In 1986, Zohar Shavit claimed in her Poetics of Children’s Literature that children’s literature’s position may cause translators to neglect the beauty and structure of a source text and focus more...Show moreIn 1986, Zohar Shavit claimed in her Poetics of Children’s Literature that children’s literature’s position may cause translators to neglect the beauty and structure of a source text and focus more on the readability of the target text. According to Shavit, the lower position of children’s literature leads to the fact that a translator of children’s literature is permitted to take greater liberties in a translation, leading to what Antoine Berman would call a “textual deformation”. Among translators and translation theorists, disagreement exists on whether staying close to the source text, which would lead to a foreignizing effect, or bringing the text to the reader, creating a domesticating effect, is the most desirable strategy. Lawrence Venuti and Antoine Berman are strongly in favor of foreignizing translations, and do not deem the readability of a translation as most important, but instead advocate exposing the reader to foreign concepts from the source text and language. In order to test Zohar Shavit’s claim that children’s literature is translated rather freely and link it to Lawrence Venuti’s accusation that Anglo-American translations are predominately domesticating, I will analyze six children’s books and their translations by means of a selected number of Antoine Berman’s deforming tendencies, i.e. rationalization, expansion, clarification, and the destruction of expressions and idioms.Show less
This thesis discusses the peripheral position of children's literature in the literary polysystem and the consequences this position has on the translation of it. The hypothesis is that this...Show moreThis thesis discusses the peripheral position of children's literature in the literary polysystem and the consequences this position has on the translation of it. The hypothesis is that this position will lead translators of children's literature to use a more laissez-faire approach when translating. With the use of Antoine Berman's model of deforming tendencies, texts for adults and texts for children and their translations are compared to see whether more "negative" changes occur in children's literature, thus showing that children's literature is indeed situated in a peripheral position in the literary polysystem.Show less
