Translating Picturebooks

Revoicing the Verbal, the Visual and the Aural for a Child Audience

Riitta Oittinen, Anne Ketola, Melissa Garavini

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351622165
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Translating Picturebooks examines the role of illustration in the translation process of picturebooks and how the word-image interplay inherent in the medium can have an impact both on translation practice and the reading process itself. The book draws on a wide range of picturebooks published and translated in a number of languages to demonstrate the myriad ways in which information and meaning is conveyed in the translation of multimodal material and in turn, the impact of these interactions on the readers' experiences of these books. The volume also analyzes strategies translators employ in translating picturebooks, including issues surrounding culturally-specific references and visual and verbal gaps, and features a chapter with excerpts from translators' diaries written during the process. Highlighting the complex dynamics at work in the translation process of picturebooks and their implications for research on translation studies and multimodal material, this book is an indispensable resource for students and researchers in translation studies, multimodality, and children's literature.

1
First Steps

A translator is like the fabricating fox fabulist of fables: swiftly and wittily she moves from one position to another and keeps out of sight with all her five senses open and ready.

(Oittinen 2008, 76)

Picturebook stories are built in the interaction of two different modes, words and images, which convey information employing profoundly different means. While picturebooks have interested researchers for decades, relatively little attention has been paid to the study of their translations. So far, research on picturebook translation has been published mainly in the form of individual articles, which by necessity approach the subject from a very limited point of view. The most comprehensive monograph written about the translation of picturebooks so far has been Riitta Oittinen’s Kuvakirja kääntäjän kädessä (“Picturebook in the Hand of a Translator”) published in Finnish in 2004, which has served as the inspiration for the book you are reading now. The most recent book-length contribution on translating the verbal, visual, and aural culture in picturebooks has been written in Italian in 2014 by Melissa Garavini, La traduzione della letteratura per l’infanzia dal finlandese all’italiano: l’esempio degli albi illustrati di Mauri Kunnas (“Translating Children’s Literature From Finnish Into Italian: Mauri Kunnas’s Picturebooks as a Case Study”). Our aim has been to make this research available for an international audience, as well as to update it with recent, international research on picturebook translations made by others, offering an unprecedentedly comprehensive view of the subject.

1.1 Purpose and Background of the Book

Aim of the Book

In this book, we set out to examine picturebook translation from a variety of theoretical and analytical viewpoints. We are interested in everything that goes into picturebook translation. We analyze translators’ solutions and reflect on the reasons behind them. We examine how the interpretation of picturebook illustrations can change when the verbal part of the story is translated into a new language. We also shed light on the publication process of picturebooks, including the co-printing of different translation versions and the effects this has on the translation, as well as the role publishing houses and editors play in the translation process. At the heart of this book is the role of the illustrations in the translation of picturebooks. We examine how pictorially presented information is treated in the translation process (What is done?), what strategies translators apply to these elements (How is it done?), as well as contemplating the reasons behind these choices (Why is it done?). In addition to studying word–image interaction, we also discuss sound: translating the picturebook to be read aloud and the auditory features of digital picturebooks.

Throughout the book, we also emphasize the importance of training translators to read, hear, and re-interpret verbal, visual, and aural information, and emphasize the need to include multimodal issues in translator training in universities. We encourage the field of Translation Studies and research into Children’s Literature to take advantage of the new research opportunities offered by the arrival of digital technology. Although some universities have already implemented translation courses with emphasis on multimodal and audiovisual translation, more must be done regarding the localization of games, websites, and digital picturebooks.

Background of the Research Problem

Our research interest certainly stems from our nationalities: the three authors represent countries in which a significant portion of the children’s literature published annually consists of translations. For instance, in Finland, out of all the children’s books published between 2010–2014, 64% were translations, 80% of which were translated from English (Finnish Institute for Children’s Literature, 2014). As far as the Italian editorial market is concerned, almost half of the children’s books come from abroad; in the last few years, the percentage of foreign works has been oscillating between 45 and 54% (Bartolini and Pontegobbi 2008, 2014). As in Finland, most of the foreign books come from English-language countries. In other words, the situation in countries such as Finland and Italy is very different from that of many English-speaking countries, where translations constitute a much smaller share of the children’s literature published annually. Unfortunately, despite our efforts, we have been unable to find similar statistics from English-speaking countries. Yet, a report published by Literature Across Frontiers (2015) offers statistics of translated literature in the UK and Ireland from three sample years of 2000, 2009, and 2011. According to the report, only 39 translated children’s books were published in 2009 and 60 were published in 2011 in the UK and Ireland combined. We find these numbers surprisingly low. In Finland, the corresponding numbers were 931 books in 2009 and 842 books in 2011—and one should also remember that the population of Finland is less than a tenth of the UK and Ireland.

The translation of children’s literature (including picturebooks) remains “largely ignored by theorists, publishers and academic institutions,” as pointed out by Eithne O’Connell (1999, 208). María González Davies (2008, 118) writes in the same vein: “Fairy tales and translations have mainly been perceived as noncanonical—peripheral—in most communities.” This book sets out to fill this gap in research. We feel that picturebooks, as well as their translations, are somewhat underappreciated. Excluding classics such as Maurice Sendak’s works, picturebooks are not as highly regarded as books addressed to older readers. One reason for this poor(er) status could be that they are mistaken as simple literature; such views were expressed by the translation students we examine in subchapter 5.2. Finally, picturebook translation is typically not a lucrative activity. In Finland, picturebook translators are usually given a flat fee corresponding to a couple of day’s work—although sometimes a higher fee may be offered for more demanding texts with rhymes or other more complicated narrative styles. It seems to us that translation commissioners might not fully recognize the complexity of the picturebook translation process.

O’Connell discusses the status of picturebook translation in the following way:

Poor status, pay, and working conditions can perpetuate a vicious circle in which publishers are often presented with what they deserve, namely, translated work which could be a good deal better. One development which could have far-reaching implications in terms of breaking this cycle would be to improve the skills (and thus the professional confidence) of those who translate children’s fiction. Academics are as guilty as anyone of contributing to this problem of poor reception and low prestige. How many undergraduate or for that matter postgraduate programmes in Translation Studies offer students the chance to develop skills in this field in either core or optional courses?

(1999, 212)

The weak status of picturebook translation is also reflected in the invisibility of picturebook translators. For example, in book reviews and advertisements in newspapers, translators of novels for adults are usually mentioned but picturebook translators are not. Picturebook translators’ names are also often printed on the back cover of the book in very small print, while the translators of adult literature are usually mentioned on the front page. All in all, this reflects an attitude of picturebook translation being only a way of passing time and having something nice to do in between translating other, more serious works.

We find it very hard to understand the present situation, because picture-books are a child’s first encounter with what books are about and what they mean. In addition to being entertaining, picturebooks also teach the child about other cultures, about naming things, and about understanding the symbolic meanings of words and images. Picturebooks are the child’s first visit to the art gallery, as is often said. The aim of our book is to show how demanding translating picturebooks really is and how great a responsibility picturebook translators have as their influence on a child reader’s mind and imagination will stay with the reader permanently.

Our analyses of picturebook translations also aim to show just how much picturebooks can change in translation. We are convinced that such discussion can be eye-opening for those who work with children’s literature but have never really looked deeply into its translation. In Finland, for instance, it is not rare to see high-profile newspapers and magazines publish somewhat debatable reviews on translated children’s books. These reviews can provide a nuanced description of the original author’s style of writing and word choices, without taking into consideration that these have actually been produced by the translator of the book (e.g., Lehtonen in Helsingin Sanomat, 2015). To give another example, children’s literature scholars and librarians across the world will often provide recommendations on picturebooks, based, for instance, on the books’ pedagogical potential or entertainment value. It is vital to keep in mind that when these books travel from one language and culture to another, these qualities can change; for an example of this, see the discussion on the Finnish translation of Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Peter Rabbit below in subchapter 1.3.

1.2 Materials, Perspectives, and Methods

In our selection of research material, we have aimed to provide our readers with a diverse assortment of picturebooks and their translations, and offer an overview that is comprehensive linguistically, culturally, temporally, and stylistically. Our research material has been written in a variety of languages, including Finnish, Karelian, English, German, Swedish, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, and Chinese, and it addresses cultural factors in many European countries as well as China, Morocco, and Brazil.

Some of the books in our research material have been translated by ourselves, most have been translated by others. Some of the books are picturebook classics, Where the Wild Things Are and The Tale of Peter Rabbit being, perhaps, the most famous of these; some are less known internationally, such as the books by the Finnish picturebook creator Mauri Kunnas. Some of the books represent lesser-known versions of famous stories, such as the Arabic versions The Three Little Pigs and The Little Mermaid (see subchapter 4.3). We have also included translations of books that are recent, such as Elena Agnello and Adrie le Roux’ I am Alex from 2016 (see subchapter 3.4), and others that are older, such as Munro Leaf and Robert Lawson’s The Story of Ferdinand from 1936 (see subchapter 4.2). Yet, it is not our aim to provide a historical account of the development of picturebook translation, as such a topic would undoubtedly merit a book of its own. The discussion of the Not for Parents travel book series in subchapter 4.5 provides a glance at nonfiction picturebooks and their international reception. Most of the books we examine have been published in a traditional book format, but we also reflect on the digitization of picturebooks and the changing nature of picturebook production.

In this book, we examine the varying contexts and conditions in which picturebook translation can take place. We discuss the way in which the previous versions of a famous story need to be taken into account when translating a new one, with examples from a children’s version of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (see subchapter 5.1). We introduce examples of the same story being published in different illustrations, a picturebook and an illustrated story (see discussion on the Spanish and Finnish versions of The Story of Ferdinand in subchapter 4.2). We also provide examples of how the same story can appear very different when presented with different illustration formats (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland in subchapter 3.1). We also discuss what can happen if picturebooks are translated via a pivot language—see Elsa Beskow’s Puttes äventyr I blåbärsskogen (published in English as Peter in Blueberry Land) and Sven Nordqvist’s Pannkakstårtan (published in English as The Birthday Cake) in subchapter 5.2. In addition to translations, our research material also includes translation diaries written during the translation process of picturebooks. We examine translator trainees’ diaries as well as diaries by a more experienced professional: Oittinen has kept a translator’s diary for several years and has recorded her reflections on the verbal and the visual in the books she has translated.

To sum up, our research material is analyzed from a variety of perspectives and it is used to address different types of research questions, ranging from an analysis of how translation might be affected by factors such as the translator’s child image or differences between the source and target cultures, to a translator’s self-reflective account of the picturebook translation process. In order to accommodate for such variety of research questions, the shared method of analysis needs to be flexible enough to allow slightly different uses and approaches. Our guiding method of analysis used throughout the book could be described as multimodal comparative analysis (Garavini 2014). Instead of outlining a strict procedure of analysis, this term describes the various stages of analysis involved in our examination process: reading the original and the translated picturebook separately, analyzing word–image interaction in both books, comparing the verbal source text with its translation—focusing on any apparent changes or manipulations of the text—and comparing these changes to the images in order to determine whether the images provided a motivation for the changes made.

1.3 Introduction to the Translation of Children’s Literature

Translating for children is no innocent act. As Oittinen writes in Translating for Children, “Translating is rewriting, and any rewriting situation is an issue of ideology and power. Everything we write tells about our views of life, our ideologies, and who we are as human beings” (2000, 134; see also Lefevere 1992). The starting point of this book, too, is looking at translating as rereading and rewriting for new audiences in new cultures. Every time a picturebook is translated, the interpretation of the entire multimodal context changes—the illustrations appear different when examined in relation to a new verbal story. In the same vein, every time a story is illustrated, the context of understanding the story changes. In translating, all the changes are multiplied and made more complicated, because the audience and culture inevitably change, too. As Maria Tymoczko (1999, 41) posits, “Every telling is a retelling. … Any literary work is dependent on texts that have gone before and, moreover, lit...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• Acknowledgments
• 1 First Steps
• 2 Picturebook Characteristics and Production
• 3 The Translator Between Images, Words and Sounds
• 4 Dogs and Bulls: Translating Cultures
• 5 Translators’ Diaries
• 6 Last Steps
• List of Contributors (in Order of Appearance)
• Index