The Translation of Racism in Literary Works: A Comparison Between Two Dutch Translations of To Kill a Mockingbird

After the Black Lives Matter movement started, racism has become strictly taboo in the United States. This increased political correctness has also spread to the Netherlands, whose government has only recently apologised for its contribution to slavery. As a result of this increased political correctness, taboo and offensive language has been a frequently studied topic in Translation Studies for the past few decades. While the translation of racial slurs has been studied frequently in subtitling, there has not been as much research into the translation of racist discourse in literary works. Moreover, publications that studied racism in literary translations have mostly focused on the translation of racial slurs or Black Vernacular, rather than analysing racist language in general. In this thesis, a comparative analysis is conducted in the form of a close reading of a selection of phrases that contain racist and racial discourse in To Kill a Mockingbird and its two Dutch translations...Show moreAfter the Black Lives Matter movement started, racism has become strictly taboo in the United States. This increased political correctness has also spread to the Netherlands, whose government has only recently apologised for its contribution to slavery. As a result of this increased political correctness, taboo and offensive language has been a frequently studied topic in Translation Studies for the past few decades. While the translation of racial slurs has been studied frequently in subtitling, there has not been as much research into the translation of racist discourse in literary works. Moreover, publications that studied racism in literary translations have mostly focused on the translation of racial slurs or Black Vernacular, rather than analysing racist language in general. In this thesis, a comparative analysis is conducted in the form of a close reading of a selection of phrases that contain racist and racial discourse in To Kill a Mockingbird and its two Dutch translations. The first Dutch translation appeared in 1961 and the retranslation was published in 2010. The aim of this case study is to analyse how the translator of the Dutch retranslation was affected by changing social norms regarding racism in his translation choices. The results show that the 2010 retranslation generally contained fewer offensive terms compared to the first Dutch translation. While it is not always clear what motivated this translation strategy, the analysis shows that in some cases it is definitely the result of changing social norms regarding racism. It can therefore be argued that the 2010 retranslation is more politically correct than the 1961 translation. Furthermore, it can be concluded that while the retranslation hypothesis has been debunked, the 2010 translation does appear to be a more literal rendering of the source text than the 1961 translation.Show less

Leiden University Student Repository

Documents

In Collections

The Translation of Racism in Literary Works: A Comparison Between Two Dutch Translations of To Kill a Mockingbird