Leiden University Student Repository

Berg, Lente van den (2020)

Culture-Specific Items in Translation: Comparing Translation Strategies in Gender-Specific Children's Literature

Master thesis | Linguistics (MA)

This thesis is located in the field of Children’s Literature Translation Studies (CLTS). A large research gap in this field is the translation of gender-specific children’s books. This thesis, therefore, aspires to reveal a possible gender bias in the way these books are translated by comparing their translations of Culture-Specific Items (CSI’s). For the analysis, two popular gender-specific children’s book series were chosen which have been translated from English into Dutch: the Dork Diaries series, written by Rachel Renée Russell, and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, written by Jeff Kinney. Using Aixelá’s classification of translation procedures, the translation strategy used for each culture-specific item (domestication or foreignization) was determined. Subsequently, a comparative analysis revealed that CSI’s in in the boys’ books series were domesticated much more often than those in the girls’ book series (a difference of 22%), which suggests that a gender bias is indeed...Show moreThis thesis is located in the field of Children’s Literature Translation Studies (CLTS). A large research gap in this field is the translation of gender-specific children’s books. This thesis, therefore, aspires to reveal a possible gender bias in the way these books are translated by comparing their translations of Culture-Specific Items (CSI’s). For the analysis, two popular gender-specific children’s book series were chosen which have been translated from English into Dutch: the Dork Diaries series, written by Rachel Renée Russell, and the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, written by Jeff Kinney. Using Aixelá’s classification of translation procedures, the translation strategy used for each culture-specific item (domestication or foreignization) was determined. Subsequently, a comparative analysis revealed that CSI’s in in the boys’ books series were domesticated much more often than those in the girls’ book series (a difference of 22%), which suggests that a gender bias is indeed present in the way CSI’s are translated in boys’ and girls’ books.Show less

Author

Berg, Lente van den

Faculty

Faculty of Humanities

Specialisation

Translation in Theory and Practice (Dutch/English)

Supervisors

Dorst, A.G.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en