrative mode. Verbal exchanges between characters contained in speech
bubbles are essential to the unfolding visual narrative in the comic strip.
Characters are created through dialogue as well as pictorially, so that repeated
expressions, exclamations or preoccupations become a code, or idiolect, that
defines them as individuals. Moreover, given that spoken language will vary
according to setting and may well include dialect and a range of social
registers, a high degree of verbal dexterity and familiarity with relevant
registers is required of translators. This issue will be discussed in further
detail in the next chapter, with examples from comic-strip albums, picture
books and prose texts, but a brief mention of the Tintin albums indicates the
concern of translators that urban dialect will be difficult for young readers to
follow.
Translating the visual 63
In an interview conducted by Chris Owens with British translators of Hergé’s
Tintin albums into English, Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper and Michael Turner,
Lonsdale-Cooper comments on the necessity to remove dialect markers in view
of the age-range of their audience: ‘because linguistically for a children’s book,
you can’t just translate – the jokes are untranslatable, some of the text was in
Brussels patois and had to be turned into appropriate English’.2
Owens’ interview with Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner also throws light on
the translation of dialogue in speech bubbles:
The system was that I translated the books and wrote my

translation longhand in pencil, and sent it to Michael Turner. I counted to
make sure every box was the correct length before it went to him, and
if he had suggestions to make, he scribbled them on the manuscript.
Then we sat down together and read it back to front, and back to front
to each other but the names, or the swearwords, or whatever, we just
invented as they came along.
(Owens,
2004)
Turner goes
on to make the
aural
component of
the process
absolutely
clear:
We felt working together on this, the best thing was to read it aloud,
and I think that was one of our most sensible decisions. We would go
through the text and repeat it out loud, and it was then that quite a
number of the names were coined, as well as things like Haddock’s foul
language. I think it was a more important step than we realized [at the
time], but it certainly made a difference and we’ve followed that ever
since – the aural approach as being very important.
(Owens,
2004)
Such comments indicate the nature of the comic strip as a performative art
comparable to that of picture books for the very young (see comments on the
translation of Babar in Chapter 1), as well as the aural creativity inherent in
the translation process. A comic strip is a drama with multiple characters whose
voices must be easily distinguished, so that the dialogue of each protagonist
has to ring true to type. The most effective way to test the reliability of
translated speech is to ‘act out’ passages of dialogue by reading them aloud,
a strategy that is not uncommon among those who translate books to be
read aloud to children. Personal experience has shown that children who
cannot yet read alone will demand to have a Tintin volume read to them and,
although reading long stretches aloud is taxing, there can be little doubt
that the translators’ attention to ‘read aloud’ qualities assists the performer.
Zanettin puts it, ‘Words, on the other hand, do not only have a purely
“verbal” meaning but are also embodied with a visual, almost physical
force’ (2008: 13). The shape, impact, design and placement of letters
designating sound in a comic-strip panel are a visual element quite
separate from the dialogue in speech bubbles or any extradiegetic
narration. A translator has to decide whether to retain such expressive
utterances and sound effects in the source language, or to use equivalent
expressions of pain, anger or joy in the target language.
Kaindl’s research suggests that of the linguistic elements in a comic book,
it is onomatopoeia and inscriptions within the artwork that are the most likely
to be retained from the source text (1999a: 275), although practice differs across
the genre and across languages. On the one hand a survey of German
publishers of comics indicated that onomatopoeia was almost always retained
in comics of the superhero, horror story or adventure type, but was likely to
be replaced in funny comics (Kaindl: 275), and on the other Jehan Zitawi’s
study of the translation of one hundred and eight Disney stories into Arabic
published in Egypt, Kuwait and Dubai revealed ‘almost no cases of retaining
onomatopoeia in its original form’ (2008: 142). Zitawi found, for example,
that when Donald Duck, disguised as a woman, trips over in his high heels,
the sound of his fall is represented as ‘TAAKH!’ rather than the ‘TUNK!’ of
the source text. Zitawi speculates that such an alteration is attributable to the
dominant sounds in different languages, since ‘even similar transliterated
consonants will have different sounds’ and that ‘perhaps for an Arab child
still developing his/her ability in Arabic “TAAKH!” would more easily reflect
the sounds that s/he is learning’ (2008: 141). In the Tintin albums, Turner and
Lonsdale-Cooper either leave instances of onomatopoeia unchanged, or adopt
customary English equivalents. In Tintin in Tibet, for example, the French
‘Boum’ simply changes to ‘Boom’ and ‘CRAC’ to ‘CRACK’ (1962: 43),
whereas pebbles hit water with a ‘SPLASH’ to replace the French ‘PLOUF’
(1962: 17). Translators working on onomatopoeia in comic-strip narratives or
picture books need to familiarize themselves with standard expressions in
both source and target languages before making strategic decisions on
whether, or how, to translate such a vivid use of language.
Pictorial elements: inscriptions within images

Inscriptions within images are found in both picture books and comic
strips
– as already indicated in the example of changes to the postmark on letters
in the Ahlbergs’ The Jolly Postman (see Chapter 2), where a translation of
a postmark allowed the translator to add wordplay. Where picture books are
the result of a co-production, with translated text added to a pre-existing set
of illustrated pages, it may be impossible to change lettering that forms a
part of specific images. To appropriate a picture book wholesale into the
target culture by altering inscriptions would in any case be to deny child
readers the sense of difference that is one of the joys of reading
translations. Titles of shops and other environmental print act as reminders
that a translated text is
set in its country of origin. Anthony Browne’s picture book Voices in the Park
(1998), for example, is
recognizably set in Regent’s Park and the zoo in London, so it is rather
incongruous in the German version (Stimmen im Park, 1998, translated by
Peter Baumann) to see that a Santa Claus figure sitting in the street in one
full-page picture holds a placard that reads ‘MUSS FRAU UND
MILLIONEN VON KINDERN UNTERSTüTZEN’ (English source text:
‘WIFE AND MILLIONS OF KIDS TO SUPPORT’). Someone begging on a
London street is hardly likely to seek donations in German, so the translation
into German jars with the setting. Translation of the placard text is not
essential to an understanding of the narrative and could be left in English.
Zitawi notes a range of practice in relation to language or numbers in the
artwork in translations of Disney comic strips into Arabic. The Beagle Boys,
a family of organized criminals, retain English prison numbers on their shirts
in one Arabic version, although numbers in Arabic are drawn on top of the
English ones so that it is difficult to read either; in a second version the
numbers are deleted, and in a third they are retained but re-ordered – which
makes it hard to identify particular Beagles (Zitawi, 2008: 148). Such variety
highlights the role of pictorial digits or inscriptions within a story, and the
need for a solution that supports narrative development. However, in cases
where images of posters or banners, the content of letters or newspaper
articles convey vital information, text does have to be translated. Hergé’s
L’Ile Noire presented its British translators with a particular conundrum, that
of a Tintin album set in England and Scotland, but which was written in
French. As befits the British context, inscriptions within panels or on buildings
in the original French version are consistently written in English, as in ‘Fire
Station’, ‘Halchester Flying Club’ and pub signs, so translators Lonsdale-
Turner and Cooper could simply leave them untouched in the translation into
English. However, a panel in the source depicting the front page of ‘The Daily
Reporter. Glasgow Edition’ text includes a story that is written, anomalously,
entirely in French, since French readers need to know the content. Here the
translators had to perform a fictional back translation to recreate the
newspaper article in English.
Typographic elements: hand-lettering and cursive script

A feature of picture books for the younger child is the use of cursive or
hand- lettered script, usually that taught in schools in the country of origin,
as part of the overall artistic effect. The Babar series (1931) is instantly
recognizable from its apparently handwritten French text, which is
reproduced exactly in the English version (Jones, first issued in 1934),
though not in the American edition of 1933 that uses a regular typeface
(Haas, 1933). Although the American translator retained the present
tense of the French text (see Chapter 1), she was perhaps unable to
persuade the publisher to replicate the handwritten effect. Fortunately,
some editors are willing to devote time and money to the production of a
picture book that matches the aesthetic and production values of the source
text. In the English version of Tove Jansson’s picture book Hur gick det sen?
(1952), translated from Swedish as The Book
about Moomin, Mymble and Little My (2001), the handwritten effect is
replicated with non-cursive calligraphy credited to Peter Blegvad. In an edition
that includes cutout holes affording glimpses of future action, translator,
calligrapher and editor have all contributed to the book as artefact that does
credit to Jansson’s idiosyncratic imagination.
In the comic-strip album, hand-lettering or the choice of a font with
unusual
features lends a vitality and individuality to characters’ spoken language. In
a comment that draws attention to a possible reason for the replacement of
handwritten text with type in the American Babar of the 1930s, Kaindl
suggests that the informality of hand-lettering was suspect in German
publishing houses of the mid-1950s:
the text in nearly all translated comics was written in typescript rather
than handlettering, in order to make comics look more like a printed book,
which as a medium of publication enjoyed much greater social
acceptance than the small, flimsy comics.
(Kaindl, 1999a: 272)
Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner, translators of Tintin into English, also cite

the wariness of educators and others towards comics in the mid-twentieth
century; this is an instance of the didactic and social constraints that have at
times affected popular literature and reading material enjoyed by the young.
Nevertheless, editors of both picture books and comic-strip albums have
recognized the essential role of calligraphers and hand-letterers. Turner and
Lonsdale-Cooper worked closely with a dedicated and patient cartographer,
Neil Hyslop, who was responsible for hand-lettering a text for their translation
of the Tintin albums that differs from the right-slanting French version and
resembles a non-cursive handwritten with an italic pen; for the brief narrative
captions the same cursive copperplate hand is used as in the French editions.
Lonsdale-Cooper remembers trying out various styles of lettering at first to
see which style might be suitable and would appeal to librarians and teachers:
once again the spectre of disapproving adults looms large. Each batch of
lettering had to be checked ‘on a sort of cellophane’ over plates with blank
boxes sent from Belgium. Too much or too little text required adjustments by
the translators. Thus ‘Milou’ in the original French became ‘Snowy’, a
compromise dictated, so Lonsdale-Cooper explained to Harry Thompson
(1991: 32), by the need to find a five-letter name that would fit the speech
bubbles where Tintin addressed his dog.
Thanks to technological advances, it is now possible to manipulate text
and
change fonts quickly. Zanettin summarizes these fundamental
developments in the process for translating comic books as follows:
Traditionally, the translator would provide the publisher with a

printed translation of the verbal content, which would then be
reviewed by an internal editor and handed to the letterer. After having
scratched away the
original text from the
balloons in the films with a razor blade, the letterer would write the
translation by hand in the empty balloons before the films went to the
printing press. Today the translation is received as a text file, and
lettering is usually done with the help of a graphics programme, by
erasing the original text and importing the translated dialogues in the area
of the balloons on the graphic file. If need be, the original handwritten
characters can be scanned and reused as fonts in a translated comic book,
and dialogues can be ‘shrunk’ to fit into balloons.
Zanettin, 2008: 21)
It is, in the end, the task of the translator, editor and publisher to work
together, using all the available technology to reproduce the harmony between
pictures and the visual appearance of text that is a hallmark of the comic
strip, the graphic novel and the modern picture book.
Transformation of the book as artefact

Finally, a few words on the book as artefact and the translator’s role in
its recreation for the target audience. When working on the translation of
picture books and visual narratives of all kinds, the translator is part of a
production team where the materiality of the book itself is of prime
importance. The role and power of the translator in this web of commercial
and artistic transactions will vary enormously. Composing translated text
to be added to a mass- manufactured co-production, for example, is a very
different scenario from being centrally involved in the recreation of the
work of a revered author in a gift-book edition. Wherever possible,
translators should be a party to discussion on the appearance and
construction of a book, so that the final product is either as close as
possible to the conception of the author and artist of the source text, or
represents a coherent and creative reinterpretation. It is important to
remember that artwork may be compromised by material alterations to the
book, as in the case of Quentin Blake’s counting book Cockatoos (1994).
The Italian edition was reprinted in a smaller size, thus cropping the
illustrations by about a fifth. Cropping resulted in the disappearance of a
cockatoo on one page, yet the number of cockatoos on each page has to
match the number in the text to maintain the counting sequence in the book.
So the cockatoo was repositioned, and appears to have flown from one
branch to another between the English and Italian editions. Matching text to
illustrations presents some unexpected challenges.
Book design and printing are an integral part of the transfer of a
picture
book or indeed an illustrated book from one culture and language to
another. The fact that languages are read in different directions, for example,
may have striking implications for the translator. Since Arabic is read from
left to right, Zitawi describes how each panel in Disney comic-strip stories
originating in Kuwait and Dubai was printed in reverse, so that right-
handed characters became left-handed, a reversal that affects the
practices in relation to the use of the right or left hand. However, the
Egyptian publisher in Zitawi’s sample used a different, older technique to re-
order panels, so characters’ positions were not altered (Zitawi, 2008). This
phenomenon is also apparent in comics translated into Japanese, as
discussed by Kaindl in an article entitled ‘Warum sind alle Japaner
Linkshänder?’ (Why are all Japanese people left-handed? 1999b).
Translators working on visual material with text in languages with different
scripts should certainly be aware of such complications.
In terms of book design, Jean de Brunhoff conceived his Babar books as
large handwritten albums, just as Beatrix Potter created her tiny books for small
hands; each format has its place in a child’s experience of the book; both have
been reproduced in smaller and larger editions respectively in translation as
well as in their countries of origin. Editorial transformations to the size,
format, covers or endpapers of translated novels or picture books are part of
a marketing strategy designed to ease their passage into the target culture, but
translators need to be aware of the picture book as a crafted artefact, and
ready to defend its integrity when necessary.
Further strategies for translating the picture book and

the comic strip
• When translating dialogue in a comic strip, read aloud selected exchanges

between characters (or, better still, persuade others to read the text of
specific characters with you) to test whether the dialogue sounds
authentic and in keeping with the persona of the speaker.
• Read a number of comic albums in the language into which you are
translating so that you become familiar with standard forms of
onomatopoeia.
• Inscriptions within images are representative of the setting of the
narrative and should therefore be retained in the source language,
but where essential information is conveyed, a translation may be
necessary.
• Where the source text includes a hand-lettered or handwritten effect,
persuade editors of the need to choose an appropriate font for text that
has the appearance of hand-lettering.
• Wherever possible, participate in editorial discussion as to the final
appearance and marketing of the translated book.
Discussion points
• What role do you consider the translator should ideally play in the
production of translated picture book – as straightforward provider of text
or contributor to an editorial team?
• What is your opinion of Riitta Oittinen’s call for specialized training for
translators of visual texts?
Exercises
• After carefully observing the interaction between pictures and written text,
translate a picture book into your working language. Keep a record of the
challenges you encounter for discussion with fellow students or
translators.
• Read a comic strip or graphic novel for a child or young adult audience
and translate one selected double spread. If possible, photocopy the double
spread and work within the space of speech bubbles (by cutting similar
shapes in blank paper) or attempt to replicate hand-lettering if
appropriate. Again, keep a record of challenges and strategies.
Notes
1 I am grateful to Emer O’Sullivan for researching the details of this telling
incident; for a full account see O’Sullivan’s keynote lecture at the 2012 IBBY
Congress on YouTube, www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zTH5dagKUg [accessed 30
June 2015].
2 10 July 2004, published on the ‘Tintinologist’ website www.tintinologist.org/
articles/mt-llc-interview.html [accessed 13 February 2013].
Further reading
Kaindl, Klaus (1999a) ‘Thump, Whizz, Poom: A framework for the study of comics
under translation’. Target, 11(2): 263–88.
Nikolajeva, Maria and Scott, Carole, eds. (2001) How Picturebooks Work, New York
and London: Garland.
Oittinen, Riitta (2003) ‘Where the wild things are: Translating picture books’. Meta
Translators’ Journal, 48(1–2): 128–41.
O’Sullivan, Emer (2006) ‘Translating Pictures’. In The Translation of Children’s
Literature: A reader, edited by G. Lathey, Clevedon: Multilingual Matters: 113–21.
Zanettin, Federico, ed. (2008) Comics in Translation, Manchester: St. Jerome Press.
4Translating dialogue and
dialect
Dialogue is central to the development of character and plot in modern

children’s fiction. Spoken exchanges drive narrative momentum, but they also
offer respite from lengthy descriptive or explanatory passages that may seem
daunting to younger readers. Authors represent children talking to themselves,
to their peers or to adults, and in doing so encompass a range of voices, from
the humorous inaccuracies and misunderstandings of a very young child to
the ephemerally fashionable cult language of the teenager. Capturing the
toddler’s lisping cadences presents one kind of challenge, but the nuances of
young people’s usage of urban or regional dialect and rapidly changing
contemporary slang are notoriously difficult to translate, originating as they
do in the desire of its speakers to create socially exclusive bonds. Fictional
child characters may also be migrant children, with the accents of their
heritage languages and the linguistic innovation of second language learners.
A translator working on spoken language in children’s books therefore needs
to become acquainted with small children’s speech patterns and to listen to
the exchanges of their elder siblings on city streets in order to create a
convincing young people’s vernacular that will not date too quickly.
Cathy Hirano, translator of Japanese fiction for young people into English,
argues that translating conversation often requires ‘more ingenuity than
descriptive passages’ (2006: 230), citing degrees of politeness and familiarity
in Japanese as specific challenges in conveying the intricacies of register and
civility. Hirano already has a distinct advantage over some translators, since
she spends time every day talking with her own children (who speak both
English and Japanese) and their friends. Not every translator is able to gain
such an immediate and regularly updated understanding of speech patterns
and current cult phrases, but Hirano does not depend on this strategy alone.
When translating Kazumi Yumoto’s The Friends (1996), she became aware
that the banter of children that Yumoto captures so adeptly would sound strange
in English. Hirano cites a passage where one of the boy protagonists finally
succeeds in persuading his friends to spy on the old man whose progress
towards death they have decided to follow. First, she presents a direct trans-
lation, commenting that it does not convey any of the humour of the
exchange:
72 Translating dialogue and dialect
いい ft ど」
「…って？」山下がおずおずきいた。
「つまりさ」ぼくは山下の食い入るような目を避 ft た。「本人には絶
対迷惑をか ft ないってことで…
」
「えーっ！」
「やたーっ！二対一！」河辺が躍り上がった。
‘All right.’
‘ . . . say?’ Yamashita is nervous.
‘To be more precise,’ I avoid Yamashita’s accusing eyes. ‘It must not
cause trouble for the old man.’
‘Ehh?’
‘Did it! Two against one!’ Kawabe dances a little jig.
This is the final, published version of the same passage as translated by

Hirano:
‘All right’ I say.

‘All right what?’ Yamashita asks nervously.
I avoid Yamashita’s accusing eyes. ‘But only on condition that it
doesn’t bother the old man.’
‘No!’ Yamashita explodes.
‘Yes! Two against one!’ Kawabe shouts gleefully, and he dances a
little jig.
(Hirano, The Friends, 2006:
230)
It may seem that there is not a huge difference between these two passages
or, indeed, that the second could have been made even more colloquial, for
example by replacing ‘on condition that’ with ‘if’. However, ‘All right what?’
is convincing as the riposte of a teenage boy and the exclamation ‘Yes!’ in
the final line is certainly an improvement on ‘Did it!’ Deletion of the rather
formal ‘To be precise’ maintains the casual tone of the conversation. Since
her version of Yumoto’s novel was to be published in the US, Hirano adopted
the strategy of reading American children’s books and watching American
movies as she translated. This is a practice to be recommended, as indeed is
Hirano’s strategy of closing her eyes, visualizing American children and
imagining what they would say in such a situation. An alternative is to
consult electronic corpora of spoken English (see summary of strategies
below) and similar corpora in other languages.
Translating spoken language: linguistic constraints

Before taking a closer look at social register and regional variation in
spoken language in children’s books, a few instances related to specific
languages (Arabic, Hebrew and Japanese) and to forms of address used in
dialogue
Translating dialogue and dialect
73
between children and adults across a
number of languages will indicate the range of strategies that a translator
may have to consider.
There is a clear distinction
between Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as
taught in schools and colloquial
Arabic, which is regarded as low status and is not usually represented in
MSA. Although colloquial Arabic (in Egypt in particular) is increasingly
used in fiction, specifically for dialogue, it rarely filters into children’s
literature, and even the dubbing of dialogue in films tends to be in fusha
(standard Arabic). One issue is the regionality of non-standard Arabic.
Translator and children’s author Fatima Sharafeddine wanted to translate
texts from English into colloquial Lebanese, but publishers insisted on MSA
in order to ensure distribution across the Arab world. Eventually
Sharafeddine found a hybrid compromise: as an example, ‘scooter’ becomes
‘‫د‬
‫ج‬
‫( ’ةري‬a small bicycle).1 Dünges (2011) cites a further example where
Lebanese author Idrïs experimented with dialect at word level (2011: 178–9),
but was accused by some teachers and parents of ruining classical Arabic.
Translators into Arabic, therefore, have to negotiate the accessibility of the
vernacular in different Arab countries in relation to children’s reading matter
specifically, and to consider ways in which children’s own language could be
represented.
The emergence of what Anissa Daoudi (2011) has called ‘e-Arabic’, a form
of the language familiar to the younger generations of internet users, also has
implications for the translation of young adult fiction from Arabic. A mixture
of ‘numbers, characters from the Latin alphabet, Arabic script characters,
emoticons, and words from other languages (e.g. English or French)’ as well
as colloquial Arabic (Daoudi, 2011: 191), e-Arabic is present in the young
adult novel Banat Al Riyadh (2005) by Rajaa Al Sanea. According to Daoudi,
the English translation of this novel by Marilyn Booth (Girls of Riyadh, 2007)
is aimed at older readers than the Arabic source text ‘to convince the Western
world and Western readers of the existence of a new “young” Saudi Arabian
identity’. Both the content and style of Banat Al Riyadh have proved to be
controversial; by using e-Arabic Al Sanea has thrown down the gauntlet,
challenging the status of formal standard Arabic on behalf of the younger
generation in Arabic-speaking countries (Daoudi, 192). A translator in Booth’s
position, translating from Arabic, therefore has to make a number of decisions
concerning the likely audience of the target text and how to replicate the
political, cultural and social implications of e-Arabic.
Hebrew is bound by different pedagogical and political constraints
in
relation to social register, but also has a history of opposition to
the representation of the vernacular in texts for children. Miryam Du-Nour
(1995) describes the representation of colloquial language as one of the most
difficult issues in the history of translations for the young into modern
Hebrew. Children’s books have been regarded as a medium for teaching
children to read and to appreciate literary style as part of the process of revival
of an ancient language. Drawing in part on his own experience as a translator
constraints imposed on the translator by editors, proofreaders and vocalization
experts when rendering the dialogue of Lindgren’s narratives in Hebrew.
Vocalization, Even-Zohar argues, is the most archaic feature of the written
standard language ‘yet it cannot be avoided in texts for children, who are
meant to use the signs as reading aids’ (1992: 243). Even-Zohar does, however,
predict a gradual infiltration of the vernacular into children’s literature in the
interests of realism. Shavit demonstrates this gradual development towards
the use of spoken modern Hebrew rather than high-status, literary Hebrew in
successive translations of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer (Shavit, 2012: 24).
In a comparable instance of the pedagogical role of language and literature
in Japanese, the formal, serious qualities of the ‘written style’ of Japanese,
which children start to learn when they are eight or nine years old, include
vocabulary and expressions unlikely to be used in ordinary conversation. In
the past, translators of English texts into Japanese therefore omitted
vernacular expressions. Noriko Shimoda Netley (1992) found an instance of
this kind of sanitization in a Japanese translation of Roald Dahl’s Matilda,
where Dahl’s scurrilous expressions and the verbal abuse uttered by various
characters are toned down, thus losing the comical, irreverent perspective of
the novel. Netley comments that ‘insulting words sometimes sound too strong
in Japanese’ (1992: 199) and identifies a considerable difference between the
‘colloquial and casual’ style of Dahl’s written English – both narrative and
dialogue – and the formal style of the Japanese version (1992: 197).
A second aspect of the Japanese language that is highly relevant to the
representation of dialogue is the wide range of forms of interpersonal address
and their role in the politeness maxims of Japanese culture. Cathy Hirano
entitled her article on the translation of Yumoto’s novel The Friends, “Eight
ways to say You: The challenges of translation”, citing a number of different
forms of the second person pronoun in Japanese. First there is a form used
only by male speakers, then a polite form for someone of higher status, a
familiar form for someone of lower status and so on. She gives her readers
a telling instance of the significance of the type of personal pronoun used in
a conversational exchange. In Hirano’s translation of a second novel by
Yumoto, The Spring Tone, thirteen-year-old Tomomi is petting a stray cat when
a rather fastidious boy from her school, Kinko, passes by. Kinko tells her that
he blames the proliferation of stray cats on those who feed them, while
Tomomi argues angrily that people who abandon their cats are at fault. Hirano
gives a literal translation of an exchange between the two and the internal
riposte by Tomomi that follows:
‘Was that your brother?’

‘Yeah, so what?’ He said ‘your’. Why is he putting on airs, that jerk?
This makes no sense in English, but the boy has used 君 (kimi) for
‘your’. Hirano comments that when used by a child to other children this
seems rather
75
affected, so Tomomi is angry at
Kinko’s elevated tone. Hirano recreates this social nuance by adding a
formal phrase as follows:
‘That was your brother, I

presume?’
‘Yeah, so what?’ You presume
indeed. You jerk.
Hirano, 2006: 229–30)
The archaic ‘I presume’ has the same effect as the use of a pronoun
normally used by adults – for example teachers – to address children.
Different forms of the second person pronoun and their usage in
conversation with or between children also affect translation between European
languages. Although a more casual attitude to modes of address has
developed over time, a respectful use of the polite form of ‘you’ between
unacquainted adults or by children to adults who are not part of their family
is still evident in a number of languages, for example in addressing teachers
and people in positions of authority. Nancy Jentsch (2006) has noted
differences in this respect in the translation of the first books of J.K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter series into German, French and Spanish. In the
Spanish version, Harry’s friendship with Hagrid is soon marked by the use
of ‘tú’ after an initial use of the more formal ‘usted’, with Ron and Hermione
following suit; in the German books, all four characters use the informal ‘du’
with each other from the start. In the French version, Hagrid addresses the
children informally as ‘tu’, while they maintain a respectful ‘vous’ when
speaking to him. Jentsch comments that the Spanish and German versions
convey the special quality of this relationship between an adult and three
children by the early use of ‘tú’ and ‘du’, whereas the formal address used by
the children in the French translation detracts from it. Degrees of politeness as
expressed in forms of address between characters, and particularly between
child and adult characters, are instances where translators have to take
account of cultural habits and to develop consistent and carefully considered
strategies.
Translating slang and ‘street talk’

Translating slang, the vernacular and dialect has long been a challenge
for translators of fiction, poetry and drama for all ages, but one factor
that translators for adults are less likely to encounter is editorial pressure to
censor and standardize spoken language. This has already become
apparent in examples outlined above; parents, teachers and librarians may
be concerned that children should read only dialogue or prose of high
stylistic quality that does not include slang, dialect or indeed scurrilous
language. Patricia Crampton wryly relates having to downgrade (at her
publisher’s insistence) a reference to a ‘morronfjärt’ (morning fart) in a
triumphant exclamation by Ronia’s father, to a ‘belch’ in her English
dialogue in the target language therefore requires a great sensitivity to social
register as well as an awareness of attitudes towards the acceptability of the
vernacular in children’s fiction in the target culture.
By surveying studies of teenage speech in English, Dutch and German, Jan
van Coillie identified some typical linguistic markers that apply to most
languages and indeed to fiction for all children and young people:
Intensifying language
Insults and swear words (as
vocatives) Neologisms and playful
language Informal language, slang
Special greetings
Words from foreign languages
Clip words (abbreviated nouns or adjectives, footie for football,
OK etc.)
(van Coillie, 2012:
219)
All of these features should be borne in mind by the translator and are
addressed in this chapter or elsewhere (neologisms and playful language, for
example, are discussed in Chapter 5). The following examples, both historical
and contemporary, illustrate cultural and pedagogical influences on the
translation of language variety, and a range of strategies adopted by translators.
A significant historical instance of a change of social register in the
representation of spoken language is found in the British translation of a
German modern children’s classic, Erich Kästner’s Emil and the Detectives
of 1931. This shift reflects both anxieties about the contaminating influence
of the vernacular and the phenomenon of affiliation to models in the target
culture noted by Zohar Shavit in her Poetics of Children’s Literature (1986).
Published just ten years after the condemnation by the Newbolt Report on the
teaching of English in primary schools in 1921 of ‘the powerful influences of
evil habits of speech contracted in home and street’ (HMSO Newbolt Report
on The Teaching of English in England, 1921: 59), translator Margaret
Goldsmith’s version of Emil transforms Kästner’s stylized Berlin street slang
into the dialogue of the English boarding-school story that was popular in the
UK at the time. Both Emer O’Sullivan (2000) and Gerda Faerber (1999) have
analyzed critically the English vocabulary and phrases that belie the lower
middle class milieu Kästner created. A brief example will suffice to illustrate
this shift in British versions and the American translations that remain closer
to the register Kästner used. When Emil persuades Gustav, a member of a
Berlin street gang, to help him to capture the thief who stole his money, the
new ally is delighted:
Translating dialogue and dialect 77
‘Also, ich finde die Sache mit dem
Dieb knorke. Ganz Grosse Klasse, Ehrenwort! Und, Mensch, wenn du
nischt dagegen hast, helfe ich dir’
Kästner, 1929: 78)
[‘Well I think the thing with the thief

is fantastic. Just great – I mean it! And, man, if you’ve got nothing
against it, I’ll help you’]
literal translation)
‘Well, I think this thief affair is going

to be tophole. First-rate. And, I say, if you don’t mind, I think I’ll help
you’
trans by Goldsmith, 1931: 95)
Obsolete slang such as ‘knorke’ is transposed into the upper middle class
register in the use of ‘tophole’ and ‘first-rate’ and ‘I say’. A new translation
by Eileen Hall in 1959 did little to alter the inappropriate register of the
children’s exchanges. Translations such as those of Goldsmith and Hall
indicate that in specific eras – in this case the UK in the first half of the
twentieth century and beyond – there is a tendency to choose a higher social
register in translation than that used in the source text. Both translators were
bound by conventions concerning the appropriate register for younger child
readers at the time of translation, so they affiliate to contemporary models –
in British English translations of Emil to the British boarding-school story of
the period. May Massee’s American translation (published a year before
Goldsmith’s), on the other hand, strikes a far more authentic note. Emer
O’Sullivan suggests that Massee drew on her reading of American dime
novels for the vernacular
she employs (O’Sullivan, 2000: 217):
‘This looks like a swell stunt to me – some class, I’ll say. And man,
I’m with you, if that’s all right with you.’
trans by Massee, 1930: 77)
W. Martin updates the passage for twenty-first century readers in a new

translation published in 2014, stating in a translator’s note that his aim was
to achieve a ‘contemporary, coloquial American idiom’ (Kästner, 1929; Emil
and the Detectives, 2014: 160):
‘Listen, this thing with the robber is cool. It’s awesome, actually! So
unless you have a problem with it, I’d like to help out.’
trans Martin, 2014: 80)
‘Cool’ and ‘awesome’ replace Massee’s ‘swell’ and ‘some class’. Both
In an English-language source text published some sixty years after Emil,
Laurie Thompson and his editorial team decided to try to achieve a partial
degree of historical accuracy when translating the 1950s Stockholm dialect
in Peter Pohl’s Swedish novel Janne min vän (Johnny, my Friend, 1991). Text
that is fiction set or published in the recent historical past presents specific
challenges to the translator, who may decide to update spoken language or
to attempt to create authentic period dialogue. Thompson chose the latter
strategy when working on the translation for editor, publisher and author
Aidan Chambers. Fortunately, Chambers kept all correspondence and a log
on translation projects for his business partner David Turton in Australia;
he also wrote an account of the detailed discussions on specific translation
points with Thompson. Thompson noted the problem of achieving the right
level of colloquialism in the covering letter to his first sample translation sent
to Chambers:
There are frequently no direct English equivalents for the individual

slang words and phrases, so it is often a case of trying to give the whole
paragraph a similar tone rather than worrying too much about specific
phrases. I’m trying to remember the kind of colloquialisms current when I
was at school [in the 1950s, when the story is set], while avoiding giving
too dated an impression.
(Chambers, 2001:
131)
In fact, for Johnny, my Friend, a four-way collaboration took place between

Chambers as editor and publisher; his Swedish language consultant Katarina
Kuick who first suggested publishing the novel in English; the author Peter
Pohl, and the translator Laurie Thompson. Just as American translator Massee
acknowledges in her introduction to Emil and the Detectives the help of two
German friends who acted as advisors on the street language of Berlin in the
late 1920s, Kuick was a trusted intermediary who could interpret the fine
distinctions of Stockholm slang. In this case the relationship between all
participants in the translation enterprise was close-knit. As a first step, Kuick
and Chambers met with Pohl who answered an initial set of translation
questions, then Thompson was chosen as translator, and he in turn visited
Pohl in Sweden. Despite these fortunate and unusual circumstances,
Thompson’s task was not an easy one. One example of the linguistic
sensitivity required is Thompson’s use of the slang term ‘bobby’ instead of
‘policeman’ which, though current in 1950s Britain, was changed in the final
draft to the American ‘cop’ – a more likely choice for young people
influenced at the time by Hollywood crime movies and eager to gain
credibility with their friends (Chambers, 2001: 133).
Reproducing the vernacular in a novel first published in 1929 (Emil und
die
Detective) or set in the recent past (Janne min vän) raises pedagogical
issues concerning the type of language suitable for children’s books and a
fine-tuning of historically authentic dialogue. In translations of
contemporary fiction
79
representing young people’s language
of the late twentieth and early twenty- first centuries, there has been in many
countries a liberalization of educational policy on spoken language, thanks
to a new understanding of children’s abilities to switch between different
registers when necessary. This has resulted in a marked increase in the
representation of slang and street language in children’s fiction. It is
therefore even more important that translators should become acquainted
with current phrases and expressions used by young people or that,
following Massee and Thompson, they should use the services of an
intermediary. Both translators benefitted from the advice of native
speakers of the source language who were more likely to be in tune with the
urban slang of the text to be translated; it is, after all, impossible to become
familiar with the full range of registers in any language.
Translations of the Harry Potter books indicate, however, that the trend
towards the acceptance of spoken language varieties in children’s books is by
no means universal. Throughout the series, Hagrid speaks a non-standard
English that is not characteristic of any particular locality. During Hagrid’s
very first appearance in Chapter 1 of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s
Stone, he tells Professor Dumbledore about his motorbike journey with baby
Harry:
‘[. . .] I got him out all right before the Muggles started swarmin’
around. He fell asleep as we was flyin’ over Bristol.’
(Rowling, 1997:
16)
The omission of the final ‘g’ from ‘swarming’ and ‘flying’ and the first
person plural ‘we was’ rather than ‘we were’ are probably meant to indicate
that Hagrid has working-class origins and certainly that he is of lower social
status than the highly educated Dumbledore. An international gathering of
Harry Potter translators on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the
International Federation of Translators in Paris in 2003 revealed a range of
responses to the representation of Hagrid’s vernacular. Serbian
translator Vesna Stamenkovic Roganovic, who worked on the series with
her son, was quite prepared to use regional dialect but rejected a solution
that would make Hagrid seem to be ‘a Serbian peasant rather than an
English giant’. So the translators created an innovative ‘Hagrid pidgin’:
[. . .] it is very peculiar, yet recognizable to our kids. We had in

mind the sound of many people that settled in our Belgrade, after the
Second World War, coming from different parts of the country; sooner
or later, most of them would adopt their own local dialect, Northern,
Southern, Eastern Bosnian, or Macedonian, with other newcomers’
words and pronunciations, as well as with the common Serbian speech
of the new environment. The result was a unique leitmotif-speech,
equivalent to the musical theme for Hagrid in the films of Chris
Columbus.
On the other hand, the Thai translator of the series, Sumalee
Bumroongsook, decided not to use regional dialect to depict Hagrid’s speech
simply because ‘Thai readers are not accustomed to reading regional
accents in print’ (Bumroongsook, 2003–4: 20). These two examples are a
reminder that there are no ready-made functional equivalents across
languages; translators must always be sensitive to cultural practices and
historical circumstances.
On examining a number of other translations it appears that a lingering
reluctance to reproduce colloquial language results; for example, in the
French translation, Hagrid uses standard grammar and pronunciation:
‘[. . .] je me suis débrouillé pour le sortir de là avant que les

Moldus commencent à rappliquer. Ils’est endormi quand on a survolé
Bristol.’
(Rowling, 1997; Harry Potter à l’école des Sorciers,
trans by Ménard, 1998)
Anne-Lise Feral attributes the French translator’s strategy here, and in the
unnatural retention of ‘ne’ in negative clauses and ‘nous’ as a personal
pronoun in the spoken language of child characters, to ‘the importance of
grammar in the school curriculum in France where pupils spend a minimum
of eight years learning the complex mechanisms of their own language’
(Feral, 2006: 463). In the German version Hagrid merely drops the final ‘e’
of ‘habe’, which is a common feature of spoken German and not necessarily
indicative of social standing:
‘[. . .] ich hab ihn gerade noch herausholen können, bevor die
Muggel angeschwirrt kamen. Er ist eingeschlafen, als wir über Bristol
flogen.’
(Rowling, 1997; Harry Potter und der Stein der
Weisen, trans by Fritz: 1998)
It seems that a distinct uneasiness at using non-standard language in a

children’s book is still evident in these two instances, although in other books
in the series the German translations of Hagrid’s speech do include
colloquialisms. Martin B. Fischer indicates, too, that in the case of the
Spanish Catalan edition translated by Laura Escorihuela, it was the publisher
who did not want any deviation from Catalan standard norms. Although
Hagrid uses some Catalan colloquial expressions such as ‘aviam’, ‘llavorens’
and ‘calés’ in the series, on the whole he speaks in standard Catalan
(Fischer, 2012: 58). Depending on regional and political circumstances,
young people’s fictional dialogue may also include the voices of bilingual
and migrant children who incorporate the vocabulary, phrases and intonation
of their heritage language into their own version of the language spoken on
the streets so that translators may be working with multilingual texts.
Sarah Ardizzone has completed English versions of young adult novels
written in two very different genres, both of which feature the French
urban slang of young people of North
81
African origin. Ardizzone has taken
research into street language further than most translators. Before translating
several of the bestselling Golem series of five novels by the siblings Marie-
Aude, Lorris and Elvire Murail set in an imaginary and unspecified urban
ghetto in France, Ardizzone spent three months in the Algerian community
in Marseilles, which has a similar urban scenario to that found in the books,
financed by a grant from the French Book Office. She became familiar with
the particular brand of Maghreb-influenced ‘verlan’ (back slang) whereby
words are reversed, and which is spoken in the extended low-rise housing
blocks (or ‘barres’) of that city. Ardizzone has written about her acquired
understanding of verlan for the Golem books, including the common issue
in young adult fiction – already noted in Johnny, my Friend – of finding an
appropriate equivalent for the slang term for ‘police’:
[. . .] a femme becomes a meuf a

mec (guy) becomes a keum, a prof(esseur) is a feupro and les flics are
keufs. Take that last example: an old skool [sic] English translation
would be ‘pigs’, but given the US influence on UK slang, you might
want to refer to them as Feds.
(
Adams/Ardizzone, 2005: 13)
Once again an American term, ‘Feds’, is chosen rather than the British ‘pigs’
in recognition of the continuing influence of US films and TV detective
series. Moreover, to make the dialogue of the Golem books work for a
street- conscious British readership, Ardizzone sought out teenage ‘slang
advisors’ in the Afro-Caribbean community of Brixton, south London.
These young people introduced her to the rhythms, vocabulary, moods and
humour of current slang, while warning of its inbuilt obsolescence.
Ardizzone’s task was to ‘engineer an equivalent: but preferably with a
longer shelf-life’ (2005: 13). She cites the words of Carlos Fuentes, taken
from his 2004 NESTA Max Sebald lecture on translation: ‘Translators
can’t convey the slang of our times accurately, because slang is language
in constant transformation. So we have to give slang an “onomatopoeic
resonance” by transforming language into comical expression’ (cited in
Adams/Ardizzone, 2005: 13).
Ardizzone transfers the setting of the Golem books to a British social
housing estate. As indicated in Chapter 2, such radical relocation is a rare
occurrence and is only justifiable in this instance because the setting is un-
specified and the genre that of fantasy. Relocation also avoids the incongruity
of English slang spoken on French streets. Phrases taken from Afro-
Caribbean south Londoners are appropriate in the locality of the target text, so
Ardizzone renders the backslang term ‘keums’ (backslang for ‘mecs’ or
‘guys’) in the phrase:
On s’éclate, les keums, dit-il, une fois de l’autre côté.

(Murail, Murail and Murail, Golem 5 Alias, 2002:
as:
‘Nuff respect!’ he said from the other side.

(Murail, Murail and Murail, 2002; Golem 5 Alias,
trans by Ardizzone, 2005: 131)
Later in the scene Ardizzone uses ‘brethren’ as an alternative rendering of

‘keums’ and ‘Nuff respect’, meaning ‘enough respect’, is another phrase taken
directly from her young advisors.
Ardizzone has also translated a novel written in a different mode, that
of
social realism, which retains its Parisian setting in translation. In her
translation of Kiffe kiffe demain (2004) by the young French-Algerian
author Faïza Guène as Just Like Tomorrow (2006), Ardizzone makes use
of a different strategy by appending a glossary of Arabic words and
expressions as discussed in Chapter 2. She also takes the unusual step of
including ‘A Note on the Slang’ to her young readers at the end of the novel.
Ardizzone explains the use of ‘Arabe’ as a term for a second or third
generation French national of North African origin, which in back slang
becomes ‘beur’, or is even flipped again by those at the cutting edge to
become ‘rebeu’. Then she offers some examples of translations for vernacular
phrases:
Examples might be ‘oh my days’ to register shock and wonder; ‘bare’

or ‘over’ meaning ‘very’; ‘safe’ or ‘heavy’ to refer to something
positively; or ‘buff’ meaning ‘good-looking’. Sadly, I never got a
chance to use ‘minging’ for ‘no good’.
(Guène, 2004; Just Like Tomorrow,
A dedication at the beginning of the book: ‘The translator would like to

thank Cleo Soazandry and all the slangstas at Live Magazine’ makes it clear
that most of these English expressions are, as in the Golem books, taken
directly from the young people of Lambeth, south London. Here is an
example of Ardizzone’s ability to capture the tone and voice of fifteen-
year-old Doria, the narrator of Kiffe kiffe demain:
Les poufiasses du lycée, la bande de décolorées, surmaquillées avec

leurs soutiens-gorge rembourrés et leurs chaussures compensées, ells se
sont bien foutues de ma gueule. Le truc écrit en anglais sur le pull, c’était
‘sweet dreams’. Ça veut dire ‘fais de beaux rêves’. Cette saloperie
de pull mauve, c’était un haut de pyjama. Je savais que j’aurais dû
être plus attentive pendant les cours de miss Baker en sixième.
(Guène, 2004, Kiffe kiffe demain, Kindle
edition)
The fat slags at school, that crew of peroxide blondes with their
padded bras and platform heels, never let me hear the end of it. Turns
out what
Translating dialogue and dialect 83
was written in English on the
sweatshirt meant ‘sweet dreams’. That bitch of a mauve sweatshirt was
actually a pyjama top. I knew I should of paid more attention to Miss
Baker’s English lessons in Year 6.
(Guène, 2004; Just Like Tomorrow,
Ardizzone renders ‘poufiasses’ as ‘fat slags’, a derogatory term for a

female, and uses the hip ‘crew’ rather than the more usual ‘gang’ or the
bland ‘group’ for ‘bande’; she also replaces Guène’s conditional perfect
‘j’aurais dû être plus attentive’ (literally: I ought to have been more
attentive), with ‘should of’ to represent a common pronunciation of ‘should
have’.
Although the English version of this passage is convincing as the voice of
a young girl living on a social housing estate, translators should be aware of
the potential incongruity of south London slang on the lips of young speakers
in urban France. Translator Daniel Hahn has called the translation of non-
standard language a ‘sleight of hand . . . using slang but avoiding any
particular markers that’ll seem to locate the characters too sharply
somewhere they’re not’, a sentiment echoed by Anthea Bell who prefers to
create a ‘non-specific demotic’ that is not linked to any particular place.
Each book, she argues, requires its own strategies. Bell has even, in one
instance, created a non-standard dialect where a character speaks the standard
language in the source text. When working on a novel by Willi Fährmann
about a young boy sailing to the US in the 1870s to find work, she found that
the standard German of an old sailor’s conversation with the boy seemed
stilted when written in standard English:
I therefore worked on creating him a colloquial idiom of vague

proven- ance; I did not want to pin him down with an actual dialect,
either English or American (the translation being for both sides of the
Atlantic), but aimed for something which might sound like the way a
shrewd but uneducated old sailor would tell his tales. I tried to get this
effect partly by giving him the historic present for his narratives, along
with various elisions, inversions and colloquial tricks of speech. They
may not have been present in the German, but I hope that they faithfully
reflected the author’s intention in the portrayal of his character.
(Bell, 1986:
18)
As always, the translator has to find a way to replicate the potential effects
of the source text with the child reader in mind. This is certainly true of
books for younger children, where representations of dialect may prove to be
difficult for an inexperienced reader to decipher, so the stylization of both
urban slang and regional dialect has to be tackled with care.
Translating regional dialect

Translating regional dialect has much in common with translating urban
or age-related language varieties. The same pitfalls can trap the unwary
into producing dialogue that seems stilted or even ridiculous. The dangers of
rendering, say, a Spanish Andalusian dialect as Bavarian German in a text
with a Spanish setting are obvious. As Anthea Bell has pointed out, such a
transition risks undermining the whole translation enterprise:
What, thinks the reader, is this man from Cologne (or Marseilles or
wherever) doing speaking broad Yorkshire (or Deep South or whatever)?
Come to that, what are the rest of these people in Central Germany or the
south of France doing speaking English at all? And come to that, these
are not the author’s own words, and what am I doing reading anything
so artificial as a translation anyway?
(Bell, 1986: 18–19)
A transposition into a local dialect of the target language is therefore best

avoided, with the use of stylized non-standard dialogue as the only solution
in many cases. Bell and Derek Hockridge generally did not use British
dialects for the French regional accents in the Asterix albums, for example,
even where this meant the rewriting of some frames or ‘in one case, of an
entire page where the French jokes depended on an Auvergnat accent’ (Bell,
1980: 130).
Occasionally, however, there may be a sound literary argument
for
introducing local features. In her translation of Astrid Lindgren’s Ronia,
the Robber’s Daughter, Patricia Crampton decided to render the speech of
one of the many sets of mythical creatures – the rumphobs – as a dialect
taken from her local Wiltshire in the southwest of England (Crampton,
1990). By doing so she conveys the humour of this welcome interlude to
the intensity of the central, fraught relationship of the narrative between
Ronia and the son of her family’s arch-enemy. When Ronia’s foot gets
caught in the rumphobs’ underground home, they hang their baby’s cradle on
it, shrieking:
‘She do go!’
‘She do swing there! . . . Lil’ boy he be rockin’ proper, see!’
(Lindgren, 1981; Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter,
trans by Crampton, 1990: 84)
Use of the auxiliary ‘do’, and the tag ‘see’, both typical of the dialects of
southwest England, does indeed make the rumphobs seem ridiculous – but
Lindgren’s intention was indeed to make her young readers laugh at these
incongruous creatures.
In a second example, the English translation of Hergé’s adventure L’Ile
Noire
(1943), dialect is introduced where it is not present in the source text for
reasons of authenticity and congruity with the accompanying images (see
discussion of translating the text in these images in Chapter 3). This entire
album has an English and, in the last phase of the adventure, a Scottish
setting and thus presented its translators with a paradoxical challenge in
relation to cultural adaptation. In The Black Island (Hergé, 1943; trans
85
and Turner faced the task of
transposing the French dialogue (masquerading as English) into actual
English, and in particular the invention of a Scottish accent to replace the
standard French for the characters Tintin meets once the action moves to
Scotland. The Scottish pub landlord responds to Tintin’s request for a bed
for the night with ‘Aye, for sure’ rather than the rather formal ‘Certainement’
(Hergé, 1943; trans 1966: 41) in French. Sailors who refuse to take Tintin to
Black Island tell him:
‘Personne ne voudra vous y conduire’
and in the English-Scottish translation:

‘there’s no maun heer that’ll dare
go neer that curst place’
(Hergé, 1943; The Black Island, trans by Turner
and Lonsdale-Cooper, 1966: 42)
Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner deliberately represent Scottish pronunciation

as well as incorporating dialect vocabulary at other points, for example: ‘ken’
instead of ‘know’ and ‘gang’ instead of ‘go’. Hergé had demonstrated no
such intention to distinguish between English and Scots speakers in the
French source text, and indeed would have found it impossible to do so
without the jarring use of a regional French dialect and an inevitable
mismatch with the images of Scotland. In this unusual example, the
translators therefore create an extra but necessary layer of humour in the
script for English- language readers who would find it rather odd if
Scottish characters spoke standard English. In a further twist to this
particular translation story, the Scottish publisher Taigh Na Teud issued two
new versions of The Dark Isle (Hergé, 1943) in 2013: one translated into a
representation of English spoken with a Scottish accent (The Derk Isle
‘Translatit by Susan Rennie’) and another in Scottish Gaelic (An T-Eilean
Dubh ‘Air Eadar-Theangachadh le Gillebrìde Mac ‘Illemhaoil’). To sum
up, Crampton, Lonsdale-Cooper and Turner use dialect for specific aesthetic
reasons: to recreate the humour of the source text in both cases and to match
images in the case of the Tintin album.
Translating idiolect
Tintin’s translators across the world encounter a regional form of
French described by Jan Baetens in his aptly entitled article “Tintin the
Untranslatable” as a Bruxello-Flemish dialect (‘Marols’, or ‘Marollien’)
(2001: 366), but they also have to address the invented idiolects associated
with particular characters. Thomson and Thompson’s repeated phrase ‘to be
precise’ (‘je dirai meme plus’) is one such instance, but Captain Haddock’s
colloquial register and rich resource of curses demands innovation. In Tintin
in Tibet (Hergé, 1960; trans 1962) Haddock’s ‘foul language’ (see Chapter 3)
offers a guaranteed moment of pleasure in the read-aloud performance and is
Tintin series for the young; it calls for both linguistic playfulness and extensive
research. According to Harry Thompson’s biography, Tintin, Hergé and his
Creation (1991), Tintin’s English translators resorted not just to off-the-cuff
coinages to replace Haddock’s habitual and florid curses, but also to Roget’s
Thesaurus ‘and four other books on Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper’s shelves
including Petersen’s Prehistoric Life on Earth, and Reptiles, Mammals and
Fishes of the World by Hans Hvass’ (Thompson, 1991: 101).
Taking Tintin in Tibet as an example, by page 5, Haddock has already uttered
his trademark ‘billions of blue blistering barnacles’ (‘mille millions de mille
sabords’, p. 3) and ‘ten thousand thundering typhoons’ (To preserve
alliteration, this is a numerically reduced rendering of ‘mille milliards de
tonnerres de Brest’, p. 5). It is, however, Haddock’s prolonged and
vituperative verbal reaction to the yeti’s consumption of his whisky that
no doubt had Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper reaching for her Petersen and
Hvass. Just one speech bubble (Tintin in Tibet: 26) illustrates a number of
strategies including direct translation, alternatives and omission in order to
maintain an approximate equivalence in the number of letters used
(Lonsdale-Cooper’s reference to counting ‘to make sure every box was the
correct length’ makes clear the expediency of spatially matching the
French):
‘Macrocéphale! . . . Amphytrion! . . . Rocambole! . . .

Ectoplasme! . . . Phylloxéra! . . .
Cannibale! . . .’
(Hergé, Tintin au Tibet,
1960)
is translated as:
‘You odd-toed ungulate! . . . Macrocephalis baboon! . . .

Phylloxera! . . . Cannibal!’
(Hergé, 1960; Tintin in Tibet, trans by
Lonsdale-Cooper and M. Turner, 1962)
The translators omit the Greek king (‘amphytrion’), Spanish garlic

(‘rocambole’) and ‘ectoplasme’ while introducing the splendid ‘odd-toed
ungulate’. However, it is the sound of Haddock’s invective and the demarca-
tion of each word by exclamation marks or ellipses that gives his explosion
of wrath its expressive force. Fortunately, as sole translators of Tintin, Turner
and Lonsdale-Cooper were able to maintain a lively consistency in the use
of specific phrases from album to album and kept handwritten glossaries
for Captain Haddock and the two Detectives, which Lonsdale-Cooper still
possesses.
Reminiscent of Haddock’s curses is the abuse delivered by the tyrannical
Miss Trunchbull in Roald Dahl’s Matilda. Victòria Alsina (2012) has analyzed
an idiolect that is always delivered in short, clipped sentences and is
87
characterized by verbal abuse and tags
that indicate vehemence. Alsina offers an example of the Spanish and
Catalan versions:
‘This clot’ boomed the

Headmistress, pointing the riding-crop at him like a rapier; ‘this black-
head, this foul carbuncle, this poisonous pustule’
(
Dahl, Matilda, 1988: 142)
Este cretino – bramó la

directora, dirigendo la fusta hacia él como si fuera un estoque –, esta
espinilla, este ántrax asqueroso, esta pústula venenosa
(Span
ish version, 124, cited in Alsina, 2012)
– Aquest imbècil – tronà la

directora, apuntant-lo amb la fusta com si fos una espasa –, aquesta
berruga, aquesta nafra, aquesta pustule
(Cata
lan version, 120, cited in Alsina, 2012)
She comments that both translators have retained the clipped phrases and
created violent, invented terms of abuse rather than resorting to ready-made
invective.
The spoken language of younger children

Akin to idiolect in its individuality is the early language of a very young
child. The fictional child narrators discussed in Chapter 1 were
sufficiently in command of their native language to relate an entire story or
write a diary, but the rhythms, repetition and fragmentary utterances
characteristic of a two- to four-year-old are limited to snatches of dialogue. As
any parent knows, very young children pass through a stage of asking
monumental questions about the way the world works, many of them
unanswerable by a Nobel Prize- winning scientist or the most gifted student
of human behaviour. As well as capturing these spontaneous thoughts and
queries, authors of children’s fiction seek to convey the humour and
sometimes the pathos of voices not yet fully in command of the language
they speak. It takes great skill and sensitivity on the part of the writer, and
therefore of the translator, to tune into a young child’s voice, imagination and
concerns.
In the text of picture books, the words, elliptical phrases and silences of a
young child may be central to the narrative, as is the case in John
Burningham’s Granpa (discussed in Chapter 3). Translator Irina
Korschunow’s addition of text to Burningham’s final double spread is not
only unnecessary and limiting; it is also out of keeping with the brief
of five consecutive sentences that jars with the form and structure of the
child’s spoken language thus far.
An even younger child is heard in Alf Prøysen’s stories about a little old
woman who shrinks: Teskjekjerringa – a name that translates into English
literally as ‘Mrs. Teaspoon’. Marianne Helweg, translator of the well-known
English versions of Prøysen’s tales, changed the protagonist’s name to Mrs.
Pepperpot to recreate the striking alliterative sound of the original title. These
stories, published in Norwegian between the late 1950s and early 1960s, have
enjoyed – and still enjoy – international success as read-aloud material. In the
story “Teskjekjerringa er detective” (1960), where Mrs. Pepperpot attempts
to track down the culprit stealing potatoes from her vegetable patch, a toddler’s
speech provides an amusing interlude. As usual, Mrs. Pepperpot shrinks to
the size of a teaspoon (or pepperpot) at the most inopportune moment: while
crouching over a bucket of potatoes she falls into it, thus becoming invisible
to the potato stealers – three hungry siblings from a nearby dwelling. The
youngest child, a boy, is a toddler still at the early stages of language
development, so when he finds the human potato, Prøysen has the little boy
lisp, using ‘l’ instead of ‘r’ and refer to ‘en snakke-potet’, an invented word
composed of the elements ‘snakke’, to talk, and ‘potet’, ‘potato’. According
to Norwegian scholar Professor Janet Garton, to whom I am indebted for
insights into the Norwegian original, this is not nearly so funny as Helweg’s
translation. Helweg creates a complete scene based on the child’s mispro-
nunciation that includes an overt reference to it:
‘I dood! I dood!’ piped the little fellow who couldn’t say his ‘k’s’
and ‘g’s’. ‘I find lots o’ tatoes!’ and he scrambled after the others [. . .]’
(Prøysen, 1960; Mrs. Pepperpot Turns Detective,
trans by Helweg, 1968: 74)
Once he finds Mrs. Pepperpot among the potatoes, the boy asserts that she
is his potato to ‘teep’ (keep), so he holds her very carefully during the
following exchange:
‘You my ’tato?’ he asked.

Mrs. Pepperpot nodded. ‘That’s right. I’m your
’tato.’ The little boy’s eyes grew round with
amazement. ‘You talking ’tato?’ he asked.
‘That’s right,’ said Mrs. Pepperpot again. ‘I’m a talking
’tato’. ‘Tan I eat you?’ he asked, looking at her very closely.
(Prøysen, 1960; Mrs. Pepperpot Turns Detective,
trans by Helweg 1968: 76)
It seems that Helweg, again through the use of alliteration in ‘talking ‘tato’,
has added to the humour of ‘snakke-potet’. By drawing attention to the
toddler’s speech she guarantees the attention of young children who have only
just moved beyond this stage and will enjoy a moment of superiority.
89
Helweg’s purpose is the preservation of a humorous tone which may
unavoidably be lost elsewhere, so she has used a compensating strategy to
mimic a toddler’s speech in a scene that is funny whether read aloud or
silently. Both this and the inappropriate addition to Granpa demonstrate the
need for a translator to become familiar with the talk and thought patterns of
very young children. As always, the best advice to a translator is to spend time
with children in order to become acquainted with their spoken
communication and use of gesture, and to read the work of authors
recognized for that rare ability to recreate successfully the speech of the
younger child.
In contrast to negotiating the cultural, geographical, historical and even
pedagogical niceties of regional dialect or urban slang, translators of idiolect
and young children’s speech have free reign. A translator’s capacity for
invention is essential when translating a text where child readers relish
language precisely because of new, complex and arresting vocabulary, whether
invented by a toddler or originating in a zoological dictionary. Young
children’s amusing proto-language or idiolect such as that of Haddock or
Miss Trunchbull require much wit and linguistic flair on the part of the
translator.
The following is a summary of strategies for translating dialogue and
dialect:
• When urban slang is prominent in a source text, advice from an inter-

mediary in the source culture (for example Laurie Thompson’s Swedish
advisor Katarina Kuick) who is familiar with the kind of dialogue to be
translated is useful, as indeed are advisors in the target culture (Sarah
Ardizzone’s London crew of young advisors). Research with young
people or eavesdropping on their conversations on public transport, in
cafés or by following social media etc. will introduce you to current
terms and phrases in the target language.
• Consulting relevant corpora, for example the HERMES Twitter corpus,
the Birmingham blog corpus, the Cambridge and Nottingham e-Language
corpus (CANELC) or the COLT-Bergen Corpus of London Teenage
Language may well be useful for recreating authentic speech and forms
of electronic communication where relevant.
• To test the impact of the vernacular you have created, try out passages of
dialogue on children or young people.
• As always, the reading aloud of translated passages of dialogue alone, or
where possible with others, will highlight any incongruity or inauthenticity
in passages of dialogue and assist in the creation of fluent exchanges.
• Read novels (for the young or for adults) that incorporate non-standard
varieties of the target language and note the strategies authors use to
represent spoken language.
• Watch current films or TV series in the language into which you are
translating that feature young people and listen closely to their dialogue.
• Afterwards, close your eyes and imagine an exchange between children
or young people (better still, between characters in the book you are
currently translating) in the target language.
• When working on a series of books about the same characters, keep
glossaries of characteristic terms and phrases for specific protagonists to
ensure consistency.
• Bear in mind the strategy of introducing dialect where it does not appear
in the source text for specific purposes, for example to compensate for
humour or emphasis lost elsewhere.
• Where appropriate, consider carefully forms of address and the use of
pronouns in dialogue between characters, particularly between children
and adults, and how these might be rendered in the target language.
• Sarah Ardizzone has some sound advice in a series of Translation Tips
on the English PEN website.2 ‘If you’re translating SLANG, remember
it has a sell-by date. So you might want to use “vintage” or “re-cycled”
slang – words that come back round again, and are likely to keep doing
so. Also, watch out for DOSAGE. Too much slang may mean you’re
excluding too many of your readers. Make sure the context – the
wording around the slang – is always clear enough for readers to be able
to guess intelligently at the meaning of the slang word.’
Discussion points
• Should a translator always attempt to replicate street slang? What about

instances where the novel is set in the recent past?
• Is it best to avoid translating regional dialect (by finding a localized
equivalent in the target language) in texts to be translated for children?
• What is your opinion of the insistence of some publishers and other
stakeholders on standard, ‘prestige’ forms of a language in translations
for children? What effects might this prescriptive approach have on
children’s appreciation of literature and on the development of the child’s
eye and ear for difference?
Exercises
• Translate the following passage from Doing It by Melvin Burgess (2003)
into your working language and be prepared to justify your translation
strategies to colleagues or fellow students and translators.
Four young male friends are smoking cannabis and discussing the
girlfriends of two of them:
‘Seeing Deborah tonight?’ whispered Dino.
‘Yeah.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Dunno.’
91
‘Good luck with it, mate.’
‘Thanks.’ The spliff end flared up in the hushed darkness. They
could just about see each other in outline.
‘You seeing Jackie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘How’s it
going?’ ‘Great.’
‘Great.’
‘Hey,’ whispered Jonathon a moment later. ‘Look at these two.
They’re the two non-shaggers.’
(Burgess, 2003: 188–
9)
• How might you translate Hagrid’s non-standard English in the first chapter
of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (see passage cited in this
chapter), and indeed throughout the series, into your working language?
Notes
1 http://arablit.wordpress.com/2012/09/20/ [accessed 16 July 2014].
2 www.englishpen.org/translation-tips-sarah-ardizzone/ [accessed 20 May 2014].
Further reading
Adams (Ardizzone), Sarah (2005) ‘Translating monsters’. In Outside In: Children’s
books in translation, edited by D. Hallford and E. Zaghini. Chicago, Il: Milet
Publishing.
Baetens, Jan (2001) ‘Tintin, the untranslatable’; trans Alyson Waters, SITES 2:
236–271.
Fischer, Martin B. and Wirf Naro, Maria (2012) Translating Fictional Dialogue for
Children and Young People. Berlin: Frank & Timme.
5Translating sound
Reading aloud, poetry, wordplay
and onomatopoeia
Translating books for reading aloud to the younger child has much in
common with the translation of poetry, or indeed any kind of prose
where aural, aesthetic or rhetorical power is a primary consideration. In
Chapter 1 of this book, Puurtinen’s analysis of the read-aloud qualities of two
different Finnish versions of The Wizard of Oz highlighted the rhythms and
syntax of translated prose that appeals to both adult performer and young
listener. And, as practising translator Riitta Oittinen reminds us, ‘Listening to
books being read aloud is the only way for an illiterate child to enter the
world of literature’ (2000: 32); it is also the best method for parents or
teachers to introduce even competent young readers to the work of an
unfamiliar author. Since children of all ages often hear stories rather than read
them, translators have a particular responsibility to produce texts that read
aloud well. Indeed, Danish translation scholar Cay Dollerup has argued that
translating for reading aloud ‘is an art requiring great competence of
translators’ (2003: 82).
Sound and rhythm play a fundamental role as children discover the delights
of language and narrative. Young children are eager imitators of whatever
sound-systems surround them; they learn language naturally through practice
and play, with the encouragement of their fluent elders. Ruth Weir’s classic
account of her son Anthony’s pre-sleep monologues, Language in the Crib
(1962), demonstrates the sheer joy of a two-and-a-half year-old’s experimenta-
tion with sound patterns as he rehearses the phonology and basic grammar
of his native language. Babbling, repetition and playing with
spontaneously created sounds, phrases or fragments of speech learned from
adults constitute a young child’s natural repertoire. As discussed in
Chapter 4, children’s authors attempt to replicate that repertoire when
seeking to create authentic child speech, just as they recognize in child
readers an appreciative audience for their inventive games with language.
Repetition, rhyme, onomatopoeia, wordplay and nonsense are, therefore, all
common features of children’s texts and require a high degree of linguistic
creativity on the part of the translator. In this chapter the focus will be on
sound: on the aural and read-aloud qualities of translated prose; on animal
cries as a common feature of books for younger children; on translating
wordplay that is often dependent on sound and, finally, on the translation of
children’s poetry and nonsense rhymes.
94 Translating sound
Translating ‘aloud’
A common strategy when translating for children is that of reading newly
drafted passages aloud to find an appropriate rhythm or syntactic structure in
the target language. Michael Turner’s comment that the decision he and
Leslie Lonsdale-Cooper made to read draft translations of Tintin albums
aloud to each other was one of the most productive aspects of their
collaboration confirms the point made in Chapter 4 that the most effective
way to test the verisimilitude of translated speech is to ‘act out’ passages of
dialogue by reading them aloud. It is not only dialogue, however, that benefits
from the spoken voice, since any text to be read aloud should be practised
and honed until the translator achieves maximum narrative impact and
potential aesthetic pleasure for the young listener. Speaking text aloud alerts
the speaker to disharmonies that may go unnoticed on the written page. Any
parent or teacher who reads aloud regularly to children will testify to the
difference between a story that reads aloud well, and one that does not.
Interviews with translators of children’s and young adult fiction Patricia
Crampton and Sarah Ardizzone, conducted in 2007 and 2008 respectively
(Lathey, 2010), reveal that both have used aural translation techniques, albeit
at a different point in the translation sequence. Until she ended her translation
career at the turn of the millennium, Patricia Crampton dictated her translations
directly into a tape-recorder, sent the tape to be typed and revised the copy
once it arrived. Dictation enabled her to ‘perform’ the translation as she
created it, with revisions taking place in her head at this stage; advances in
technology and the use of a computer – which Crampton resisted – may well
have assisted this process. Sarah Ardizzone’s working method, on the other
hand, has five stages, with reading aloud as the third. After an initial reading
of the book – often in order to prepare a reader’s report – she types a ‘stream
of consciousness translation’, using the forward slash to indicate alternatives.
Next she reads through the draft to eliminate as many slashes as possible. At
the third stage she tries to make the text work in English by reading sections
aloud:
You’ll do something that reads like hell but is a relatively faithful

version. Then you’ll start to make it start speaking for itself in English
and then you’ll worry that it’s too far away from the French and try to
rein it back. You want it to have its own voice and sing for itself,
but not be disrespectful. It’s trying to balance that tension.1
Ardizzone then gives the text another ‘rinse’ and puts it aside to ‘stew’
before a final ‘rinse’, describing the whole process as akin to painting the
interior of a house, since it involves both a ‘building up and stripping down’.
She wants the translated text to read well in English, but at the same time to
ensure that there is a degree of ‘décalage’, or disjuncture, at a linguistic
level – a disharmony that is a reminder of the source language. She uses a
variety of
Translating sound
95
phrases such as ‘jet-
lag’, ‘being out of kilter’ and ‘slippage’ to convey the sense of a ‘healthy
clash and jostle’ as two languages meet: ‘If something fits too snugly then
I’ve lost the clash’ (Lathey, 2010: 190). Combining these two aspirations – a
text that is a pleasure to read aloud but that does not lose the tension of the
very fact that it is a translation – is a considerable feat. However, when back
problems made sitting at the computer uncomfortable, Ardizzone adopted
Crampton’s dictation method using voice-activated software, a practice
she continued even when the back improved.
These two examples
of translators specializing in fiction for the young
indicate the
significance of reading aloud as well as variation in translation methods and
intentions. In addition to the demands of reading aloud according to the age
and literacy competence of child readers, certain children’s writers achieve a
form of prose poetry or linguistic inventiveness that demands a level of
creativity akin to that required by the translation of poetry. Prose for
children is often playful, whether in an author’s use of puns, idiomatic
expressions, repetition or expressive emphasis. Children’s authors invent
words to enhance the rhythm, humour and aural qualities of their prose. Roald
Dahl, for example, is a master of the neologism in many of his books,
especially The BFG where Dahl introduces his readers to ‘snozzcumbers’ and
where the eponymous giant distinguishes between people, ‘human beans’, and
animals such as ‘jiggyraffes’ and ‘cattypiddlers’ that belong in a zoo.
Swedish author
Astrid Lindgren’s literary style and invention make her
fiction a joy to read
aloud, and she too uses vocabulary innovatively. Patricia Crampton (1990)
has written about the choices she faced when translating a number of
Lindgren’s books, for example the expressive ‘jubelskrik’, a primal
exclamation that Lindgren uses in the last line of Ronja Rövardotter (1981;
Ronia, the Robber’s Daughter, 1983) to epitomize the advent of spring and
Ronja’s existential rapture. Crampton describes how she settled for ‘shout of
joy’, but later amplified it into a yell (Crampton, 1990: 85). Poetic phrases
within Lindgren’s prose also demand creative solutions. A short story of a
child’s grim poverty, Spelar min lind sjunger min näktergal, includes an
overheard refrain that gives hope to the central character, Maria:
Spelar min lind,

sjunger min näktergal
(literal translation:
plays my lime-tree, sings my nightingale)
Crampton’s first
attempt at this phrase was:
Plays my linden,
sings my nightingale
and took the latter phrase as the title of the translation published in 1985. The
result is one syllable longer than the original line and does not, so Crampton
admits, quite have its ‘lilting rhythm’ (1990: 85). The continuous present in
English alters the rhythm of Lindgren’s phrase, but has a resonance of its
own. Opinion concerning this solution will be divided; any readers of this
book who read Swedish might like to attempt a translation of this phrase.
Essential, too, to the cadences of Lindgren’s prose is her stylistic technique
of expressing emotion directly, as already indicated in an extract from
Bröderna Lejonhjärta (The Brothers Lionheart) in Chapter 1. In the picture
book The Dragon with Red Eyes, the penultimate paragraph includes a similar
exclamation:
Och därefter – o vad det var underligt – därefter flog han sin väg.
rendered by Crampton as:
And then – oh it was so strange – then he flew away.
Both the stylistic technique of repetition, commonly used by Lindgren and

evident here in ‘därefter’ (‘thereafter’, or ‘then’), and the ‘oh’ of the
narrator’s expression of wonder, contribute to the ‘delicate melancholy’
(Crampton, 1990: 85) of the sentence.
Onomatopoeia: animal cries

Texts read aloud to a young child include expressive language of all kinds,
whether as part of spoken exchanges, as the approximation of sound effects
using the human voice or, since animal characters are extremely popular in
stories and rhymes for younger children, the utterance of animal noises.
Onomatopoeia has already been discussed in relation to the comic strip in
Chapter 3, but the translation of animal noises for the young has a far longer
history. When translating literary effects that depend on aural qualities, as in
the case of animal sounds, translators have to switch from one phonological
system to another, transposing the barks, squeals, roars and neighs of a
complete menagerie into the commonly accepted equivalents in their own
tongues. In 1659 London schoolmaster Charles Hoole, first English translator
of the Orbis Sensualium Pictus by Comenius, grappled with this conundrum
in captions to pictures of animals and birds representing different letters of
the alphabet, together with an indication of the sounds they utter. Hoole
leaves intact the alliteration and onomatopoeia of the Latin source text, so
the cat utters a ‘nau nau’, and the dog a rather low key ‘err’ (Comenius,
1659: B3). How conventions for the human representation of animal cries in
different languages were first established can only be the subject of
speculation, but an articulated cry such as that of a cockerel maintains its
characteristic rhythmic pattern across a number of languages: ‘Cock-a-
doodle-doo’ in English;
Translating sound
97
‘coquerico’ in French,
‘qui-qui-ri-qui’ in Spanish and ‘kikeriki’ in German. Similarly, there may be
an aural equivalent for other animals between two or more languages: a
Spanish pig in the Venezuelan picture book Cui-cui- cuidado! Animales
al volante by Marilyn Pérez Falcón and María Elena Repiso (2002)
happily utters an ‘oinc oinc’ that matches the English ‘oink oink’. But there are
differences, too: the Spanish-barking dog in the same book utters an ‘guau’, a
sound very different from an English ‘woof woof ’, ‘ruff ruff’ or the quaint
‘bow-wow’. Sometimes these distinctions are even more marked. According
to Professor Catherine Ball’s comprehensive Georgetown University website
on animal noises, ‘gonggong’ is the sound customarily attributed to
Indonesian dogs, ‘mung-mung’ to Korean and ‘hav, hav’ to Turkish canines.2
It is common translation practice to use the conventional equivalent in
the target language, but a more playful approach might catch children’s
imaginations. A transliteration of a Spanish or German cockerel’s cry into
‘kikeriki’ in an English translation would certainly intrigue a young child
already familiar with ‘cock-a-doodle-do’. A unique collaboration between an
American and a Japanese picture book artist exemplifies the potential of this
strategy.
Eric Carle and Kazuo Iwamura, both highly respected and successful
illustrators in their own countries, came together to create Where Are You
Going? To See My Friend! A story of friendship in two languages (2001).
While there is no translation involved on the part of the authors, they
conceived and illustrated a book that tells the same story in two directions, in
English from the front of the book and in Japanese from the back. It depicts
the progress of two bands of animals, all uttering typical sounds in
their respective languages and marching towards a grand finale in the central,
fold-out section of the book where two artistic styles and two languages
finally meet. The crescendo is a grand celebratory song dominated by
animal cries. Each page of the English or Japanese text has the same
content and the same animals, albeit drawn and coloured in the style of
either Carle or Iwamura. Japanese text in Katakana such as the
cockerel’s cry, コッコッコケーコ , is transliterated so that English
readers can pronounce the animal sounds, ‘kok kok ko keh ko’. A Japanese
child learning English would, perhaps, be able to read the English section of
the book by Eric Carle, and English-speaking children, who are less likely
to learn Japanese, can nevertheless appreciate and enjoy rehearsing the
approximation to Japanese phonology and the Japanese script. Translators
can take from this example the idea that it may not always be necessary to
adopt standard animal cries. A touch of foreignization in such instances is
likely to spark interest in sound and language and enhance children’s interest
in and awareness of different languages.
To sum up, strategies for translating for reading aloud include:
• Reading passages of longer texts aloud to listen out for awkward phrases
and to ensure that translated prose is a pleasure to read and includes
rhythms and cadences that echo those of the source text.
• Reading aloud drafts of translated stories to children to evaluate their
responses.
• Recording a draft translation on any device and listening to the playback.
• Translating aloud by using voice-activated software.
• Sarah Ardizzone’s Translation Tips on the English PEN website3 include
recommendations on the aural qualities of texts:
– Get technical. Think about CRAFT. For example, if the original
author uses a lot of alliteration or assonance or soft rhymes or if they
imprint a distinctive rhythm on the way they write, then you need to
capture everything you can of this in the English. But remember not
to get stuck by being too literal. If it doesn’t work using assonance
or a rhyme or rhythm or even a joke in the same place as it occurs in
the original text, maybe you’ll be able to introduce that effect
somewhere else in your translation instead.
• Deciding whether to use standard animal cries in the target language or,
where there is a difference between representations of animal cries in the
two languages, to retain those of the source language.
Figurative language and wordplay

Stylistic qualities of prose that depend on, or are enhanced by, reading aloud
include wordplay and idiomatic expressions. Children’s authors take idiomatic
expressions and puns as a starting point for creativity, knowing that young
readers are likely to have heard them in conversation. For children to find that
words may have more than one meaning, and that this is a source of aesthetic
pleasure and irony, is to learn to appreciate the writer’s craft and to increase
their metalinguistic awareness. Puns that depend on homophones, either words
that sound the same but have different meanings (‘sea’ and ‘see’), or which
are spelled and pronounced in exactly the same way but have different
meanings (‘chest’ as the upper front portion of the body or a large box for
hiding treasure), are a source of great amusement and irony in children’s fiction
and poetry. Opinions differ as to the age at which children can appreciate
metaphor, irony or dual meanings, but even the youngest children will happily
echo idiomatic phrases used by their parents and, although interpreting the
words literally at first, soon enjoy learning about ‘hidden’ messages.
One classic and frequently translated British picture book for the younger
child is by John Burningham, Mr. Gumpy’s Outing (1970), and relies in
part on the use of puns. Mr. Gumpy takes a group of children and a host of
farmyard animals for a trip in his boat. As each set of animals asks to be
taken along, Mr. Gumpy agrees, on condition that they behave with
decorum: the rabbits must not ‘hop about’, for example. There is,
however, a double meaning to his admonition to the pig not to ‘muck
about’ and the chickens not to ‘flap’:
Translating sound 99
‘Very well, but don’t muck about.’
‘Yes, but don’t flap,’ said Mr. Gumpy.
(
B
u
r
n
i
n
g
h
a
m
,
1
9
7
0
:
u
n
p
a
g
i
n
a
t
e
d
)
To ‘muck about’ is a reference both to the habit of pigs to wallow in mud,

but is also used of humans who mess around or behave in a silly fashion,
whereas ‘to flap’ carries both the literal meaning of flapping wings and the
figurative connotation of humans who become over-anxious. Both meanings
resonate in the chaotic scenario that ensues when Mr. Gumpy’s passengers
all start to misbehave at once. In the German translation by Josef
Guggenmos, Die Kahnfahrt (Burningham, 1970; trans 1973), Mr. Gumpy’s
reply to both sets of animals loses its double meaning. His reply to the pig is:
‘Gut. Aber mach keinen Dreck!’

(Literal translation: ‘Good. But don’t make a mess!’)
and to the chickens:
‘Ja, aber flattert nicht herum.’

(Literal translation: ‘Yes, but don’t flap around.’)
[. . .] while the conventional French means of representing a hiccup is
‘Hips!’ its English equivalent is ‘Hic!’, so that drunken Roman legionaries
can be allowed to hiccup in Latin: ‘Hic, haec, hoc.’
(1980: 132)
Similarly, Bell and Hockridge seized the opportunity of a swordfight in

Le Cadeau de César to replace references to Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac
with allusions to Hamlet’s battle with Laertes from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, at
the same time indulging in a pun on the word ‘foil’, the weapon used in the
sport of fencing. They insert ‘Give us the foils’ (even though the weapons
pictured are heavy, short swords rather than elegant rapiers) into one
speech bubble and ‘Foiled again!’ (using the verb ‘to foil’, meaning to defeat
or to frustrate a plan) into another. Domestication of the literary reference
accompanies compensation for the untranslatable French puns linked to
sword fighting and Cyrano. Bell and Hockridge frequently adopt this strategy
of inserting puns where none existed in the source text in order to match as
closely as possible the tally of wordplay created by Uderzo and Goscinny.
Idiomatic expressions taken from spoken language are a source of
humour,
too, as Uderzo and Goscinny were well aware when using stock
English phrases of the mid-twentieth century ironically in the speech of
British characters in Asterix chez les Bretons (1970), for example in calques
such as ‘c’est un morceau de chance’ (that’s a piece of luck) and ‘gardez
votre lèvre supérieure rigide’ (keep a stiff upper lip). Bell and Hockridge
had little alternative but to translate the two clichés directly back into English
in Asterix in Britain (2004), with the intention of replacing the humour enjoyed
by French readers elsewhere in the text.
The following sequence may assist in the translation of idioms
and
wordplay:
1 The first task of the translator is to recognize idiomatic expressions and

puns in the source text (see Baker, 2011 for advice on recognizing
idioms).
2 Second, make an assessment of the function and resonance of the idiom
or pun within the relevant passage or indeed within the text as a whole.
3 Next, the translator needs to decide whether there is an equivalent
idiomatic expression or pun in the target language.
4 If replacement is not possible, literal translation of the idiomatic expression
or play on words is the next option, possibly with an accompanying
explanation woven into the text, although this is only to be
recommended in circumstances such as those outlined above, otherwise
there is the risk of confusing or alienating the child reader.
5 The most likely option in the case of an idiomatic expression is to
convey
its meaning in the target language.
6 Deletion of the pun or idiom may sometimes be the only option.
7 In this case, or when a double meaning is lost in translation, the translator
has to decide where it might be possible to compensate for any loss of
humour or irony by
using an idiom or pun familiar to children in the target culture elsewhere
in the translated text.
8 When translating
illustrated texts, keep in mind the relationship between
text and images
whatever translation strategy you adopt. Occasionally it may be
necessary to sacrifice visual congruity, as in the Bell and Hockridge
example of ‘foils’ cited above.
Translating children’s
poetry
From lullabies to songs,
nursery rhymes, nonsense verse and rhyming incanta- tions within prose
narratives, children delight in poetry from their earliest days. They are,
moreover, natural poets, as anyone listening to the early speech of toddlers
or the inventive coinages of younger children – or indeed the rap, love
poems and song lyrics of teenagers – will acknowledge. Whether rehearsing
a favourite rhyme aloud or using rhythm, repetition, rhyme and metre as aids
to predict the next word during the process of learning to read, poetry is
essential to the child’s linguistic repertoire. Translators of children’s books
will occasionally be commissioned to translate collections of poetry for
children by individual poets, anthologies of poetry, picture book versions of
counting rhymes, children’s songs, lullabies and nursery rhymes, or verse within
traditional tales and fairy tales.
Since poetry and song are
generally acknowledged to be the most difficult
of literary arts for the
translator, it is often children’s poets who translate children’s verse –
German poet Josef Guggenmos, for example, has translated Robert Louis
Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses into German as Mein Königreich
(1969), and Erich Kästner, who wrote poetry for adults as well as children’s
novels, produced a German version of T.S. Eliot’s Old Possum’s Book of
Practical Cats in 1952. An accomplished poet as translator has the expertise
and experience to create a new and aesthetically satisfying poem in the target
language.
Whether a poet or not, the
translator of children’s verse may employ a range
of processes, for example
creating a fresh poem inspired by an initial, literal translation (a crib) or
attempting to maintain rhythm and metre by altering semantic content. All
depends, of course, on the nature of the poem and the relative significance
of its musicality and meaning. In some instances metre may have to be
sacrificed in the interests of the poetic message, with a focus on meaning
that is expressed in an appropriate metrical form in the target language. In
verse for younger children, however, the replication of musicality, sound and
form are often the translator’s primary concern. This is certainly the case
where verse includes nonsense, so that sound and rhythm are the most
be translated for reading aloud, since that is its purpose for both the reader –
who also becomes a performer – and the listener.
Maintaining poetic form, rhyme, metre as well as meaning is a tall order
for any translator, as Susan Kreller demonstrates time and again in her
excellent, detailed study of the translation of children’s poetry into German
in the twentieth century (Englischsprachige Kinderlyrik: Deutsche übersetz-
ungen im 20. Jahrhundert, 2007). To take just one example, Kreller
reproduces a number of different German translations of a limerick by
Edward Lear:
There was an Old Man with a

beard, Who said, It is just as I
feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their
nests in my beard!
(
K
r
e
l
l
e
r
,
2
0
0
7
:
2
7
3
)
The limerick, with its five lines, aa/bb/a rhyme scheme, anapestic rhythm,
short central lines and scurrilous or comic content, has been a popular poetic
form in the English language since the eighteenth century. All four German
translators retain the rhyme scheme and the form – five lines, three long and
two short – of Lear’s poem, but there are differences in metre. Kreller points
out that Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s translation maintains Lear’s metre in
its first line, replicating the iambic ‘There was’ (unstressed syllable/stressed
syllable), followed by two anapests (two unstressed syllables followed by one
stressed syllable) ‘an Old Man with a beard’, but changes to a trochaic metre
(a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable) in the second line:
H.C. Artmann’s translation illustrates just how different translation solutions
can be:
Ein Herr ohne Brille mit Bart

Rief: Teufel, mir bleibt nichts
erspart, Ein Nachteulenpärchen
Ein Huhn und fünf Lerchen
Benisten ganz frech meine Bart.
[Literal translation: A man without glasses but with a beard shouted:
Devil, I’m spared nothing, a pair of night owls, a hen and five larks
have all cheekily nested in my beard.]
(Artmann, 1964, cited in Kreller, 2007:
273)
Kreller comments that Artmann, too, maintains form and rhyme scheme
while, like Enzensberger, adding an extra syllable to the two short lines. Also
noteworthy, however, is Artmann’s clever insertion of the diminutive form of
a ‘pair’ of night owls (‘Pärchen’), which facilitates the rhyme with ‘Lerchen’
(larks), and the addition of an extra lark to make five (fünf) – probably to
avoid the two syllables of ‘vier’ (four). Artmann also adds a pair of absent
spectacles (‘ohne Brille’) to replace the traditional limerick opening ‘There
was’, but his version in all other respects is much closer to Lear than
Enzensberger’s. As is evident from these translations, both Enzensberger and
Artmann are poets who have published verse for children, and are
therefore familiar with the constraints and potential of their craft.
Verse with a regular rhythm but no rhyme might seem to be far easier to
translate, yet poses problems of its own. The current vogue for verse that
addresses children’s everyday concerns and follows the patterns of contempor-
ary spoken language results in a concentration on repetition and rhythm as
primary poetic techniques. British author Michael Rosen is a highly
successful author of this kind of verse: his poem “We’re Going on a Bear
Hunt” has a strong walking or marching rhythm that echoes the strides of a
young family as they step out into the countryside pretending to track a
mythical bear. Rosen frequently performs the poem himself with gesture and
movement in time with the insistent beat:
We’re going on a bear hunt

We’re going to catch a big one.
What a beautiful day!
We’re not scared.
(
R
o
s
e
n
,
1
104 Translating
sound Wir gehen
auf Bärenjagd Wir
fangen
einen ganz
Grossen.
Und wenn ihr uns
fragt,
wir haben
keine Angst in
den Hosen.
(We’re going on a bear hunt/we’ll catch a really big one/And if you ask
us/we have no fear in our trousers)
(Rosen, 1989; Wir gehen auf Bärenjagd
trans by Inhauser, 2002: 1)
No matter how these lines are read aloud, it is difficult to create any kind
of rhythmic pattern apart from the partial rhyme of ‘Grossen’ with ‘Hosen’.
Losing both rhythm and the playfulness of ‘What a beautiful day!’ as part of
the ‘pretend’ game, this translation focuses simply on conveying the meaning
of the majority of the lines. When reading the poem aloud in English, it soon
becomes apparent that rhythm is an essential component of its effect, and
should therefore be the major focus for the translator. Each poem has to be
considered and savoured before the translator decides what must be
preserved and what may, if necessary, be sacrificed.
Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt is published as a picture book.
As
with prose narrative in picture books, it is essential to ensure that the
content of the translated verse matches illustrations; Edward Lear’s
illustrated ‘Old Man’, for example, is not ancient, but clearly not a young
lad (‘Jüngling’) as in Enzensberger’s translation. One picture book written
in verse offers an example of a two-stage translation process as well as
illustrating the significance of information contained in images. Poet
Sophie Hannah has produced an English version of Hur gick det sen? Boken
om Mymian, Mumintrollet och lilla My (1952), written and illustrated by
Swedish-speaking Finn Tove Jansson, and entitled in English The Book of
Moomin, Mymble and Little My (2001). As the blurb on the back inside
cover informs readers, Hannah wrote her version ‘with the help of a literal
translation by Silvester Mazzarella’. Such indirect or intermediate
translation, where a translator and poet work together or in sequence may
well be the best option when it is difficult to find a children’s poet who also
happens to know the source language well enough to translate, and offers
plenty of potential for author–translator collaboration and negotiation. The
combination of poet-translator is far more likely to exist in some language
pairs than others: the number of poets translating Edward Lear’s verse into
German, for example, is indicative of the widespread knowledge of the
English language in Germany, whereas the number of English- speaking
poets who know Swedish or German is likely to be limited.
On the first double spread of Jansson’s tale the tiny figure of an anxious
(anxiety is indicated by worry lines above his eyes) Moomintroll hurries
home through the dark forest with a can of milk. A reading of Jansson’s
Swedish verse, a literal translation into English and Hannah’s final rendering
in verse makes it clear that Hannah has worked with Mazzarella’s English
text to produce verse that retains Jansson’s aa/bb/cc rhyme scheme, although
Jansson rhymes all four of the final lines on the page:
Från mjölkbutiken, klockan

fem, ett litet mumintroll gick
hem.
En kanna full med mjölk han
bar
och vägen lång och kuslig
var och vinden suckade och
ven
i skogens alla mörka trän –
det var ej långt från
skymningen.
VAD TROR DU ATT DET
HäNDE SEN?
(Jansson, ‘Hur gick det sen?’ Boke nom Mymian,
Mumintrollet och lilla My, 1952: 2)
From the dairy, at five o’clock, a

little Moomintroll went home A
churn full of milk he carried and
the road long and eerie was and
the wind sighed and whined in
all the forest’s dark trees –
it was not far from gloaming.
What do you think happened next?
(Literal translation by Gunnar Florin;
Mazzarella’s version was not available)
Here’s little Moomintroll, none other,

Hurrying home with milk for Mother.
Quick Moomintroll, it’s nearly night.
Run home while there’s a bit of light
Don’t hang around in woods like these.
Strange creatures lurk between the trees.
The wind begins to howl and hiss.
NOW, GUESS WHAT HAPPENS
AFTER THIS?
(The Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My,
trans by Mazzarella and Hannah, 2001: 2)
By reading the literal translation and comparing it with Hannah’s, we can

effective ‘nearly night/bit of light’ rhyme, just as by replacing the customary
‘happens next’ with ‘happens after this’ and causing the trees to sound a
threatening ‘hiss’, she deftly brings the verse to a close with a final rhyming
couplet. In order to maintain the rhyme scheme, however, Hannah adds a sense
of urgency and danger throughout the verse – ‘Hurrying’ ‘Quick’ ‘Don’t hang
around’ ‘strange creatures’ – whereas the note of threat is communicated in
the Swedish version entirely through the pictures. In this instance the comple-
mentary interaction of text and pictures has been sacrificed to the demands of
creating a satisfactory rhyme. When juggling four dimensions of meaning –
source language, target language, images and poetic form, a translator has to
make choices that may involve the sacrifice of one aspect of the text’s layers
of communication.
A set of children’s verses that has enjoyed international, if controversial,
success including multiple adaptations and parodies is Heinrich Hoffmann’s
Der Struwwelpeter. These ironic cautionary tales, first published in Germany
under the title Der Struwwelpeter in 1848 and written to amuse Hoffmann’s
infant son, have fascinated and repelled children and adults alike. A brief
look at a translation by American author and versifier Mark Twain (completed
in 1891 but not published until 1935 as Slovenly Peter) offers an ironic
commentary on the process of translating verse through instances of
awkward, expedient solutions to the exigencies of a rhyme scheme, as well
as ironic asides to the child reader. It is a moot point whether Twain intended
his version for an adult (as an ironic comment on Hoffmann’s verse and on
the art of translation) or a child audience, but he did in fact present it to his
children on Christmas day 1891 and, according to his daughter, read the
verses aloud to them in a dramatic manner. Twain wanted above all to
retain Hoffmann’s rhythms, as he stated in his introduction: ‘[. . .] rhymes
that jingle felicitously are very dear to a child’s ear. In this translation I have
done my best to fetch the jingle along’ (Hoffmann, 1848; trans 1935: 9).
Twain translates the final couplet of the first verse of “Die Geschichte vom
wilden Jâger” (“The Tale of the Terrible Hunter”):
nahm Ranzen, Pulverhorn und Flint

und lief hinaus ins Feld geschwind
[literally: took his bag, powder, horn and gun and ran quickly into the
fields]
(Hoffmann, 1848: 12)
as:
He took his game-bag, powder, gun,

And fiercely to the fields he spun.*
(Hoffmann, 1848; Slovenly Peter,
trans by Twain, 1935: 28)
The asterisk leads readers to the following note: ‘Baby, you must take notice
of this awkward form of speech and never use it, except in translating. M.T.’
Twain was well aware that he had stretched the meaning of ‘to spin’, using
the past tense to rhyme with ‘gun’. In similar tongue-in-cheek fashion, Twain
admits defeat in the face of an invented compound in a couplet from “Die
Geschichte vom Daumenlutscher” (“The Story of the Thumb-Sucker”):
Springt der Schneider in die

Stub Zu dem Daumen-Lutscher-
Bub
(
H
o
f
f
m
a
n
n
,
1
8
4
8
:
1
6
)
[the tailor jumps into the room
towards the thumb-sucking boy]
as:
Whoop! The tailor lands her-blam!

Waves his shears, the heartless grub,
And calls for Dawmen-lutscher-bub.
(Hoffmann, 1848;
Slovenly Peter, trans by
Twain, 1935: 34)
Twain’s strategies are not to be generally recommended, but they are a

reminder that children’s texts of any genre may serve a dual adult–child
audience, and that Twain’s playfulness in adhering to rhyme patterns come
what may is itself a wry comment on translating children’s verse.
Translating nonsense verse

Nonsense verse has long been associated with children because of the
Eco’s assertion that the poetry of Christian Morgenstern (1871–1914)
cannot be translated is confounded by Anthea Bell’s translation from German
into English of a collection of Morgenstern’s children’s verse, Lullabies, Lyrics
and Gallows Songs (Bell, 1995), selected and illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger.
In an account of the challenges of translating Morgenstern’s poetry (Bell,
1998), Bell compares his work to that of both Edward Lear and Lewis
Carroll. The sound poem “Das grosse Lalula” (“The Big Laloola”)
illustrated in an appropriately quirky manner by Zwerger, and described by
Morgenstern as ‘a phonetic rhapsody’ (Bell, 1998: 10), has no
recognizable syntax or grammatical constructions at all. ‘Translation’ is
possible into English simply because the two languages are closely related,
so that Bell’s English version replicates the aural quality of the German
original with minimal alterations. In the poem “Das Grosse Lalula” Bell
replaces the long ‘u’ of ‘Lalula’ with a double ‘o’ in ‘Laloola’. In the third
line of the poem she renders the German ‘Bifzi, bafzi’ as ‘Biftsi, baftsi’ –
thereby reproducing in English the ‘ts’ sound of the German ‘z’. Bell does
not adopt this strategy throughout the poem, however, as can be seen from
the rest of the verse:
German English
Kroklokwafzi? Semememi! Kroklokwoffzie? Seemimeemi!
Seikronto – prafriplo: Siyokronto – prufliplo:
Bifzi, bafzi; hulalemi: Biftsi baftsi; hulaleemi:
Quasti basti bo . . . quasti basti bo . . .
Lalu lalu lalu lalu la! Laloo laloo laloo laloola!
(Morgenstern 1992; trans Bell, 1995: 21)
She chooses not to use the voiced fricative ‘v’ in English that would
convey the sound of the ‘u’ in the German ‘qu’ (pronounced ‘kv’). This may
well be because translation of this kind of poetry has to take account of
the visual element that reaches its extreme form in concrete poetry: the
arrangement of letters on the page is part of the appeal of nonsense verse.
To return to Eco’s comment, I would argue that the process Bell
undertakes
when rendering “Das grosse Lalula” into English can be called
translation, since Bell is operating between two languages. She makes
choices that are appropriate both to the aural and visual qualities of
Morgenstern’s original poem, and to the needs of its young target-language
audience. Bell’s translation of other poems in the collection ranges from
non-intervention in “Fisches Nachtgesang” (“Fish’s Night Song”), which
consists entirely of patterns of dashes and brackets printed sideways to
replicate waves and bubbles made in the water by the fish’s song, to a child’s
animal calendar where Bell replaces Morgenstern’s ‘Jaguar, Zebra, Nerz,
Mandrill’ (jaguar, zebra, mink, mandrill monkey) with ‘Jaguary, Zebruary,
Moose, Apeman’. Where there is a syntactic and grammatical framework to a
nonsensical vocabulary, Bell gives free reign to her creativity:
Translating sound
109
Gruselett
Der Flügelflagel gaustert
Durchs Wiruwaruwolz,
Die rote Fingur plaustert,
Und grausig gutzt der
Golz.
(Morgenstern, Kindergedichte und Galgenlieder
ausgewählt und illustriert von Lisbeth Zwerger,
1992, unpaginated)
(It is only possible to give a sense of associations to certain invented words,

for example ‘Gruselett’ is linked to ‘gruselig’ [weird, creepy]; ‘Flügel’ are
wings and ‘grausig’ means gruesome or ghastly.)
Gruesong
The Flidderfloppet gloameth
Through igglywangled wole.
The great red Fangyre boameth,
And ghastly geeks the Grole.
(Morgenstern, 1992; Lullabies, Lyrics and Gallows Songs.
Selected and Illustrated by Lisbeth Zwerger,
trans by Bell, 1995: unpaginated)
Bell’s idiosyncratic translations of this poem, “The Big Laloola” or the

child’s calendar, indicate that the translator has to rely on literary and linguistic
knowledge and familiarity with children’s poetry to ensure a child-friendly
translation of sound poetry and nonsense verse. The strength of such verse
lies in the freedom and creativity expressed, so the translator, too, should take
a liberal approach to the task while maintaining the essence of the poet’s
technique. The only sure test of any kind of children’s poetry – or prose
originally written to be read aloud – is the response of children to a trial
reading or performance. Reading aloud to friends and colleagues is a first
step, but children will be the best and most honest audience.
Translating poetry requires above all a love of and familiarity with children’s
verse and the will to experiment, but the following may also help:
• Familiarize yourself with classic and contemporary children’s poetry

written in all the languages to which you have access.
• If you are new to translating poetry, find a handbook on poetic
techniques that will introduce you to metric forms, etc. Stephen Fry’s
The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the poet within (2005) is an
entertaining introduction with exercises.
• Pay close attention to the rhythm and metre of any verse you are
translating and read aloud the source text several times.
• If you are translating rhyming verse, decide on the relative importance of
rhyme and semantic content. Will it be necessary to sacrifice elements of
meaning in order to create rhymes in the source language? Might it be
better to seek an alternative metre in the source language?
• Online rhyming dictionaries are a useful tool.
• In some situations working as part of a translating team or pair (see the
example above of Mazzarella and Hannah in the translation of Tove
Jansson’s rhyming picture book) is advantageous.
• Read aloud your draft translation as many times as possible to yourself,
to other adults and, above all, to children.
Discussion points
• Discuss the usefulness of reading text aloud during the translation process.
Is it a strategy you employ regularly? If so, what effect does it have on
the revisions you subsequently make to a translation? Is reading aloud a
strategy you would only use for translating stories for young children and
poetry, or would you also use it at times when translating fiction for
adults? If so, why?
• What is your response to Eco’s statement that it is ‘pointless’ to translate
‘invented language’ where ‘the phonosymbolic effect depends precisely
on the absence of any semantic level’?
• Is it only possible to translate nonsense and sound poetry between pairs
of closely related languages?
Exercises
• Choose a text that has clearly been designed to be read aloud to a

younger child and translate a short chapter or passage. Either translate the
text aloud, using voice-activated software, or pause to read your
translation aloud as often as possible. Test the response of listeners –
preferably children.
• Choose a piece of nonsense poetry or prose for translation into your
working language. Note down all the strategies used to create a rhythm,
specific aural effects or wordplay.
• Translate the following opening verse of Lewis Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”
into your working language:
Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.
Find out whether there is already a version available on the internet and
if so, compare your translation to the web version.
• How might you translate the opening lines of Michael Rosen’s “We’re
going on a bear hunt” into your working language with a primary focus
on a marching rhythm?
We’re going on a bear hunt
We’re going to catch a big one.
What a beautiful day!
We’re not scared.
(Rosen,
We’re
going on
a Bear
Hunt,
1989: 1)
Notes
1 This quotation is taken from: ‘Cheddar or Brie?’ Interview with Madelyn Travis
on Booktrusted website www.booktrusted.co.uk/articles/documents.php4?articleid
=18 [accessed 18 June 2007].
2 www.georgetown.edu/faculty/ballc/animals/animals.html [accessed 12 May 2006].
3 www.englishpen.org/translation-tips-sarah-ardizzone/ [accessed 20 May 2014].
4 www76.pair.com/keithlim/jabberwocky/ [accessed 26 November 2013].
Further reading
Baker, Mona (2011) In Other Words: A coursebook on translation (2nd edn),
New York and London: Routledge.
Bell, Anthea (1998) ‘Translating verse for children’. Signal, 85: 3–14.
Dollerup, Cay (2003) ‘Translation for reading aloud’. Meta, 48(1–2): 81–103.
Fry, Stephen (2005) The Ode Less Travelled: Unlocking the poet within, London:
Hutchinson.
Goucha, Maria João (2005) ‘Translating illustrated poems for children’. Translating
Today, 3: 22–4.
Kreller, Susan (2007) Englischsprachige Kinderlyrik: Deutsche Übersetzungen im 20.
Jahrhundert, Bern: Peter Lang.
Nasi, Franco (2013) ‘Creativity on probation: On translating a nursery rhyme’.
Translation Review, 83(1): 35–49.
6Retellings, retranslation and
relay translation
Children’s literature has always been vulnerable to a high degree of adaptation,

thanks to its subordinate position in the literary hierarchy and its classification
as ephemeral, or ‘popular’ literature (Shavit, 1986). Abridgements, adaptations,
retellings and multimedia versions of well-known children’s stories are
common, so that a spectrum of adaptation from minor alterations to radical
rewriting has long been associated, for example, with fairy tales and the
classics of children’s fiction. Desmet’s (2007) investigation into the radical
adaptation of both classics and popular series fiction for girls translated from
English into Dutch confirms Shavit’s hypothesis that editors, publishers and
translators take far greater liberties with children’s than with adult texts.
Interestingly, Desmet also found that translations of prize-winning, and
therefore high-status, contemporary novels on the whole remain closer to
source texts than abridged and adapted classics or popular series.
The free translation and alteration of popular children’s stories has led to a
proliferation of versions. Characters belonging to a children’s canon that is
familiar across the world, such as Cinderella, Pinocchio, Alice, the Moomins,
Winnie-the-Pooh and the Little Prince, encourage the common perception that
children’s literature is an international literature. Yet the exchange of children’s
stories is often a one-way traffic: the global domination of Western children’s
literature that continues with the Harry Potter series, now acknowledged as
a modern classic, can hardly be described as truly international. Journeys by
‘classic’ children’s stories from the east and the south to Western Europe
and the US are few and far between: the much debated relay translation of
The Arabian Nights (see the section ‘relay translation’ below) and a
translation of the Chinese ballad of Mulan, the basis of the animated
Disney film and picture book, are notable exceptions.
The protean nature of many classic children’s stories results in transforma-
tions that may reduce a carefully crafted text to a basic plot line and a
complex character to a mere cipher, but there is also great potential for literary
creativity in translating or retelling well-known tales for children. Indeed, the
openness of the most familiar characters and plots of children’s literature – in
particular those of fairy tales – to endless recreation calls to mind Bakhtin’s
concept of ‘unfinalizability’ and is a reminder that there will never be an
ultimate, fully
114 Retellings, retranslation and relay translation
realized Cinderella. At various points in the transformation of familiar
characters, translators are called upon to render a particular version of a fairy
tale or the text of an authored children’s classic into the target language in a
new version that will fulfill a specific purpose – perhaps the presentation of
a freshly illustrated and translated version for the Christmas market, or a new
edition of a classic story in the everyday language a child of the twenty-first
century will find easy to read. Alternatively, the demand may be for an
abridged version that will become the text for a picture book edition.
It is not always easy to establish the dividing line between a translation and
a rewriting, given that some translators take a very free approach to the task,
as examples in this chapter will demonstrate. Oittinen even argues that ‘the
main difference between translation and adaptation lies in our attitudes and
points of view, not in any concrete difference between the two’ (2000: 80).
One fundamental difference is that a translator does, of course, work from a
source-language text, whereas a rewriter may base a new version on an
existing translation. A translator who does return to the source text may have
been asked to abridge or update the language of a new edition. Klingberg
discusses modernization as one of the central concepts in the translation of
children’s literature, a process that may include the updating of language
perceived to be old-fashioned, and ‘attempts to make the target text of more
immediate interest to the presumptive readers by moving the time nearer to
the present time or by exchanging details in the setting for more recent ones’
(Klingberg, Ørvig and Amor, 1978: 86).
Alternatively, a translator may have his or her own linguistic, literary or
ideological agenda for creating a new translation. Brazilian author Monteiro
Lobato’s translations of classic English-language children’s books in the
early-twentieth century, for example, served a multiplicity of purposes. First,
Lobato wanted to translate from English in opposition to the dominant tradition
of translating French texts; second he wanted to translate into Brazilian
Portuguese rather than standard Portuguese and third he adapted texts to include
a subversive narrative framework. In his version of Peter Pan, for example,
two children, their liberal-minded grandmother Dona Benta and various dolls
engage in dialogue that is critical of Brazil’s lack of economic progress
(Milton, 2006).
Whatever the impetus for a new translation or retelling may be, it is
salutary
to return to first principles. Oittinen poses basic questions concerning
adaptation or retranslation when recounting her own venture into recreating
some of Hans Christian Andersen’s stories as films: ‘Did I harm the originals
or their author in the process? Did I spoil the children’s reading experience
by offering them “incorrect, unoriginal” interpretations? Or did I give my
readers a fresh new viewpoint of the story?’ (2000: 83). All these questions
are central to the process of adaptation and revision, and are worth bearing
in mind throughout the following discussion of the varied forms of transla-
tion involved in the international publication of fairy and folk tales, and the
retranslation of classics.
Retellings, retranslation and relay translation 115
The translation of fairy tales and folktales
The global popularity of Western fairy tales, particularly those of Charles
Perrault and the Brothers Grimm – Cinderella, Red Riding Hood and Sleeping
Beauty – results in what Jack Zipes has called ‘a non-recognition of transla-
tion’ (Zipes, 2006: 198). Zipes, writing on Grimms’ tales, asserts that: ‘When
most children and adults hear or read “Hansel and Gretel”, they rarely think
that they are reading or listening to a translation’ (2006: 197). Nor are most
readers aware of the degree to which translators, let alone retellers and
adapters, have altered the German source texts of the Brothers Grimm,
merged different versions of the same tale, or drawn on existing
translations. Peter Carter’s so-called ‘fresh translation’ (bookjacket) into
English of Grimms’ Fairy Tales (1982), for example, has the prince in
Cinderella see the ugly sister’s mutilated toe through Perrault’s glass slipper,
when the Grimms’ slipper is in fact golden. Incidentally, Perrault’s slipper
was indeed made of glass (‘verre’); the legendary ‘mistake’ attributed to
Perrault or his publisher of using ‘verre’ instead of ‘vair’ (fur or,
specifically, squirrel fur) seems to date back to a comment by Théophile
Gautier, and was subsequently considered to be a mistranslation in
commentaries on English versions (see Hoffmann, 2015, forthcoming).
A recent version of a selection of Grimms’ tales by celebrated author Philip
Pullman, Grimm Tales for Young and Old (2012), does stick exclusively to
Grimms’ tales, but draws on a number of existing versions of the German
texts. In personal email correspondence, Pullman explained that he had
referred to translations by Jack Zipes, Ralph Manheim, David Luke and D.L.
Ashliman, ‘triangulating’ between these versions as he retold the tales,
while keeping open beside him the 1857 German text as a further reference
point. In Carter’s case a translator chose to merge two different versions of the
same tale, whereas Pullman worked from existing translations to produce his
own fluent versions with minor amendments justified in notes appended to
each tale.
Since the fairy tale is one of the bestselling genres in children’s literature,
it is important for translators to be aware of the range of expectations in the
world of children’s publishing. The marketing for Peter Carter’s version
focused on the word ‘translation’, even though his version is clearly a retelling,
in order to give the publication a cachet of authenticity; Pullman’s edition, on
the other hand, is presented as a set of retellings (‘A clear and humorous
retelling’ – blurb to the Penguin Classics edition), yet in fact it remains –
thanks to the translators he cites – closer to the source text than does
Carter’s supposed ‘translation’. A translator who receives a commission to
produce a new version of a specific fairy tale, or indeed a selection of
tales, should therefore clarify with editor and publisher exactly what kind of
‘translation’ is expected. Although folk and fairy tales were originally told
and recorded for readers and listeners of all ages, they have over time come
to be associated with child readers, so translator and publisher have to
agree on a target audience; this will affect the selection of tales as well as
the nature of the translation.
Whereas Pullman reverts to the original purpose of the tales collected by
the Grimm Brothers by dedicating his retellings to ‘young and old’, artist
Wanda Gág’s intention was to translate solely for the child in her illustrated
selection of Grimms’ tales published in English in 1936 under the title Tales
from Grimm. Freely translated and illustrated by Wanda Gág (further volumes
appeared in 1938, 1943 and 1947). Gág outlined in her preface a three-point
strategy for child-friendly translation:
• to free hybrid stories of confusing passages;

• to use repetition for clarity;
• to employ dialogue to sustain interest in places where she considered the
narrative to be too dense for children.
She also announced her decision to practise censorship by toning down what
she called ‘goriness’. Gág was driven by an artistic desire to produce a small,
illustrated collection for young readers or listeners below the age of twelve
written in fluent, rhythmic prose for reading aloud, so the list above is only
pertinent to her own translation. Each new edition of popular fairy tales, whether
initiated by artist, publisher, reteller or translator, will have its own impetus
and related strategies.
Alongside the widespread dissemination of the tales of Perrault and
the
Grimms, the international and interlingual circulation of folk tales takes
place in many parts of the world in widely differing scenarios. Judith Inggs
reports that contemporary collections of translated or retold folk tales, as well
as tales published in indigenous African languages (for example a collection
by K.V. Sigenu published first in isiXhosa and then translated by Sigenu into
English), ‘constitute a considerable proportion of the relatively small number
of books published for children in South Africa each year’ (Inggs, 2009:
137). In other geopolitical situations, the collection of oral or written
versions of unknown tales and their translation – possibly through an
intermediary – becomes almost an ethnographic endeavor. Instances of the
translation into English of folktales from Russia in the twentieth, and Somalia
and Ethiopia in the twenty- first centuries, will illustrate the strategies
writers and translators have employed to convey national and regional
tales from one language into another, and offer food for thought to
publishers and translators keen to introduce to young readers tales from a
wide range of cultures.
Arthur Ransome (1884–1967) is known in the UK as the author of
the
Swallows and Amazons adventure stories set in the English Lake District.
Less well-known are his journalism and trip to Russia in 1913 with the
express intention of learning Russian in order to retell Russian folktales from
source texts. Ransome set about achieving his aim with gusto in his early
days in Russia, principally by befriending Russian children, purchasing
Russian reading primers and developing fluency as a reader, rather than a
speaker, of the language. His autobiography (1976) presents both what might
seem to be a cavalier approach to translation, and a rationale that places the
child reader
Retellings, retranslation and relay translation
117
firmly in the foreground. Ransome’s description of
his translation strategy is worth citing in full because of his evolving
understanding of the needs of child readers:
One way or another, bad linguist as I am, I was

able at the end of a very few weeks to begin filling notebooks with
rough translations of stories from Russian. The first of these were
more or less word-for-word translations into English from a good
collection of Caucasian tales that I had found in paper-bound parts in a
shop on the Nevsky Prospect. I was to find later that direct translation is
not the way to tell Russian stories to English children, and for a reason
that should have been obvious from the first. The Russian peasant
storytellers, telling stories to each other, could count on a wide range of
knowledge that their listeners, no matter how young, shared with them.
Young English listeners knew nothing of the world that in Russia
listeners and storytellers alike were able to take for granted. Continual
explanation would have been as destructive of the tales as an endless
series of asides. The storyteller, if he were to tell the tales as they should
be told, had to stand between two worlds and never allow himself to
feel that he was showing one world to the other. In the end I used to
read as many variants of a folk-story as I could find and then lay them
all aside while writing the story for myself.
(
Ransome, 1976: 62)
Ransome’s solution to the issue of culture-specific material was to read as

many versions of each tale as he could, and then to retell it from memory.
The result of this distillation of a number of Russian versions of each tale was
a set of interlingual retellings, Old Peter’s Russian Tales, published in 1916,
to which Ransome added a narrative framework in which old Peter sits in the
warmth of a log hut in the snow-covered forest, telling stories to his grand-
children Maroosia and Vanya. Peter France (1995) emphasizes Ransome’s
storytelling voice and the addition of emotional and visual detail, citing
Ransome’s transformation of the opening phrase of “Prince Ivan, the Witch
Baby, and the Little Sister of the Sun” from the detached statement typical of
folk tales:
Then the Tsarevich wept yet more.
(literal translation by Leonard A.
Magnus)
to:
Little Prince Ivan cried bitterly, for he was very little and was all alone.
(Ransome’s translation, cited in France, 1995: 39)
Such sentimentality would not be welcome to the folklorist, but thanks to

Ransome’s reputation as a children’s author and his captivating narratives, the
collection has remained in print since 1916.
Ransome was not alone in rewriting Russian tales from memory. James
Riordan’s The Mistress of the Copper Mountain: Tales from the Urals by Pavel
Bazhov (1974) originated in an oral storytelling session of tales from the Ural
mountains by a headteacher and her pupils when the young Riordan was
bedridden in Yekaterinburg (formerly Sverdlovsk; Riordan, 2006: 74). On
returning to England, Riordan rewrote the tales from memory, checking them
against Pazel Bazhov’s Russian Uralskie skazy, and asserting his intention to
create a set of tales that children would enjoy without being disloyal to the
original Russian. He prefers not to call this process ‘translation’: ‘Incidentally,
I dislike the word “translator”; it does not do justice to someone who provides
a folk tale text in another language. Maybe “communicator” is more
appropriate.’ (2006: 74). Riordan subsequently returned to Russia for five years,
participating in folk tale sessions across Russia that resulted in five further
volumes of tales in English. Familiarity with many tales enabled him to
recognize ‘grammatical peculiarities of folk tale language’ in Russian, such
as the frequent use of diminutives, the pairing of nouns with virtually the
same meaning (‘put-doroga’: path-way) and a variety of stock epithets
(‘kosoi zayets’: cross-eyed hare or ‘sery volk’: grey wolf). Riordan’s
conclusion on conveying folk tales between languages is that ‘to speak the
language is not enough: you must know the culture and the sound of a
people, live cheek by jowl with them and, as the Russians say, consume a
pood of salt with them’ (2006: 75).
Elizabeth Laird certainly shared a pood of salt with the peoples of
the
Ethiopian region, both while living there as a teacher and on her return
forty years later to collect folk tales. As she knew no more than the basics
of the many languages spoken in the area, Laird used a number of
translators as intermediaries, funded by the Ethiopian Ministry of Education
and the British Council. The aim was to produce stories and reading
materials in English for children in Ethiopia, but the project also resulted
in a UK-based website (www.ethiopianfolktales.com) and UK
publications. The Ogress and the Snake and Other Stories from Somalia
(2009) is targeted specifically at young readers, whereas The Lure of the
Honeybird: The storytellers of Ethiopia (2013) includes information on the
storytellers and their localities as a prelude to each tale. Both are welcome in
the UK where schools in a number of areas have pupils of Somali origin.
For translators, the interest in these collections of tales lies in the
strategy
employed for conveying into English stories from the less accessible
languages of the fourteen regions of Ethiopia across which Laird travelled.
Moge Abdi Omer was the chief finder of tales and translator in Somalia and
in Somali, whereas in parts of Ethiopia a collector of stories would translate
them from tape recordings of storytelling sessions in local languages
(including the Afar and Anuak languages) into Amharic, which in turn had
to be translated into English and dictated to Laird. She often worked with
translators to probe the meaning of stock phrases before retelling the stories
in English versions. As in the case of Riordan’s engagement with Russian
tales, Laird discovered the
119
particularities of the Amharic culture, including a
prized form of poetry and prose known as ‘wax and gold’ that relies on
double meanings and compact expressions. She also became familiar with
the customary condensed story opening:
Teret, teret, ye lam beret

[Literal translation: Story, story, cow in byre]
which conveys the meaning:
The evening has come, the cows are shut in the

byre, and it’s time for stories.
(
Laird, 2013: 40).
Each of the publications by Ransome, Riordan and Laird arises from a keen
interest in and longstanding relationship with a specific culture and people,
and each author–translator took the initiative to bring new tales and cultural
insights from Russia and North Africa to the ears and eyes of young British
readers. Translators who wish to explore the potential in the children’s market
for folk tales as yet unknown in the target culture may find that seeking
funding for an ethnographic project is one way forward. There is certainly an
audience for such collections, since a broader knowledge of folk tales beyond
the Western canon is essential to the cultural integration of migrant children
from Eastern Europe or Africa in many schools in Western Europe, with
teachers eager to find books that reflect their pupils’ heritage cultures.
Strategies for translating folk and fairy tales

The following points should be kept in mind when translating folk or
fairy tales:
• Is the collection or the individual tale to be translated intended for child

readers, adults or both? When translating a selection of tales from an
extensive collection, attention should be paid to the selection as well as
the translation of tales for the particular audience and age group the
publisher has in mind.
• Careful consideration should also be given to which edition of the source
text the translator intends to use. The Grimm Brothers, for example,
published a number of editions of their collected tales, and publishers and
retellers have repackaged the tales in many guises in the German-speaking
world since the early-nineteenth century.
• Any translator of fairy tales has to discuss with the editor and publisher
what kind of translation is to be undertaken: a free translation or retelling,
perhaps directed at a modern child audience, or a translation based
closely on the source text (see discussion below on retranslation)?
• When working on the translation of a collection of folk tales from written
or oral sources, a longstanding connection with the culture of the source
text is an advantage, as is the reading and hearing of as many folk tales
as possible to detect patterns such as opening and closing rhymes,
specific phrases or epithets.
• Working with translators who act as intermediaries is an option when the
translator is unable to access all the languages in which tales are told.
The translation and retranslation of children’s classics

Books that enjoy the label ‘children’s classics’ are a hybrid set of texts,
comprising tales written for all ages and filtered through a number of
languages (such as the set of stories known as The Arabian Nights), or stories
originally written for adults that have become part of a Western-dominated
children’s canon. Shavit (1986) discusses a number of mid-twentieth-century
translations from English into Hebrew of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels
and Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, indicating instances of censorship,
abridgement and a loss of irony in the process of translation. Gulliver’s
Travels, for example, is transformed from a satire into a combination of
fantasy and adventure story in line with existing genres in the children’s
literature of the target culture. English-language children’s editions of
Cervantes’ Don Quixote, published between the late eighteenth and early
twenty-first centuries and based on a range of translations from the Spanish,
are often radically abridged distillations of a set of core episodes from the
novel (Lathey, 2012). A journey from adult to children’s literature may
indeed take place in the course of translation, or subsequently in the
adaptation of a translation originally intended for adults into an entertaining
novel for child readers. Rewriters rather than translators may be required for
these transitions, but there is nonetheless a market for updated versions that
require a fresh translation of the source text.
A publisher may commission a new translation of a classic originally
written for children – Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Collodi’s
Pinocchio, Johanna Spyri’s Heidi or Saint-Exupéry’s Le Petit Prince, for
example – for a number of reasons:
• New illustrations by a well-known children’s illustrator may be the

dominant factor in the publication of a new picture book or gift-book
edition of a children’s classic. Publishers of picture book editions of single
fairy tales may or may not require a new translation.
• A publisher may require an updating of archaic language and dialogue
for a contemporary child readership; a particular instance is the gradual
modernization of language in retranslations of children’s texts into Hebrew
(see Du-Nour, 1995, cited in Chapter 4).
• Publishers see the marketing of a ‘new’ or ‘fresh’ translation of a well-
known classic as a means of reviving its popularity. The marketing of
Peter Carter’s hybrid collection of retellings of Grimms’ tales as a ‘fresh
translation’ (see above) is a case in point.
121
• A new translation is occasionally necessary because a publisher envisages
a different audience for the text: for example the scholarly, annotated
edition of a children’s classic for the academic study of children’s
literature (see discussion of Pinocchio below).
• A retranslation of a children’s classic may be a very different textual entity
from previous editions, either in relation to the degree of abridgement in
each version or, in the case of fairy tales, the selection of tales on a
particular theme.
Whatever the reasons for the commission, retranslation remains a common

practice, as indicated in Kieran O’Driscoll’s (2011) study of the twelve trans-
lations from French into English of Jules Verne’s Le tour du monde en quatre-
vingts jours (1873) published between 1873 and 2004, and Sonia Marx’s
analysis of the German–Italian dialogue inherent in multiple translations and
adaptations of Struwwelpeter and Wilhelm Busch’s Max und Moritz from
German into Italian, as well as Collodi’s Pinocchio from Italian into German
(Marx, 1997). O’Driscoll’s analysis of six of the versions of Verne’s novel
appears to contest Berman’s (1990) ‘retranslation hypothesis’, according to
which there is a development in retranslations towards increasingly accurate
renderings, and from target-oriented to source-oriented translations. In the case
of children’s literature, changing perceptions of the requirements of the child
reader and the marketing of children’s fiction, and above all the visual
presentation and illustration of a new edition, are likely to play a far more
significant role in determining translation practice than the desire for a version
that is closer to the source text. Translators can take solace, however, from
the emphasis on the agency of the translator in O’Driscoll’s study. A personal
affinity of the translator with the source culture and professional publishing
expertise (one translator of Verne’s novel was at the time editor of Penguin
Classics) were instrumental in instigating new editions. A further endorsement
of the translator’s art is to be found in O’Driscoll’s findings that ‘the individual
translating agent has an essential role to play in determining the form of the
TT [target text]’ (2011: 252). Despite the existence of previous translations,
translators exhibited stylistic idiosyncrasies that make their versions unique.
The use of existing translations in the process of writing a new translation
is difficult to establish and, judging from the limited evidence
available, subject to great variation in individual practice. Pullman’s
‘triangulation’ between previous translations when retelling, rather than
retranslating, Grimms’ tales contrasts sharply with Anthea Bell’s insistence that
she only looks at other versions of a fairy tale once her own translation is
complete: ‘what has already gone into one’s mind from past readings is quite
enough’ (Bell, 1985b: 142). O’Driscoll (2011: 261) found instances of what
Brownlie (2006) has called the ‘haunting’ of retranslations by earlier
versions; in retranslations of Jules Verne’s novel this became evident in the
use of particular phrases or lexical items. Reading a number of different
translations rather than just one can give a fuller picture of a source text,
whereas over-reliance on one existing
translation leads to such ‘echoes’ and to ethical questions concerning the
reproduction of an earlier translator’s work that were often ignored in the
past. However, the existence of multiple versions of a text, even if
contemporary with one another, does not imply that one is the ‘best’; each
may well serve different needs and have different purposes or emphases. It is
important, then, to be aware of these issues when embarking on a
retranslation and to make clear and considered decisions as to what role, if
any, existing versions will play in your own work.
As was the case with fairy tales, the exact nature of the relationship
between
translator and implied reader is a particular concern in retranslations of the
classics of children’s literature, where an editor may envisage the modern child
reader, the nostalgic adult or indeed the scholar as his or her target readership.
Whereas Wanda Gág had child readers in mind for her modernized translation
of selected Grimms’ tales, Jack Zipes intended his new translation of The
Complete Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm (1987) for adults who would
appreciate his endeavor ‘to respect the historical character and idioms of each
tale and to retain a nineteenth-century flavor’ (Zipes: 1987: xxxvii). One
instance that nicely illustrates the dilemma concerning a translator’s target
audience is that of the new translation of Pinocchio by Ann Lawson Lucas
published in 1996 in the Oxford University Press World Classics series.
Lawson Lucas, an academic with a particular interest in Italian literature,
treads an equivocal path in the preface to her retranslation, stating on the one
hand that her version is a scholarly one and therefore ‘not specifically or
exclusively for children’ (1996: 1); her introduction and extensive notes
certainly endorse that view. To further reassure the adult scholar, Lawson Lucas
justifies her choice of the Italian text of Pinocchio edited by Ornella
Castellani Pollidori in1983, arguing that ‘a translation which itself aims to be
scholarly cannot but be taken from the text of the critical edition’ (1996:
xlv). She also claims that ‘precise equivalence has always been sought’ –
although she does not define the term, and adds that hers is a literary
translation, where ‘it would be no more appropriate to update the
expressions used than it would to modernize the language and style of
Charles Dickens’ (1996: l).
So far the adult, rather than the child, appears to be the intended audience
for this ‘new’ Pinocchio. A commitment to scholarly translation begins to
waver, however, in the rationale that Lawson Lucas presents for domestication.
To foreignize and accentuate Italianness, she argues, would offend her love
of Italy by ‘piling on local colour to the point of rendering the text “folksy”,
quaint, olde worlde’. By toning down its Italian qualities, Lawson Lucas
wants the text to live for her second, less academic audience, which she
names as: ‘English-speaking readers for whom, perhaps, the differences
between traditional pasta recipes, or between the educational writers of
Italy in the 1870s, might be somewhat mysterious’ (1996: xlix–l). Since
Collodi’s recipes and contemporary Italian educational writers constitute
precisely the kind of ‘mystery’ that the scholar would relish, there has
clearly been a shift away from the scholar towards the general reader and
the child in the matter
123
of the adaptation of cultural markers. Lawson
Lucas domesticates the text by changing names – Geppetto to Old Joe,
for example, and substituting shepherd’s pie for ‘risotta alla milanese’ or
steak and kidney pudding for ‘maccheroni alla napoletana’. Paradoxically,
with regard to foodstuffs contemporary British readers – adults or children
– are much more likely to eat Italian meals on a regular basis (pizza, pasta and
macaroni) than the shepherd’s and steak and kidney pies that were popular in
the UK many years ago. Such are the anomalies of a translation that registers
the tension between a dual adult audience (the scholar and the general adult
reader) and a potential child reader who is, after all, implicit in the source
text with its opening direct address to the child reader or listener (see extract
in Chapter 1). Lawson Lucas is well aware of the tightrope she walks,
conceding, for instance, that she may have ‘fallen between two stools’ when
arguing for domestication (1996: l).
An alternative approach to that of Lawson Lucas
is evident in the child-
friendly retranslation of Pinocchio (Collodi, 2002) by
Emma Rose, published in 2003, which directly targets a child audience in the
flowing, modern English of the text and the vibrant, quirky collage
illustrations by Sara Fanelli. Interestingly, Rose does not domesticate to the
same degree as Lawson Lucas. Geppetto retains his Italian name just as
‘risotto alla milanese’ and ‘maccheroni napoletana’ maintain their Italian
flavour as ‘mushroom risotto’ and ‘pasta with tomato sauce’. Rose has faith in
her young audience’s interest in, and tolerance of, Italian culture. At every
stage she has child readers in mind and is judging their likely response, so
that her translation is child-friendly semantically, as well as in its modern
tone.
Does one translation suit all, or should the
publisher of a new version make
a clear choice between the academic audience and
the child? Much depends of course on the market the publisher has in
mind. In the case of the two Pinocchio retranslations the potential readers
of a volume in the Oxford World Classics, with its academic cachet, and
the illustrated gift book from children’s publisher Walker Books are so
different that it is unlikely that one translation could suit both. As Riitta
Oittinen argues in Translating for Children (2000), a translator for children
has to have an understanding of his or her audience and to enter into an
imaginary dialogue with the child – as Collodi does – for the translation to
be successfully received and enjoyed by young readers. On the other hand, an
edition for students and scholars requires the academic paraphernalia of an
introductory essay and notes as well as a period linguistic authenticity that
are unlikely to appeal to children. The two translations of Pinocchio by
Lawson Lucas and Rose bring into sharp focus the dilemma a translator may
face when retranslating a classic children’s text.
Relay translation
Relay translation is a phenomenon that is
acumen or the initiatives of scholars and translators. A hybrid collection of
tales such as The Arabian Nights reached the West via multiple retranslations.
Antoine Galland translated into French a fourteenth-century Syrian manuscript
with additional tales from Baghdad and Cairo, as well as others of uncertain
origin and tales that he may have composed himself. These were translated
from French into the languages of Europe in the course of the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. Other examples include early translations of Hans
Christian Andersen’s Danish tales into English via German editions (Lathey,
2010) and the use of Edgar Taylor’s translation into English as a basis for
versions of Grimms’ tales into languages of the Indian sub-continent (Roy,
2014).
Relay translation occurs in cultural and historical contexts where a source
text is no longer accessible or is difficult to obtain, where knowledge of the
source language is rare, or where a translation becomes so successful that its
origins become obscure and the translation becomes the source of subsequent
versions in other languages, as in the case of Galland’s Arabian Nights. In an
era when translation into English from most European languages should not
be a problem, it is therefore perhaps surprising to see a relatively recent
example such as the translation into English from a German version of the
Russian text of A Hostage to War by Tatiana Vasilieva (1996), which in fact
won the 1998 Mildred L. Batchelder Award presented in the US for the
best translated children’s book of the year.
Relay translation is, however, almost unavoidable in some circumstances and
continues to this day. Eliza Vitri Handayani, founder of an initiative to promote
literary translation in Indonesia (InterSastra), states that many works of
literature in languages other than English are translated into Indonesian from
an English translation: ‘Therefore, rather than only condemning the method,
we had best find a way to improve its working process and the quality of the
end result’ (Handayani, 2013: 64). Relay translation is essential in Indonesia,
or indeed to an enterprise such as that of Elizabeth Laird where oral tales in
local languages were first translated into Amharic and then into English.
Relay translation is better than no translation, although the result may be a
dual or multiple reinterpretation of the source text. One frequently cited
example of the pitfalls of relay translation is that of Andersen’s The Princess
and the Pea where two English translators, Caroline Peachey and Charles
Boner, took as their source text the German translation from Andersen’s
Danish by Georg Friedrich von Jenssen (1839). Jenssen had increased the
number of peas placed under the princess’s mattress to three to make the
story more credible (Hjørnager Pedersen, 2004). Although Peachey corrected
the mistake in later editions of her translation, it still lingers. As Naomi Lewis
writes in a prefatory note to her own 2004 retranslation of selected tales:
‘Sadly, some of these early versions are still in use. Look out for those rogue
peas’ (Andersen, 2004: 13). Handayani’s admonition to find ways to
improve the process and quality of relay translation should therefore be
taken seriously by anyone who – for whatever reason – translates for
children from a previously translated text.
125
Handayani also reports on a series of translation
workshops held in Jakarta, where relay translation was accepted as ‘a
necessary evil’, but with the recommendation that the first translator or
author should be consulted where possible. In an era of the rapid
dissemination of what is frequently a transitory children’s culture,
translators should also be aware that their published translation might
be used as the basis for a relay translation without acknowledgement
or payment.
Discussion points
• Is the collection and translation of folk tales from another culture for
publication as children’s literature to be encouraged? What might be the
objections to such a practice, bearing in mind the power relations
between collectors and storytellers in specific instances that occur to
you?
• On receiving a commission to retranslate a classic text for children,
would
you consider it advisable to consult previous translations?
• Would you undertake a translation into your working language of a
children’s text that had already been translated from its source language,
in other words a relay translation? Under what circumstances might you
consider such a commission?
Exercises
• Collect a number of versions of a tale from the collection of the Grimm

Brothers or Charles Perrault written in your heritage language and com-
pare them; if possible, compare with the German or French source text.
Would you classify some of the versions you have collected as retellings
or adaptations rather than translations?
• You have been commissioned to produce a new translation into your
working language of an internationally recognized nineteenth-century
children’s classic. Choose an appropriate text and consider the potential
purpose and audience for the translation; whether you would read
existing translations before you start and whether – given your chosen
audience
– you would modernize the language of the source text, or seek to
replicate
the style and vocabulary of its publication date. Produce a sample chapter
for the publisher’s consideration, together with a cover letter explaining
the purpose of the project.
Further reading
Brownlie, Siobhan (2006) ‘Narrative theory and retranslation theory’. Across
Languages and Cultures, 7(2): 145–70.
Du-Nour, Miryam (1995) ‘Retranslation of children’s books as evidence of changes
of norms’. Target, 7(2): 327–46.
O’Driscoll, Kieran (2011) Retranslation through the Centuries: Jules Verne in English,
Bern: Peter Lang.
Publishing.
7Children’s
publishing, globalization
and the child reader
Throughout this book, references to editorial practices, international trends and

financial considerations are reminders of the fluctuating fortunes of the
children’s publishing industry. As publishing houses merge or adapt to the
electronic age, translators have to fight hard for adequate remuneration and
visible credit for the work they do. A translator of children’s fiction was, for
many years, at the forefront of the campaign for translators’ rights. Not only
did Patricia Crampton (whose translations into English from Swedish and
German are cited several times in this book) act as advocate for translators
in the UK, but she and a colleague succeeded in persuading a British official
– Britain was the lone objector – to support a UNESCO (United
Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization)
‘Recommendation on the legal protection of Translators and Translations
and the practical means to improve the Status of Translators’ that was
eventually adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO at its nineteenth
Session in Nairobi on 22 November 1976. Publishing has changed a great
deal since then, of course, but translators
– especially those new to the profession – still need to take advice from col-
leagues and professional associations (for example, the Translators Association
in the UK) before negotiating a contract or royalties since practice varies
enormously from country to country and between publishers.
This final chapter will be devoted to what has been called ‘paratranslation’:
extra textual matters such as who decides what gets translated, when and how;
the marketing and packaging of children’s books; international developments
in children’s literature and the role of the translator in aspects of children’s
publishing. It will include a few remarks on multimedia translation, a fast-
growing area of translation for children. Last but certainly not least, attention
will switch to the child reader and recipient of the translator’s work, to
children as translators and to initiatives to bring together translators and child
readers.
International marketing and the professional translator

of children’s books
The children’s literature marketplace is a fast-changing world of corporate
conglomerates and the tenacity of small, specialized publishers. Both meet
at
128 Children’s publishing and the child reader
the annual Children’s Book Fair held in Bologna, Italy, in April every year,
where translation rights are bought and sold. Any aspiring translator for
children would be well advised to visit the Fair in order to gain insights,
current trends and new initiatives in international children’s publishing, and to
see at first hand the overwhelming range of books on offer. In 2011, for
example, Lithuania was the guest of honour, so that visitors had the
opportunity to see (and purchase rights to) some superb artwork in picture
books, as well as to get to know the work of Lithuanian children’s authors.
Such initiatives help to redress the balance at an event dominated by English-
language publications and multinational corporate publishing, and to give
countries trying to establish an indigenous children’s literature in the face
of an influx of translations, particularly from English, a much-needed
introduction into the international children’s book trade. Bologna, too, is
the site of negotiations for the international co-production of picture
books that will involve translators in preparing text for editions in a number
of languages.
The buying of translation rights at Bologna raises the issue of copyright.
Copyright terms vary, but in most countries copyright is based on the life of
the author and extends some fifty or seventy years beyond death. Since
translation operates within copyright law, translators have to obtain the owner’s
permission before publishing a translation. In the case of recent publications,
the translator’s publisher will have secured translations rights from the
publisher of the source text including rights to ebooks and digital editions,
but in the case of a work published decades earlier, copyright may have
resorted to the author or to his or her estate. A translator seeking to retranslate
a modern children’s classic may have to undertake a preliminary
investigation on copyright before suggesting the project to a publisher. If
the book was published more than seventy years ago, and copyright and
intellectual property rights have expired, then the work enters the public
domain, is available for open access and may be translated without the
need to seek permission. Conversely, translators need to keep in mind the
copyright status of their own work. Advice from the UK Society of Authors
website states that:
The law recognises this ‘original’ nature of a translation and affords

copyright protection to the translation, separate from the copyright
protection to which the original foreign work is entitled and also separate
from the protection of someone else’s translation of the same work. The
translator’s ‘moral rights’ are also protected: a translation cannot be used
in a derogatory way and if the translator wishes, it must carry the
translator’s name when it is published.1
It is therefore advisable to research the position on copyright in your own

country and to insist on as prominent a position as possible for your own
name in the published translation.
Who decides what gets translated in the world of children’s books is
part
of a complex trade network including rights deals, with commercial gain
as
Children’s publishing and the child reader
129
the dominant factor. Translators working in a
market where a large proportion of children’s books are translations may be
able to specialize in children’s literature, or even in a specific genre (the
fantasy tale, the graphic novel, etc.), whereas in other contexts translating
for children will form only a small proportion of their work. It is beyond
the scope of this book to examine the publishing scenario in even a small
number of countries in any detail, but research into the translation of
children’s books into English focuses on the special case of the US and the
UK (Lathey, 2010; Goldsmith, 2006), where publication of translations
remains limited and erratic. Translations published each year in the UK
(about two per cent of the children’s book market) are largely from
European countries – particularly France, Germany and Scandin- avia. Since
the foundation of the UK Marsh Award for Children’s Literature in
Translation in 1996, there have been only a handful of non-European
submissions: one translated from Chinese in 1996 (Let One Hundred Flowers
Bloom by Feng Jicai, translated by Christopher Smith); one, the winning entry
for 2001, from Hebrew (Duel by David Grossman, translated by Betsy
Rosenberg) and two entries translated from Arabic (My Own Special Way
by Mithaa Alkhayyat in 2013 and I am a Woolly Hat by Salma Koraytem in
2015, both translated by Fatima Sharafeddine and retold by Vivian French).
The website on Arabic Literature in English2 points to one or two further
very rare examples of translations from Arabic into English for older readers,
namely Mohieddin Ellabbad’s The Illustrator’s Notebook (2006) and Fatima
Sharafeddine’s own translation of her novel Faten as The Servant (2013).
Within the US market, the findings of Annette Goldsmith’s investigative
study of successful (Batchelder Award-winning) publishers of translated
books, based on interviews with five editors who had acquired and edited
winning titles, reveals a continuing reluctance to publish translations. Editors
cite the high cost of production, the difficulty in identifying appropriate
translators, the lack of interest from mainstream US culture, the low level of
sales and the need to rely on readers’ reports rather than their own instincts
(Goldsmith, 2006). Goldsmith discovered that personal connections with
foreign authors, illustrators, translators, editors or agents are by far the most
important channels of information about books worthy of translation; several
editors comment that ‘serendipity is a factor’. Goldsmith’s interviewees twice
mention the work of German author Cornelia Funke as an example of the
kind of bestseller translations they hope to discover. It is therefore ironic that
Funke’s success in translation, too, is the result of a fortunate circumstance.
Were it not for the persuasive enthusiasm of a young German-speaking
relative of an employee in Funke’s UK publishing company, Chicken House,
her books might never have been translated into English at all.
Goldsmith’s research reinforces the message that aspiring translators
of
children’s books should seek all available information on the children’s
book market, attend book fairs, readings by children’s authors, publishing
events and gradually get to know the industry and its key players.
Acclaimed children’s authors who also turn their hands to translation, as
is the case
in a number of countries, will already be well aware of trends in children’s
publishing, but trainees or professionals who lack that experience and wish
to translate for children would be well advised to research the field. Any
available university or adult education course on children’s literature, its
history or contemporary genres will provide a sound basis for work in
children’s publishing or as a translator, as indeed will a reading of journals and
magazines on children’s books, whether local or international (for example
International Research in Children’s Literature and IBBY publications). The
translator’s agency in the publication process may be crucial, so experience of
the industry will also be an advantage. An internship or minor editorial post
in children’s publishing has proved to be a stepping stone to translation
commissions for a number of student translators who returned to Japan
and Taiwan after studying for the Children’s Literature MA at the
University of Roehampton; an alternative first step is to offer to write a
reader’s report on a book you consider to be worthy of translation. A
knowledgeable translator who can write well-informed readers’ reports,
suggest titles to a publisher and gain the trust of an editor who cannot read
the source language will be likely to receive more commissions in the long
run.
Once a new translator has a draft contract, it is advisable to join a
professional association or, where none exists, to contact other translators and
translation networks online. PEN International is a good source of
information and some local branches offer examples of model
translation contracts. National translation associations can also advise
on contracts, payment (whether an advance fee, a flat fee or royalties),
copyright and associated legal matters. The British Translators Association,
for example, will vet contracts and provide a sample basic agreement and
offer business advice and a range of additional resources as well as an email
discussion group and social events, for translation can be a lonely profession.
Translators have to be wary when negotiating payment, as there is a great
variety in practice in any one country, let alone across the world. In the UK
for example, translator Sarah Ardizzone has discovered that practice varies
greatly from publisher to publisher. She describes an optimal scenario of
half the fee being paid on signature of the contract and the other half on
delivery and acceptance of the translation, followed by royalties set at
between one and two per cent from the first copy sold. However, Ardizzone
has found only one publishing house that practices this policy, so second
best is a fee with royalties payable after a set number of copies, usually
around five thousand, have been sold (interview recorded in Lathey, 2010:
186).
A very different professional history from Ardizzone’s is that outlined by
American–Japanese translator Andria Cheng in an essay posted on the
website ‘What is Manga?’ on 8 April 2013.3 This is a story that highlights
the pitfalls and successes of a young translator specializing in a genre that is
popular with young people in Japan and rapidly gaining acclaim ground
across the world. Cheng, who graduated with a degree in Japanese in 2005,
has been a freelance translator from Japanese into English for six years.
Working for an agency
131
seemed to be the only means of entry into the
profession, but she does not recommend this route since it entailed the
signing of restrictive clauses and an undisclosed percentage paid to the
agency. Instead, Cheng advises registration with ProZ.com as the
leading community and network for freelance translators. Cheng’s
account of her payment and the polishing of text through ‘adaptation’ are
fascinating insights into the role of translation in these ephemeral graphic
novels:
In the beginning I got paid a flat fee per

volume of manga. This was anywhere from $400–$700, but when you
get a contract for an entire series of say, ten volumes, it can add up
quickly. I generally translated anywhere from five to seven volumes of
manga a month, in addition to any light novels I was doing at the time,
which I got paid for by the page. When I started translating manga,
someone else would be hired to ‘adapt’ my translation, which basically
means they Americanized my literal Japanese translation. This only
lasted for one manga series I did for Viz called St. Dragon Girl, and
after that I was credited with my own adapting. Most of the time the
adapters don’t even know Japanese, so in my opinion there are much
better results when the translator can adapt their own work.
Once she did receive commissions Cheng found that she still did not make
enough money to live on, even though her translations featured on The New
York Times bestseller list for manga. After the economic crisis of 2008, Cheng’s
income reduced by half, as Japanese publishers cut back production of manga
and turned to in-house translators. There was a corresponding boom in
amateur translations or ‘scanlations’ that originally arose because of a lack of
translated Japanese manga; a similar phenomenon accompanied the
publication of later volumes of the Harry Potter series, as discussed below.
Cheng argues, however, that this does not damage official publication – on
the contrary:
I actually know of quite a few series that were specifically chosen to

be published because of their popularity in scanlation form. Seeing
what scanlated series are most popular and most read can give a
publisher a quick idea of how well a certain series or genre might do.
Chang’s argument raises questions of piracy and legality of which translators

should be aware, but it also illustrates the highly competitive nature of the
profession and the impact of global economic developments. At the time of
posting, Cheng was working on the translation of games for mobile devices
for a Japanese company.
To sum up, translators new to the profession and to translating
children’s
literature would be well advised to find out:
• Which children’s publishers in their own country specialize in translated

• Whether government agencies in either the country of first publication or
the receiving country offer translation grants for literature generally or
specifically for children’s books.
• What kinds of translated children’s books – particular genres, picture
books, etc. – have been published and have sold well in the past five
years or so by visiting local websites that indicate bestselling children’s
book trends.
• What is the range and quality of children’s books published in the
language(s); from and into which he or she intends to translate.
It would also be extremely useful to build networks and gain experience

by:
• Seeking an internship in a children’s publishing house.

• Visiting the Bologna Children’s Book Fair.
• Gaining experience of writing readers’ reports.
• Networking with other translators via professional associations, online
communities of translators, etc.
Professional British translator Frank Wynne offers the following sound

advice:
Never undervalue yourself. Even if you’re just starting out, don’t

work for free, don’t accept a paltry rate that will mean having to rush the
work or scrimp for months. I’m not suggesting for a moment that
publishers will try to bilk you, but knowing how to read a contract, what
the current TA [the UK Translators’ Association] recommended
minimum is, what royalties translators earn and the difference between
cover price and net receipts means you can make informed decisions
before plunging into the vertiginous pleasures of translation itself. Find out
what grants, residencies and bursaries are available – it can be vital
information for you and your publisher. Translation is an art, a pleasure
perhaps even a vocation but it also a profession.
(Wynne,
2013)
Working with editors

Cheng’s reference to ‘adaptation’ as part of the translation and
editorial process is a reminder of the relationship between translator and
editor. Few editors become as closely involved with the translation
process as Aidan Chambers when working with translator Laurie
Thompson (see Chapter 4), but all will expect to intervene at some stage to
a greater or lesser extent. A discussion about expectations on both sides
is advisable at the very beginning of the translation project. When translator
Ros Schwartz interviewed a number of British editors who publish
translations (her focus was not
133
specifically on children’s literature), she
discovered a range of attitudes. One publisher insisted on a number of
editing rounds with a beautiful piece of English literature as the ultimate
goal, while another argued that only a light copy-edit should be necessary
and that leaving ‘oddities of the original untouched’ allows the publisher
to decide what to do (Schwartz, 2013: 19). Other editors like to include the
author of the source text in editorial discussion, just as some experienced
translators prefer to work with authors before submitting a first draft to
an editor. Barry Cunningham, UK publisher of children’s fiction, describes
such triangular discussions between author of the source text, translator and
publisher:
Once we’ve got the translation, we treat it

almost like it’s an entirely new book. This is an opportunity to make the
book work in another language, and so we might go back to the author
and look again at certain points. We’re very active on this front, and all
the German authors we’ve worked with have been very pleased with this
approach. A good example is Kirsten Boie and The Princess Plot – we
directed it in a slightly different way and it’s been hugely successful in
America.
(
Cunningham, 2015)
As Schwartz concludes, ‘Empathy between translator and editor is as

important as empathy between translator and author’ (2013: 20). Sarah
Ardizzone and Daniel Hahn, translators of children’s books into English, both
cite editors who are willing to leave the final decision on suggested amend-
ments to translators or to settle discussion on disputed points amicably;
ideally, a dialogue between editor and publisher leads to improvements to the
final manuscript. Although translators have to recognize that, contractually,
the publisher does have the final say, it is always worth defending a
translation when an editor seems to be mistaken: Anthea Bell has argued with
publishers in lengthy letters, and Astrid Lindgren eventually won the battle
of the dung heap (see Chapter 1).
Globalization: the case of Harry Potter

The rapidly accelerating globalization of bestselling children’s titles in an
international children’s culture has had an enormous impact on both
publishers and translators that became particularly apparent during the
publication of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Although an exceptional
‘phenomenon’, the series represents both a turning point and an illuminating
case study in relation to the international marketing and distribution of
children’s books. Never has the role of translators been so essential to
publishers and keen readers alike as in the travels of Harry Potter. Once the
series became an international success, any publisher who bought translation
rights to the latter volumes had to face what must have seemed an irritatingly
lengthy hiatus while a translator or translators (employing a team increased
Gaps between publication of the English version and translations decreased
as the ‘Potter effect’ gained momentum. Volume one, Harry Potter and the
Philosopher’s Stone, was not published in China until October 2000, a delay
of three years from first publication in the UK; yet for volume five, Harry
Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (published in June 2003), the planned
time lapse between publication of the original and the translation was barely
four months. According to the Publishers Weekly NewsLine website of 2 July
2003, the Chinese translator was in fact the frontrunner in the race to produce
the first translation, with plans for an 800,000 copy first printing in place for
1 October 2003. The Japanese translation of the book, on the other hand, was
not expected until mid-2004, with Germany (November 2003), Finland and
Spain (both early 2004) in between (Lathey, 2005). Such a snapshot of
schedules for the publication of a book towards the end of the series indicates
the commercially driven pressure to which translators were subject in the heady
atmosphere succeeding the publication of a new Potter volume. In response
to an approach from The Guardian newspaper in connection with a pirate
translation of the final volume, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the
wife of French translator Jean-François Ménard commented that her husband
could not talk to reporters as he was translating night and day (The Guardian,
8 August 2007).
Resistance to publishing conglomerates controlling the dissemination of
the
Harry Potter books took a number of forms. One potential blow to the
income of professional translators resulted from the impatience of eager
readers of all ages when faced with a lengthy wait for an authorized translation.
Many decided to bypass translation altogether and read the latest Potter title in
English; indeed the fifth volume of the series, Harry Potter and the Order of
the Phoenix, was the first English-language book ever to top the bestseller list
in France. Some publishers who had bought translation rights resorted to
litigation. German publisher Carlsen, concerned at the number of
enterprising young German readers purchasing Harry Potter and the Order
of the Phoenix in English, sued Amazon.de for selling the Bloomsbury
edition by claiming that different customers were getting different
discounts in violation of German law.4
A second threat to authorized, professional translations was the number
of
pirate and wildcat translations that became available on the internet. On
the one hand, such practice undercuts the work of translators, yet on the
other it raises the profile of translation and encourages inexperienced and
young translators. Russian readers, impatient for a translation of the very first
Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, 1997) for
example, officially published in Russian in 2000, could turn to several
translations on Harry Potter websites (Inggs, 2003: 291). Pirate translations
online continued to appear in many languages as the series developed.
An article in The New York Times of 14 July 2003 reported on the
online
German translation collective ‘Harry auf Deutsch’ (Harry in German),
and on the successful action of the Carlsen publishing house, authorized to
publish German editions of the Potter books, to have the translated extracts
135
from the site. Bernd Koelemann, the computer
engineer who managed the site, set rules that only those who made a
contribution by translating or proofreading could see the final version, and
argued in his defence that excerpts were only posted to attract new
members. Despite Carlsen’s action, the site remained open and included a
section devoted to the highlighting of errors and omissions in published
translations identified by the collective – an unsettling initiative as far as the
professional translator is concerned.
From fake translations – the publication in China
of a novel purporting to
be a translation of Rowling’s latest book is
probably the best known example
– to the iron control over ‘Harry Potter, names,
characters and related indicia’ exercised by Time Warner (producers of the
Potter films), manifestations of the furore surrounding the Harry Potter
series may well be unique but the globalization of its success is not.
Borodo (2006) cites the example of the popular WITCH series:
Originally created in Italian, by Italians, in

Disney Italy, and was later extended to include another sub-series, this
time created by a Danish author for Disney and Egmont. It is now
marketed in about 60 countries including the US, Russia, Turkey, China,
United Arab Emirates and Chile, in the form of comic book magazines,
short stories, calendars, diaries and other accompanying products. It has
also been made into an animation (also broadcast globally), this time
created in France by Disney in co-production with Jetix Europe and
French SIP animation company.
(
Borodo, 2006: 140)
The global reach of children’s culture should alert translators to the potential
consequences of translating internationally successful children’s fiction:
• Translators working on internationally popular texts may find themselves

under duress to produce a translation to extremely tight deadlines;
adequate remuneration and a contract that is to the best possible
advantage of the translator should be negotiated.
• When a publisher decides to employ a team of translators to speed up the
process, terms and conditions should be carefully established.
• Infringement of copyright through pirate translations or illegal downloads
of audiobooks may affect the income of translators, particularly if they
are being paid in royalties from the authorized translation.
• In the wake of the selling of the Harry Potter brand, publishers have
recognized the significance of marketing events. Translators may or may
not wish to participate (see the following section on profiling the
translator).
• Globalization and the international ‘packaging’ of children’s culture may
ultimately result in the pre-release translation of highly popular children’s
Multimedia translation
Since books written for children constitute only one part of global children’s
culture, a few words on multimedia translation for children will serve as an
introduction to a topic that is not the subject of this book but is discussed in
detail elsewhere (O’Connell, 2003; Tortoriello, 2006; Bernal-Merino, 2014).
As will be apparent from previous chapters, translators of children’s books,
especially those intended for younger children, have to pay particular
attention to image and sound and, moreover, children’s translators often
grapple with the prevalence of dialogue – all of which are the fundamentals
of audiovisual translation. Younger children are unlikely to be able to read
subtitles, or their reading speed may well fall considerably below the average
reading speed of 160 words per minute for programmes distributed on DVD
(Tortoriello 2006: 56), so that dubbing is dominant in screen translation
for this age group. O’Connell’s (2003) detailed study of the dubbing of a
German-language animated children’s television series into Irish identifies
the lexical simplification and the reduction of dual address that is also found
in studies of the translation of written texts.
Children and young adults form a significant audience for translated games
for a number of platforms including mobile devices, as Andria Cheng dis-
covered. It is ironic that the term ‘localization’, used by Göte Klingberg (1986)
in some of the very earliest research into translation for children to denote a
translation practice in children’s literature of which he disapproved, now
designates the act of translation in this specialized context. Bernal-Merino’s
(2014) investigation of video game software based on children’s books
indicates that the localization of such texts requires considerable technical
acumen, since localizers have to translate multiple formats, including operating
instructions, coded text and periodic game updates. Translating games for child
viewers demands that such expertise be combined with an understanding of
the child audience and the role of text and image in games designed for
children.
The following are a few preliminary suggestions on multimedia translation
for the young:
• A translator with a particular interest in children’s culture and experience

of translating children’s literature may decide to seek training in order to
specialize in the translation of children’s fiction and children’s films (or
indeed children’s theatre); it would be advisable, at least in the first
instance, to specialize in media products targeted at a broadly based age
group of very young, older children or young adults.
• A translator who has translated street language and the adolescent
vernacular of a particular language may be well equipped (once again,
after undertaking appropriate training) to undertake the subtitling or
dubbing of a film featuring young adults.
• Translators for screen or stage should avoid the pitfalls of linguistic
simplification, the reduction of dual address and other unnecessary
modifications to the source text discussed in this book.
Children’s publishing and the child reader 137
Profiling the translator
Historically, translators were often invisible and unaccredited in publications,
and none more so than the translators of children’s literature (Lathey, 2010).
Fortunately, times have changed, since translators’ names appear on title pages
and even on book covers far more frequently than in the past – although a
simple reference to the copyright of an ‘English language edition’ without
reference to a translator still occurs in some translations into English, despite
the advice from the Society of Authors cited above. Translation for children
is now recognized as a literary activity worthy of awards; in the English-
speaking world, the Mildred Batchelder Award in the US is given to the
publisher of the winning translation and the UK Marsh Award for Children’s
Literature in Translation to the translator; in Germany translated works may
be submitted for the Deutsche Jugendbuchpreis, and the IBBY (International
Board of Books for Young People) Honour List has three categories: one for
authors, one for illustrators and one for translators.
There are promising signs, too, of editorial practices that draw the child
reader’s attention to the translator, and indeed to the fact that the book is a
translation. Swiss publisher NorthSouth books, for example, included a brief
profile of translator J. Alison James in a number of illustrated hardbacks she
translated from German for the New York NorthSouth imprint. Similarly, at
the back of the English edition of Tove Jansson’s picture book, The Book about
Moomin, Mymble and Little My, young readers are introduced on the back
inside cover to both Silvester Mazzarella, translator of a literal version of the
text, and poet Sophie Hannah who composed the final version in verse. Other
postscripts give equal weight to author and translator in child-friendly
prose. Guy Puzey, translator of Maria Parr’s Waffle Hearts (2013) from the
Norwegian Vaffelhjarte (Parr, 2005), is presented in a manner likely to appeal
to young readers with the information that Puzey ‘grew up in the Highlands
of Scotland, just a short swim from Norway’ (Parr, 2013: 240), whereas an
introduction to Australian translator Judith Pattinson at the end of her English
version of Ursula Poznanski’s German fantasy Erebos (2010; trans 2012)
emphasizes the impact of childhood reading on the first step towards becoming
a translator:
at an early age her reading transported her (in spirit) to the other side
of the world – to chalets with flower boxes and hay-filled attics, and
school hikes through the Swiss Alps full of friendly strangers who
greeted you with ‘Grüss Gott!’ and ‘Bonjour!’. As a consequence she
couldn’t wait to study European languages [. . .]
There is, moreover, a salutary indication in the final sentence that

translators may need to supplement their income:
Judith has worked as a translator, production editor, web designer

and bookseller; her early working life included stints in a shoebox
factory, as
a London barmaid and as a checkout chick in her grandparents’ grocery
stores.
Even more in tune with the reading experience the child has just enjoyed
is the editorial decision to have the voice of the book’s protagonist introduce
the translator, as is the case in the English translations of Johanne Mercier’s
French–Canadian books about a young boy named Arthur. In a postscript to
Arthur and the Mystery of the Egg, Arthur addresses young readers directly:
Daniel Hahn translated the stories. He took my French words, and

wrote them in English. He said it was quite a difficult job, but Cousin
Eugene said he could have done it much better, only he was busy that
day. So we got Daniel to do it, as he’s translated loads and loads of
books before. He also said he wrote the words for a book called
Happiness is a Water Melon on your Head, but everyone else said that
book was just plain silly.
Daniel is almost as clever as Cousin Eugene and he lives in England
in a house by the sea with a lot of books.
(Mercier, 2013:
41)
These examples signal the potential for engaging the interest of child
readers in the translation process through the packaging and marketing of a
translated text. Translators are likely to have very little control over these
aspects of the production process, but they can insist on accreditation that is
displayed as prominently as possible and seek to persuade publishers to add
a brief note on the translator as well as the author. As noted in the Introduc-
tion to this volume, there may be cultural or ideological differences in the
peritextual material attached to source and target texts, just as the cover, format
and size of a translation (especially of an illustrated or picture book) sometimes
differ radically from the original version (see Chapter 3), but a translator who
insists on being informed about editorial and production decisions from the
outset may have some influence on the final outcome.
Children and translation

It is fitting to close this chapter and the book by placing the child –
so frequently present in the imaginations of children’s publishers, editors,
authors and translators, and yet so rarely consulted – centre stage as
translator, reader and respondent. Anecdotal evidence from adults suggests
that children are not always aware that they are reading a translation, and
may only discover many years later that a childhood favourite was originally
written in another language. Many report that they certainly detected and
enjoyed an aura of difference, but only learned retrospectively about the
linguistic and cultural transition that lay behind that sensation. Dutch
children’s author Isabel Hoving recounts in an article entitled “In praise of
imperfect translations” (2006) how
139
she became sensitized to language and style
through the childhood reading of translations, mostly from English:
An added delight, which I could not quite put

into words at the time, was the curious rubbing against each other
of language, in the Dutch translations, and the story. Something
seemed to be wrong: reading these translated books was like squinting,
and adopting double vision. The Dutch names did not fit the English
characters . . . Nothing was quite right: the prices in the shops, the
public transport, the meals, the time of leaving school. Everything was
lopsided, twisted, queer. Being a child, I took this as it came, without
really criticizing it. I had discovered the book’s artificiality . . . the
mismatch between words and the things to which they referred, was in a
curious way exciting. I realized that some words were wrong, and others
were awkward, old-fashioned or inappropriate. In other words, I
discovered style.
(
Hoving 2006: 39)
For Hoving, cultural context adaptation – a practice still hotly debated by

translators of children’s books (see Chapter 2) – actually instigated a revelation
of the intricacies of style. Drawing on this childhood experience, she argues
in favour of allowing children the ‘taste’ of unpronounceable names and even
of ‘bad’ translations:
I would deplore the loss of all traces of the incommensurability of

languages: the artificiality, clumsiness and inappropriateness. The
imperfect translations of the past were dear to me, as they taught me so
much about the gap between languages and cultures, about the essential
otherness, the untranslatability, the opacity of other cultures.
(2006:
43)
Hoving’s memory of translations suggests that foreignization and linguistic

awkwardness (the ‘décalage’ Sarah Ardizzone advocates – see Chapter 5)
have an ultimately positive effect on some young readers, just as her
reaction to translations is a reminder of the emotive power and numinous
quality of much childhood reading that may turn a particular translation –
good or bad
– into a precious and memorable reading experience. Oittinen cites an
adult
colleague’s reaction to a new Finnish translation of Winnie-the-Pooh:
‘The translation is good and yet it is bad, for this is not the same Pooh bear
that I learned to know, not the same bear who gave us words to quarrel and
love, play and grow’ (2000: 99).
A few additional glimpses of children’s direct responses to translations
can
be found, for example, in the academic study by Tiina Puurtinen on
Bell’s ‘Translator’s notebook’ of 1980 indicates a keen – even pedantic –
interest on the part of child readers in the constant challenges she and Derek
Hockridge faced when translating names in the Asterix series: ‘Kind little boys
write to us with suggestions for Gaulish names; in fact we’re usually
searching for more Roman names, since the basic Gaulish characters go on
from book to book’ (Bell, 1980: 133). Riitta Oittinen, too, refers to an
instance of sharp observation when recalling how her small sons pointed
out the mismatch between the colour of the caterpillar in the picture (blue)
and the text (green) in a Finnish language edition of Alice in Wonderland,
freshly illustrated by Tove Jansson. Rather than referring to the Finnish
translation with which her illustrations were to be published, Jansson (a
Swedish-speaking Finn) drew on the original English text and a Swedish
translation, where the caterpillar is decidedly blue. The Finnish text, a
translation by Anni Swan of 1906, refers to a green one. Both boys were
understandably annoyed: ‘Why did you say that the caterpillar is green? It’s
blue in the picture!’ (Oittinen, 2000: 96). Translators and publishers of
translated picture books beware! Much can be learned from insights into the
reading of translations in childhood; this is an area ripe for research, the
results of which would be an invaluable addition to specialized training for
translators of children’s books.
As for young people as translators, some have of course already taken the
initiative by seizing the opportunity offered by access to the internet in the
scanlation of raw manga scans, or the collective translations of the Harry Potter
series. The German collective ‘Harry auf Deutsch’ mentioned above included
sixteen-year-old Britta Sander, responsible for the translation of two pages of
the book (Amy Harmon, The New York Times, 14 July 2003), and in 2007 a
sixteen-year-old French high school student was arrested for posting his own
pirate translation of the final volume, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,
online (The Guardian, 8 August 2007) two months before the publication date
of the official French translation.5
How, then, might translators and professionals in children’s publishing
capitalize on the linguistic competence of children and young people across
the world? The current trend towards the public visibility of authors can be
extended to those translators who wish to participate in children’s book
roadshows, readings at children’s book festivals, in bookshops, schools,
libraries and community centres. Not all translators are temperamentally
suited to such jamborees, but those who are can become ambassadors for
their profession and engage children and young people in the
excitement of translation.
Translator Sarah Ardizzone describes one such initiative in the literary
translators’ journal In Other Words (Ardizzone, 2011). Ardizzone was the first
curator of the Translation Nation project for schoolchildren aged seven to eleven
in the UK that began both in London, where many children are multilingual,
and on the Kent coast in schools with a large percentage of children from
Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. A series of three-day creative
workshops run by literary translators and volunteer assistants enabled these
141
children to work on the translation of a
favourite story from their heritage language (the languages of the first
cohort in London included Amharic, Gujurati, Italian, Polish, Portuguese,
Somali, Spanish, Telugu and Urdu) into English, with the aim of taking part in
a competitive performance. The winning stories appeared on the Translation
Nation website, hosted and funded by the Stephen Spender Trust and the
Eastside Educational Trust. One of the major aims of the project is to
encourage the next generation of literary translators and to enthuse
monolingual English-speaking children by involving them in the editing and
polishing of English versions of the stories to which their classmates have
introduced them. As Ardizzone comments: ‘this is a project where we have
to tear up the usual job description of what it means to be a literary
translator – an energizing if challenging step for everyone’s continuing
professional development’ (2011: 7). Such was the success of this first phase
that the project has now developed into a ‘Translators in Schools’ programme
funded by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and delivered by the
Stephen Spender Trust that also offers translator training.6 Trainees spend
three days on lesson planning, classroom management, visits to schools and
work with a mentor. Translation MA students who take part in such projects
appreciate the opportunity to engage with a potential audience for their
work.
An alternative strategy to engage child readers is one-off school visits by
the author of a source text and the translator, where both introduce the book,
give readings and answer children’s questions. When well-prepared in advance
by teachers, these visits are enriching to all involved, as are community
events involving translators. A ‘translation slam’, where two translators
prepare a translation of a passage from a book by a children’s author and
discuss their relative solutions to translation challenges – in the presence of
the author of the source text if possible – offers enlightenment and inspiration
to audiences of young people. An experiment conducted at the Southbank
Centre’s London Literary Festival, where members of the public were
invited to translate an entire book across two weekends with the assistance of
professional translators in a ‘Spectacular Translation Machine’ could also be
adapted to a school or community setting (Reece, 2013).
From child translators to technological advances such as ebooks,
online
publications and desktop publishing programmes; from radical changes in
the international book trade to an expanding role for the professional
translator specializing in children’s books, the twenty-first century brings
exciting new ways of working – as well as commercial pressures that
challenge the already financially precarious existence of the translator. To
translate for the young is to address the next generation through the voice of
a source-text author that brings both enjoyment and responsibility.
Children’s translators are in the vanguard of new challenges and initiatives,
as the Harry Potter story and the encouragement of budding translators in
schools demonstrate. Children’s literature is a dynamic medium of
immense cultural and developmental significance and, as I hope this book
has shown, its translation is therefore as demanding as it is inspiring.
Discussion points
• What are the negative and the positive aspects for translators of the
current globalization of children’s culture?
• Brainstorm ways to engage children’s interest in the process of translation,
either in the presentation and marketing of published translations, or in
talks, events, workshops, online tutorials and virtual collaborations.
Exercises
• Undertake research into children’s publishing in languages into which you

intend to translate by contacting at least one publisher (and, if possible,
a translator) directly in order to establish methods of payment and
conditions attached to the translation of children’s books.
• Write a reader’s report for a publisher on a children’s book you would
like to translate. Include a description of similar books that have been
successful in the target language, or a gap you have identified in the
target- language market, together with information on the availability of
translation rights from the source-language publisher. Estimate an
appropriate age group for the book and, after a thorough reading of the
publisher’s online catalogue, comment on how it might enhance the
publisher’s list or a particular section of it. If possible, include sales
figures in the country of origin and translated extracts from favourable
reviews.
• Analyze the profiles of translators specializing in the translation of
children’s literature on the ProZ.com website, note down some prompts
and compose a first draft of your own professional profile.
• How might you present yourself and your work briefly to a child reader
in a translator’s preface or in a few lines on a book cover?
• As the translator of a recently published children’s book, you have been
invited to plan, together with the author of the source text, a joint
question- and-answer session with activities for a class of
schoolchildren (choose an appropriate age-group). How might you
introduce your work as a translator to your target age group? What
kind of activities might you design to help them to understand the
nature and challenges of the translation process? (Bear in mind that
some – perhaps the majority – of the children will be monolingual and
you may therefore have to use slang or dialect expressions as examples
of ‘translation’ between dialect and the standard language, and between
different social registers).
Notes
1 www.societyofauthors.org/translation-faqs [accessed 22 January 2015].
2 http://arablit.wordpress.com/ [accessed 20 May 2014].
3 https://whatismanga.wordpress.com/2013/04/08/9b/ [accessed 28 March 2014].
143
4 Publisher’s Weekly NewsLine for 2 July 2003. Available at: www.researchgate.
net/.../236717914_The_Travels_of_Harry_International_Marketing_and_the_
Translation_of_J._K._Rowling’s_Harry_Potter_Books [accessed 30 June 2015].
5 The Guardian, 8 August 2007, www.theguardian.com/world/2007/aug/08/france.
harrypotter [accessed 30 June 2015].
6 www.translatorsinschools.org [accessed 30 June 2015].
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Children’s and young people’s literature

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Letters, London: Heinemann; trans. Ernst van Altena as De Puike Postbode of:
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Aiken, Joan (1976) The Angel Inn, Joan Aiken’s translation of a story by the
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Al Sanea, Rajaa (2005) Banat Al Riyadh, Beirut and London: Dar Al Saqi; trans.
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wird anders, 1990, Oldenburg: Lappan.
Browne, Anthony (1998) Voices in the Park, London: Transworld Publishers; trans.
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Burgess, Melvin (2003) Doing It, London: Andersen Press.
Burningham, John (1970) Mr. Gumpy’s Outing, London:
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of the literary work, Carbondale, Il: Southern Illinois University Press.
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155
Roy, Malini (2014) ‘The Grimm Brothers’ Kahaniyan: Hindi Resurrections of the
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Shavit, Zohar (1986) Poetics of Children’s Literature, Athens: University of Georgia
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Shavit, Zohar (2012) ‘From Time to Time: Fictional dialogue in Hebrew texts for
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Translators’ Journal, 53(1): 139–53.
Index
adaptation 113–21 Borodo, M. 135

adult 1–4, 16–7 Brooks, C. 19
Ahlberg, A. 52–4 Browne, A. 59–60
Ahlberg, J. 52–4 Browning, R. 57
Aiken, J. 24 Brownlie, S. 121
Al Sanea, R. 73 Burningham, J. 59, 87–8, 98–9
allusions 50–3
Alsina, V. 86–7 Carle, E. 97
animal cries, translation of 96–8 Carlsen 134–5
Appleyard, J.A. 6–7 Carroll, L. 1, 39, 107
Arabian Nights 123–4 Carter, P. 115
Arabic 73, 129 censorship 6, 25–7
Ardizzone, S. 43, 80–3, 94–5, Chambers, A. 3–4, 26, 29, 44–5, 78
130, 133, Cheng, A. 130–1, 136
140–1 Chesterman, A. 27–8
artefact, the book as 67–8 child 5, 15, 138–41; development 6–8,
Artmann, H.C. 103 59; narrative 20–3; reading 28;
artwork see picture book response 27–9; spoken language
Astérix 33, 46, 61, 99–100 87–90; and translation 10
aural translation see sound children and translation 138–41
children’s literature 1–4, 8–10;
Bakhtin, M. 15, 113–4 classics 120–3; definitions of
Ball, C. 97 2–3;
Bamberger, R. 9–10 emergence of 5–6; poetry 101–7
Barrie, J.M. 2, 6 Collodi, C. 5, 17–8, 50–1
Baumann, P. 59–60 Comenius, J. 55, 96
Beard, S. 53 comic strip 61–8
Bell, A.: culture 37, 44, communication 15, 27–9; see also
46; dialogue narrative
83–4; narrative 28–9, copyright 128
31–3; Crampton,
publishing 139–40; P. 42, 94–6,
retranslation 121; 127; dialogue
sound 99–100, 108–9; 75, 84–5; narrative 24–5, 28
visual 55, creativity in translation for children 8,
57–8, 61 89, 95
Berman, A. 121 critical and theoretical perspectives
Bernal-Merino, M. 136 8–10
Boase-Beier, J. 9–10 crossover fiction 1–2
Bologna book fair 127–8
158 Index
cultural context 5–7, 23–7, 54; cultural figurative language 98–101
context adaptation (Klingberg) 37–8; Finland 30–1
cultural explanations 39; cultural Fischer, M.B. 80
markers 37; domestication 38; food folk tales 115–20
39–41; foreignization 38; glossaries food 39–41
41–4; localization 38; mediation France, P. 117
37–9; names 44–50; pronouns 31; Frank, A. 2
references 50–3; retranslation 113, Funke, C. 129
118–20; slang 75–83
Cunningham, B. 133 Gág, W. 116, 122
curricula 6 Galland, A. 123–4
cursive script 65–7 Garton, J. 88
gender 7, 45; nouns and pronouns 31
Dahl, R. 3–4, 20, 45, 74, 86–7, 95 globalization 127–35
Daoudi, A. 73 glossaries 41–4
Davies, E.E. 49 Goldsmith, A. 129
de Brunhoff, J. 33–4, 68 government 6, 25–7
de Groen, E. 41–2 graphic novels 61–2, 130–1
Defoe, D. 120 Grimm, J. 115–6
Desmet, M. 52, 59, 113 Grimm, W. 115–6
developmental issues Guène, F. 43, 82
6–8 Guggenmos, J. 99
dialect 83–5; regional
83–5 Haas, M. 33–4
dialogue 62–3, 71–5, Hahn, D. 8, 20–2, 83, 133
90–1; of younger hand-lettering 65–7
children 87–90; Handayani, E.V. 124–5
idiolect 85–7; Hannah, S. 104–6
regional 83–5; slang Harry Potter 32, 75, 79–80; culture
75–83 40–1, 46, 48–50; globalization
discussion points 12; culture 133–5
54; Hazard, P. 8
dialogue 90; narrative 34–5; Hebrew 73–4
publishing 142; retranslation Helanen-Ahtola, M. 30–1
125;
Eco, U. 107–8 Helweg, M. 88–9
sound 110;
economic visual 68
conditions 5, 127–32 Hergé 84–6
Du-Nour,
editors M. 73
132–3 Hirano, C. 23, 39, 71–2, 74–5
dual address
Engström, M.16–7
52–3 Histoire de Babar 33–4, 62–3, 65–6
Dünges, P. 73 H.M. 102–3
Enzensberger, historical contextualisation 24–5
Dusinberre,
Epstein, B.J.J.45
8 Hoban, R. 56
Even-Zohar, B. 73–4 Hockridge, D. 33, 46, 61, 84, 99–100,
exercises 12; culture 54; dialogue 90–1; 139–40
narrative 35–6; publishing 142; Hoffman, H. 106–7
retranslation 125; sound 110–1; Hollindale, P. 3, 8
visual 69 Hoole, C. 55, 96
Hopkins, E.S. 24
Faerber, G. 76 Høverstad, T.B. 46
fairy tales 115–20 Hoving, I. 138–9
Fernández López 26–7 humour 98–101
Index 159
ideology 6, 26–7, 114 McDowell, M. 2–3
idiolect 85–7 McEwen, A. 47
idioms 98–101 manga 130–1
illustration see picture book markets 127–32
Inggs, J. 116 Martin, W. 77
inscriptions 64–5 Maruki, T. 1
international markets Masaki, T. 59
127–32 Massee, M. 47, 56, 77
intertextuality 50–3 materiality of the book 67–8
interventions 23–5 Matsuoki, Y. 32
intervisuality 52 mediation 39
irony 18–20, 59, 98 Mercier, J. 21
Iser, W. 27–8 Milne, A.A. 16–7
Iwamura, K. 97 modernization 114
Iwasaki, C. 58–9 Momoko’s Birthday 58–9
Jansson, T. 65–6, 104–6, 140 Morgenstern, C. 108–9
Japan 31–2 Moriarty, J. 26
Japanese 74–5, 97 multimedia translation 136
Jentsch, N. 75 Murray, M.A. 51
Jolly Postman 52–4
Jones, O. 33–4 names 44–50
Juva, K. 30–1 narrative communication 7, 15–6, 27–9;
censorship 25–7; child narrators 20–3;
Kaindl, K. 62, 64, 66, 68 discussion points 34–5; dual address
Kästner, E. 18–9, 38, 47, 56, 76–7 16–7; exercises 35–6; stylistic and
Katz, W. 40 linguistic issues 30–4; voice 17–20
Klingberg, G. 37–9, 114, 136 Netley, N.S. 20, 30, 45, 74
Koelemann, B. 135 Nikolajeva, M. 58
Korschunow, W. 87–8 nonsense verse 107–10
Kreller, S. 102–3
Kruger, H. 6, 139 O’Connell, E. 136
Kuick, K. 78 O’Driscoll, K. 121
Oittinen, R. 9, 93, 139–40; narrative
Laird, E. 118–9 communication 15–6, 27–9;
Larsson, S. 50 retranslation 114, 123; visual 55–6,
Lawson Lucas, A. 51–2, 122–3 58
Lear, E. 102–3 onomatopoeia 63–4, 96–8
Lepman, J. 8–9 Oranskii, I.V. 48–9
Lewis, C.S. 18, 40 O’Sullivan, E. 5, 9, 16, 23, 39, 59,
Lewis, N. 124 76–7
Lindgren, A. 1, 7, 11; dialogue 73–4, Owens, C. 63
84; names 45, 50, 53; narrative 19,
21–2, 26; sound 95–6; visual 57 paratranslation see publishing
Lindo, E. 26 Paton Walsh, J. 3
linguistics 30–4, 62–4, 72–5; see also Pattinson, J. 137–8
dialogue Pausewang, G. 42–3
Lobato, M. 6, 114 payment 130
localization 38, Peachey, C. 124
136 Pérez Falcón, M. 97
Lonsdale-
Cooper, L. 63–4,
66, 84–6, 94
160 Index
picture book 33–4, 58–65, 104–6; social factors see cultural context
as artefact 67–8; strategies for the adaptation
translation of 60–1, 68; typography sociology 28
65–7 sound 93–6; exercises 110–1;
Pinocchio 5, 17–8, 50–1, 122–3 nonsense verse 107–10;
place names 48–50 onomatopoeia 96–8; poetry 101–7;
poetry 101–7; nonsense verse translation for reading aloud 93–4;
107–10 wordplay 98–101
Pohl, P. 44–5, 78 Sousa, C. 28
Potter, B. 41 spoken language see dialogue
pronouns 31 Spyri, J. 24
Prøysen, A. 88–9 Stamenkovic Roganovic, V.
publishing 127–32; editors 132–3; 79
markets 127–32; multimedia 136 Stolt, B. 26, 57
Pullman, P. 115–6, 121 street talk 75–83
puns 98–101 style 30–2, 98–101, 139
Puurtinen, T. 10, 30–1, 93, 139 Swift, J. 120
Puzey, G. 137 Tate, J. 33
Ransome, A. 116–8 tense 32–4
reader response 27–9 Thompson, H. 86
reading 28, 30–2, 94–6; see also Thompson, L. 78
sound Thomson-Wohlgemuth, G. 6
reception 10 Tintin 62–3, 84–6
regional Tolkien, J.R.R. 45
dialect 83–5 Translating Children’s Literature
register 10–1
76–9 translator 127–32, 137–8; agency
relay 121;
translation censorship 27; culture 38–9, 118–20;
123–5 profiling of 137–8
relocation voice 23–5
38 Trier, W. 56
Repiso, Turner, M. 63–4, 66, 84–6, 94
M. 97 Twain, M. 51–2, 106–7
retelling typography 65–7
115–21 UK 129
retranslati US 81, 129
on 120–3,
125 van Altena, E. 52
Reutersw van Coillie, J. 9, 76
ärd, M. 26, Vasilieva, T. 124
33
Satrapi, M. 62 Venuti, L. 38, 41
Reynolds,
Schiffer, E.L. 16–7 Verne, J. 121
K. 8
Schwartz, R. 132–3 Verschueren, W. 9
Riordan,
Scott, C. 58 verse 101–7;
J. 118 F. 39
Sester, nonsense 107–10
Rose, E. F. 73, 129
Sharafeddine, visual 52, 55–8, 60–7; see also picture
123
Shavit, Z. 1, 5, 74, 76, 113, 120 book
Rose,
slang J. 2
75–83 voice 17–20, 23–5
Rosen, von Jenssen, G.F. 124
M. 103–4
Rosenblat
t, L. 27–8
Index 161
Wall, B. 15–6 Yumoto, K. 23, 39, 71, 74
Ward, R. 42–3
Weir, R. 93 Zanettin, F. 62–4, 66–7
Winnie-the-Pooh 16–7 Zipes, J. 122
wordplay 98–101 Zitawi, J. 52, 64–5, 67–8
Wynne, F. 132 Zwerger, L. 108

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Translating Children’s Literature

Translating Children’s Literature is an exploration of the many developmental

• narrative style and the challenges of translating the child’s voice;

This is the first practical guide to address all aspects of translating

Gillian Lathey is Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the University

Translation Practices Explained is a series of coursebooks designed to help

Titles in the Series:

Conference Interpreting Explained

For more information on any of these titles, or to order, please go to www.

Typeset in Times New Roman

1Narrative communication with the child reader 15

2Meeting the unknown: translating names, cultural

3Translating the visual 55

4Translating dialogue and dialect 71

5Translating sound: reading aloud, poetry, wordplay

6Retellings, retranslation and relay translation 113

7Children’s publishing, globalization and the child reader 127

My interest in this book arises from a passion for children’s literature in my

What is children’s literature?

[. . .] children’s books are generally shorter; they tend to favour an active

Since McDowell made these assertions, longer works with ambiguous

Paton Walsh, cited in Hollindale, 1997: 40)

I must pause here to tell you something about Mr Victor Hazell. He

Chambers identifies a number of changes for the younger audience,

Creativity in translating for children

Critical and theoretical interest in translation for children

Children and translation

The purpose of this book

I believe that children have a marvellous ability to re-experience the

• Based on your own reading experience, what do you consider to be the

Dual address in children’s literature

Eule lebte in den Kastanien in einem alten, schönen

Eule wohnte an einer Adresse namens ‘Zu den

Schiffer omits both the parody of estate agent hyperbole in ‘old-world

C’era una volta . . .

In such instances the translator has to imagine telling the story to an

When Shirley Temple was no more than seven or

Kästner trusts his young reader’s ability to appreciate an implicit comment

The translator of the published English version again resorts to italics to

Thus the translator draws attention to the humour inherent in Lindgren’s

If the translation process is a two-part thing – reading, writing (inhaling,

Hahn refers here to his own translation of French-Canadian children’s

The translator’s voice: interventions

Every day, Monday to Friday, we have cram school

Where appropriate, storytelling of this kind is likely to encourage a younger

The Nazi regime led by Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in

Crampton, who began her career as a translator at the Nuremberg trials of

Censorship and ideological messages

• Integrate contextual explanation (explicitation) into a text as seamlessly

Narrative communication and reader response theory

• Oittinen’s application of Rosenblatt’s ‘aesthetic’ and ‘efferent’ reading

[. . .] but surely there is no use for a Scarecrow stuck on a pole in the

The first translation, by Marja Helanen-Ahtola, reads:

[. . .] mutta keskelle jokea seipään päähän joutuneella Variksenpelättimellä

The second, by Kersti Juva:

[. . .] mutta sellaisesta variksenpelätistä, joka roikkuu kepin nenässä

Puurtinen comments that Helanen-Ahtola uses the Finnish premodified

I am most reluctant to use the historic present in English in a middle-of-

Babar se promène tres

One day Babar was having a lovely ride

Specific cultural markers: food

Language and translator Sherbet lemon English back translation

• Consider leaving cultural markers – coins, foodstuffs, settings – untrans-