Oittinen Riitta, Garavini Melissa. Translating Picturebooks: Revoicing the Verbal, the Visual and the Aural for a Child Audience

New York: Routledge, 2017. — 225 p. — ISBN 978-1-315-11248-0.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.First Steps
Purpose and Background of the Book
Materials, Perspectives, and Methods
Introduction to the Translation of Children’s Literature
Structure of the Book
Picturebook Characteristics and Production
Definitions of Picturebook
Intertextuality and Intervisuality in Picturebooks
Words and Images Interacting
The Polyphony Aspects of Picturebook Production
Towards a New Way of Production: Digital Picturebooks
The Translator Between Images, Words and Sounds
Reading Strategies: Reading Elements and Entities
The Visual Dimension of Picturebooks
Performance and Reading Aloud
Characterization in Picturebook Translation
Cultural Mediation in the Verbal and in the Visual
Dogs and Bulls: Translating Cultures
The Canine Kalevala: Translating Finnish Culture
The Story of Ferdinand: Comparing the Spanish and Finnish Versions
Translating Picturebooks into Arabic: The Cases of The Three Little Pigs and The Little Mermaid
Translating the Chinese Classic Mulan into Contemporary Bilingual Picturebooks
Translating the “Sense of Place” in Travel Books for Children
Where the Savages and Chaps Are: Translating Sendak
Translators’ Diaries
Translator’s Diaries: Cooking With Herb, Romeus and Julietta, and The Curing Fox
Encounters with an Illustrated Text: An Analysis of Translation Students’ Diaries
Last Steps