Retaining Style in Subtitles for Children: A Functional and Stylistic Approach to Subtitling The Gruffalo

Recent years have shown an increase of research into audiovisual translation, but the field of audiovisual translation for children remains severely understudied. Academically, this field is understudied because of the low prestige of subtitling in general and children as the audience in particular (O’Connell, 2003). In practice, subtitles for children are uncommon, because children’s programs are often dubbed (O’Connell, 1999). Rhyme for children is not considered a ‘serious’ area of translation in any medium (Nasi, 2012), but combined with subtitles this field has barely received any academic attention. However, scholars in the field of literary translation argue that style and content together form the meaning of a text and therefore style is important to maintain in translation (Boase-Beier, 2014). Consequently, the purpose of this thesis was to identify the stylistic features present in the English original and Dutch translation of the children’s illustrated book The Gruffalo,...Show moreRecent years have shown an increase of research into audiovisual translation, but the field of audiovisual translation for children remains severely understudied. Academically, this field is understudied because of the low prestige of subtitling in general and children as the audience in particular (O’Connell, 2003). In practice, subtitles for children are uncommon, because children’s programs are often dubbed (O’Connell, 1999). Rhyme for children is not considered a ‘serious’ area of translation in any medium (Nasi, 2012), but combined with subtitles this field has barely received any academic attention. However, scholars in the field of literary translation argue that style and content together form the meaning of a text and therefore style is important to maintain in translation (Boase-Beier, 2014). Consequently, the purpose of this thesis was to identify the stylistic features present in the English original and Dutch translation of the children’s illustrated book The Gruffalo, before creating new, style-centered subtitles to accompany the movie of the same name. A functional analysis based on Nord (2005) showed that the functions of the texts were to entertain children and teach them new elements of language. A linguistic and stylistic analysis after Leech & Short’s checklist (2007) showed that the most important stylistic features in the book and its translation were rhyme, rhythm and repetition. To recreate the functions in translation, the stylistic features needed to be transferred into Dutch. Style-centered subtitles were created in the form of an annotated translation, but it proved difficult to forget about subtitling’s vulnerability: that the audience can hear the original and see the translation at the same time. Nevertheless, I will argue that it is possible to create style-centered subtitles for children, as the annotated translation does contain rhyme, rhythm and repetition.Show less

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Retaining Style in Subtitles for Children: A Functional and Stylistic Approach to Subtitling The Gruffalo