TRANSLATING FOR

CHILDREN

R I I T TA O I T T I N E N

GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC.

A MEMBER OF THE TAY L O R & F R A N C I S G R O U P
N E W Y O R K & L O N D O N / 2000
Published in 2000 by
Garland Publishing, Inc.
A Member of the Taylor & Francis Group
29 West 35th Street
New York, NY 10001

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002.

Copyright © 2000 by Riitta Oittinen

Cover and original illustrations by the author

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means,
now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and
recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without
permission in writing from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Oittinen, Riitta.
Translating for children / Riitta Oittinen
p. cm. — (Garland reference library of the humanities ; v. 2150.
Children’s literature and culture ; v. 11)
Based on three of the author’s previous works: the author’s dissertation (1993)
entitled I and me, I am other, Kääntäjän karnevaali (1995) and a work in Finnish
on three Finish translations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice books (1997).
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8153-3335-8 (alk. paper)
1. Children’s literature—Translating. 2. Translating and interpreting. I.
Title. II. Garland reference library of the humanties ; vol. 2150. III. Garland
reference library of the humanities. Children’s literature and culture ; v. 11.
PN1009.5.T75 O38 2000
418’.02—dc21 00-022931

ISBN 0-203-90200-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-90204-1 (Glassbook Format)
CHAPTER 1

Beginning
The problems do not depend on the source text
itself, but on the significance of the translated
text for its readers as members of a certain
culture, or of a sub-group within that culture,
with the constellation of knowledge, judgement
and perception they have developed from it.
—MARY SNELL-HORNBY, TRANSLATION STUDIES.
AN INTEGRATED APPROACH

Situation and purpose are an intrinsic part of all translation. Translators

never translate words in isolation, but whole situations. They bring to the
translation their cultural heritage, their reading experience, and, in the
case of children’s books, their image of childhood and their own child
image. In so doing, they enter into a dialogic relationship that ultimately
involves readers, the author, the illustrator, the translator, and the pub-
lisher.
The translator-centered approach to the study of translation differs
sharply from older, more traditional approaches that are focused on ab-
stract structures of equivalence, “matches,” or “fidelities” between texts
(in words). Thus, I do not agree with views that see translation as a mech-
anistic act—pertaining to texts as such, to the author’s intentions and is-
sues of language. In this way, the translator’s action is relegated to
obscurity, if not invisibility.
In my book, I am concentrating on human action in translation, and I
hope to shed some light on the translator, the translation process, and
translating for children, in particular. My intention is to demonstrate how
the whole situation of translation takes precedence over any efforts to
discover and reproduce the original author’s intentions as a given. Rather
than the authority of the author, I focus special attention on the intentions
of the readers of a book in translation, both the translator and the target-
language readers. What are the intentions of the publishers and buyers of
books? What is the overall purpose of translations for different audi-
ences—children, for example?

3
4 Translating for Children

PURPOSE AND PROPOSITIONS

Every time we speak, we respond to something

spoken before and we take a stand in relation to
earlier utterances about the topic. The way we
sense those earlier utterances—as hostile or
sympathetic, authoritative or feeble, socially
and temporally close or distant—shapes the
content and style of what we say.
—GARY SAUL MORSON AND CARYL EMERSON,
MIKHAIL BAKHTIN. CREATION OF A PROSAICS

Translating for children shares one major problem with translating for
adults: like other translation, it is anonymous, even invisible. Several
scholars have pointed out that while we acknowledge “original” litera-
ture written for child readers, we do not acknowledge translating for
children. We do not hegemonically think of translators as human beings
with their own child images. Yet translators cannot escape their own ide-
ologies, which here means: their child images.
Child image is a very complex issue: on the one hand, it is some-
thing unique, based on each individual’s personal history; on the other
hand, it is something collectivized in all society. When publishers pub-
lish for children, when authors write for children, when translators trans-
late for children, they have a child image that they are aiming their work
at—it is this act of aiming work at children that I am interested in study-
ing, whether the resulting work is actually read by children of a certain
age or not.
Moreover, when speaking of child and children’s literature, we
should be able to define them somehow. Yet there is little consensus on
the definition of childhood, child, and children’s literature. For this rea-
son, I have avoided explicit definitions of these topics but prefer to “de-
fine” them implicitly, according to whatever publishers or authors or
translators think of as children. I see children’s literature as literature
read silently by children and aloud to children. Since I deal mainly with
the translation of illustrated stories for children (e.g., picture books), I
am referring to children under school age (seven in Finland). However,
childhood is a fluid concept, so many of my observations about translat-
ing for children under school age apply to translating for older children
as well.
Children’s literature has its own special features: children’s books
Beginning 5

are often illustrated and often meant to be read aloud. Illustrations are of
major importance in children’s literature, especially in books written for
illiterate children. The illustrations in picture books may often be even
more important than the words, and sometimes there are no words at all.
Illustrations have also been of little interest for scholars of translation,
and there is hardly any research on this issue within translation studies.
Reading aloud, too, is characteristic of books for children; the only
time we ever seem to read aloud to adults is in special situations, as when
we read love poems to lovers or when friends or family members are in
the hospital, incapacitated, and we wish to help them pass the time. I will
concentrate on these two central issues of translating for children: read-
ing (silent and oral reading) and the relationship between words and il-
lustration. How does a translator take all these different issues into
consideration in the situation of translating an illustrated story for chil-
dren?
One question clearly takes precedence when we translate for chil-
dren: For whom? We translate for the benefit of the future readers of the
text—children who will read or listen to the stories, children who will in-
terpret the stories in their own ways. This question also brings up the
issue of authority. If we simply aim at conveying “all” of the original
message, at finding some positivistic “truth” in the “original,” we forget
the purpose and the function of the whole translation process: the transla-
tion needs to function alongside the illustrations and on the aloud-
reader’s tongue. However, if we stress the importance of, for instance,
the “readability” of the target-language text (or rather the readability of
the whole situation), we give priority to the child as a reader, as someone
who understands, as someone who actively participates in the reading
event.
I consider that reading is the key issue in translating for children:
first, the real reading experience of the translator, who writes her/his
translation on the basis of how she/he has experienced the original; sec-
ond, the future readers’ reading experiences imagined by the translator,
the dialogue with readers who do not yet exist for her/him, that is: imagi-
nary projections of her/his own readerly self. The translator reaches
toward the future child readers, who are the beneficiaries of the whole
translation process—the child and the adult reading aloud. Translators
are readers who are always translating for their readers, the future read-
ers of the translation.
In many instances I will be dealing with adaptation for children,
which is often considered a key issue in children’s literature. Despite the
6 Translating for Children

generality of the concept as traditionally defined, adaptation is typically

only defined in terms of how it deviates from the original. It is thus taken
to be different from a translation, which is supposed to be the same as or
in some way equivalent to the original. In related ways, adaptation and
equivalence are both vague concepts. There is every reason to reevaluate
these long-held ideas: an original, the first text, and its translation, the
second text, are invariably different, as the translation has been manipu-
lated (in the positive sense) by its translator. I believe that along with the
new developments within translation studies, the problems with respect
to adaptation and equivalence deserve more in-depth consideration. As a
whole, I do not consider them separate or parallel issues: all translation
involves adaptation, and the very act of translation always involves
change and domestication. The change of language always brings the
story closer to the target-language audience. Much of the disagreement,
for example, in adaptation versus censorship, reflects changes in culture
and society, our child images, and our views about translating.
In this book my main propositions are that despite similarities like
translating in a situation and translating for some readers, the dialogic
situation of translating for children differs in significant ways from that
of translating for adults; that the situation of translating for children in-
cludes several other elements besides the text in words (e.g., the transla-
tion of picture books); that the translator for children, too, should be
clearly visible; and that the translator, by being loyal to the reader of the
translation, may be loyal to the author of the original.
Mary Snell-Hornby has remarked that hermeneutic theory has long
been bound up with translation theory, and it certainly has been with
mine.1 It is not my aim to set norms for translating for children but to try
to understand what processes are at work in translating for children, that
is, how we communicate with children through translation. Thus I will
be dealing with translation as cross-cultural communication—including
child and adult culture—especially from the point of view of different
readers.
In addition to being cross-cultural, translation studies are interdisci-
plinary studies. They draw on several other branches of learning, among
them literary studies, philosophy, and psychology. This expands the
scale of this discipline: the process of translation takes precedence over
the study of texts as such. Thus the structure of the book is “progressive”.
In the first section of Chapter 1, “Beginning,” I introduce the subject and
map the general situation of translating for children; in the second sec-
tion of Chapter 1, I concentrate mainly on situation and equivalence, and
Beginning 7

I briefly review how I see translation studies as the basis for translating
for children.
In the second chapter, “Readers Reading,” I deal with reading as one
of the central issues in translating: translators are reading not just for
themselves but also for the future readers of translations. In the last sec-
tion of Chapter 2, I consider the issue of performance, so important in all
translation and of vital importance in translating for children. The third
chapter, “For Whom?” concentrates on my inner child—my “own” child
concept—through the eyes of child psychologists and linguists. As
adults and translators, we bring a concept of the child and childhood to
our work. Where does the child fit into the story, into society? Can child
and childhood be defined? I also deal with the differences between chil-
dren and adults in an effort to understand why we see children as we do
today. As translators for children, we should have access to the most use-
ful information about how children experience the world and literature,
how they read, how they hear, and how they see pictures. Yet it is not my
intention to universalize my own child image but, on the contrary, to tell
my readers openly where I stand and how I look at the child and child-
hood.
In the third chapter I also discuss the issue of authority—to demon-
strate the position of the child on the decision-making continuum. It is
usually an adult who decides what literature is and what it is not. This is
another reason I prefer to speak about translating for children instead of
the translation of children’s fiction: to a large extent, every reader defines
for her/himself what she/he considers “literary” or fictional. While influ-
enced by our cultural and literary traditions, we always make these deci-
sions individually. The fourth chapter, “Children’s Literature and
Literature for Children,” concentrates on children’s literature, its status
and definitions, all of which have strongly influenced what we have
translated for children and how we have done it. What do we mean by
children’s literature? What do adult and children’s literature have in
common?
The fifth chapter, “Translating Children’s Literature and Translating
for Children,” presents some examples of the translation of children’s lit-
erature and translating for children, including the translation of a picture
book. I also look at the various readerships present in the process of
translating for children, at authors as translators of their own works, and
at different versions of Tove Jansson’s Moomin stories and Lewis Car-
roll’s “Alices” in translation. In the sixth and concluding chapter, “A
Never-Ending Story,” I summarize the issues raised throughout my book,
8 Translating for Children

with the goal of including publishers, too, in the dialogics of translating

for children.
Before discussing different readers reading (Chapter 2), I would like
to take a closer look at my guiding principles of translation, and concen-
trate on the problems of situation and equivalence.

SITUATION AND EQUIVALENCE

A text is never not in a context. We are never not
in a situation.
—STANLEY FISH, IS THERE A TEXT IN THIS CLASS?
THE AUTHORITY OF INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITIES

As many scholars have pointed out, equivalence is one of the most cen-
tral ideas in translation studies and it repeatedly comes up in the course
of history. Even if in different times there have been different kinds of
“perfect” or “ideal” translations, from word-for-word to adequate (suc-
cessful, serving their purpose), in practice, most of the theories of trans-
lation from the 1960s and 1970s were based on the notion of
equivalence. Behind most of these definitions is the ideal of the perfect
match between an original and its translation.2
Today we look at equivalence like Mary Snell-Hornby, who argues
that equivalence—as meaning some level of sameness (in form, effect,
content, etc.) between the original and its translation—is an “unsuitable
basis for an integrated theory of translation.” As a whole, equivalence is a
very problematic term, since it is “imprecise and ill-defined”: it “presents
an illusion of symmetry between languages which hardly exists beyond
the level of vague approximations and which distorts the basic problems
of translation.” A good example of this is the term itself: the English
equivalence and the German Äquivalenz are often considered the same
thing, and yet the different usage of the two shows that they are not
“equivalent.”3
Attitudes are gradually changing, and in today’s translation studies
the status of key concepts such as equivalence and faithfulness are being
more and more questioned. Yet even today, scholars specializing in chil-
dren’s literature still tend to take for granted equivalence, in the sense of
sameness, in translating children’s literature. They often find it self-evi-
dent that a good translation is an equivalent, faithful translation, that a
good translator is an invisible, faithful translator, and that the function of
a translation is the same as that of its original.4
Beginning 9

There are many different ways of looking at equivalence. For in-

stance, Eugene A. Nida, the specialist in Bible translation, speaks of dy-
namic equivalence or functional equivalence: the reactions of the readers
of the source-language text should be just about the same as the reactions
of the target-language readers.5 Yet it is not self-evident, or even possi-
ble, for translations to have exactly or even nearly the same effect on
their readers as the original texts had on the original readers. Situations
vary. A translation is written in another time, another place, another lan-
guage, another country, another culture. Christiane Nord even points out
that “functional equivalence between source and target text is not the
‘normal’ scopos of translation, but an exceptional case in which the fac-
tor ‘change of functions’ is assigned zero.”6
The above—equivalence as a relationship between two texts—is not
the only way of seeing equivalence.7 On the one hand, the Israeli scholar
Gideon Toury considers the relationship between a source text and its
translation equivalence;8 Barbara Godard, on the other hand, describes
equivalence between “two text systems rather than between the contents
or words of two messages.”9 Equivalence might also be a useful tool:
“striving for equivalence might produce good, successful translations, if
the translator were aware that the ideal was . . . not an inaccessible goal
to measure relative failure by,” as Douglas Robinson points out in his
concluding remarks in The Translator’s Turn and goes on: “Equivalence
is an interpretive fiction that helps the translator work toward the true
goal of translation, a working TL text—and is only one of many such fic-
tions.”10 Anthony Pym presents similar views: translators hope that read-
ers will accept their texts as adequate translations. They hope they will
“be seen as producers of equivalence. And the kind of equivalence . . .
[they] produce can then only exist as a belief held by the receivers of . . .
[their] work.”11 As a whole, the term and its varied applications deserve a
separate study.
Rather than equivalence, this book concentrates on different situa-
tions in translation. Situation, a key issue within all translation, can be
understood as context—time, place, and culture—including the indi-
vidual interpreting the context and acting in the context. When reading,
writing, translating, illustrating, we are always in a situation. Nothing
we read or hear or see is simply a given; instead all our knowledge
is derived from a process of interpretation in an individual situation.
Situations are not repeatable; each one creates a different set of func-
tions and purposes that act on the concept derived from that particular
situation.12
10 Translating for Children

Verbal language, a very effective tool of communication, is also part

of a situation. Linguistic signs are understood differently in different sit-
uations: the information, the message, is part of a meaning, but not iden-
tical to it.13 As Stanley Fish suggests, even each generation, each age
group, has a language and vocabulary of its own. In translation, when
concepts are expressed in new words, the message, too, takes on a new
purpose and a new meaning.14
Situation not only involves time, place, and culture but also, or
should I say first and foremost, issues like the translator as a human
being and her/his ideology. Yet a measure of conflict has always been in-
herent between the author’s intentions and the translator’s manipulation,
if the translator’s visibility is considered negative and we believe that
through “real” translation we gain access to the author of the original.
These views have also been presented by the “manipulative school” of
translation. As the name implies, these scholars understand translation as
manipulation, which in practice means that they reject the concept of
“translation as reproducing the original, the whole original and nothing
but the original.” Thus equivalence between the source and target texts is
not even intended.15
Feminist theories, especially on the translation of women authors,
express parallel views: translation is manipulation, and the translator
should be visible. Translation can be made visible by including the trans-
lator’s name, her/his “signature,” and prefaces and afterwords, “the
word” of the translator. Sherry Simon writes that through prefaces we
have “access to the collective dimensions of translatability, the ‘will to
knowledge’,” that created the need for translations. And in some cases—
the Canadian feminist novel is one—translation is defined as an activity
“deeply, and consciously, engaged in the social and political dimensions
of literary interchange.”16 Even Nord refers to forewords and prefaces,
when she suggests that adhering to the principle of loyalty, “the transla-
tor should at least inform the other participants [e.g., the author of the
original and the reader of the translation] of what has been done, and
why.”17
Yet translators do not act in situations as individuals only, but they
are also part of different interpretive communities: translation is an issue
of the collective and tradition, too, as will be later shown in this book. All
times, cultures, and societies have norms and conventions guiding trans-
lation action.18 It is up to the translator (and her/his commissioner) to
what extent she/he chooses to take them into consideration.
Our interpretations of texts are also influenced by our prejudgments:
Beginning 11

background as well as literary tradition are both constituents of the inter-

preter’s situation. This is a very important question from the perspective
of translating for children, who are not yet familiar with the tradition or
conventions of literature.19
Even textual analysis, an essential part of any translation process, is
always carried out within a situation and for a purpose, which Christiane
Nord also points out in her book Text Analysis in Translation. Nord pre-
sents “a model of translation-oriented text analysis” including three sets
of factors: extratextual (situative: who? why? to whom?) and intratextual
(what? which nonverbal elements? in which words?), as well as effect.20
The analysis should always take place “from the ‘top down,’ from the
macro to the micro level, from text to sign,” as Snell-Hornby points out.
Any translation has a communicative function that influences the ways
the texts translated are analyzed.21
The functional approach to translation was first introduced by
Katharina Reiss, and later, in 1978, Hans J. Vermeer formulated this fur-
ther as the scopos rule.22 These German scholars of translation observe
that the function of a translation and its original—or the intentions of the
author of the original and its translation—may be different. They also
point out that a translation must be coherent in itself rather than com-
pared with its original.23 Vermeer defines “skopos and commission in
translational action” as follows:

Any form of translational action, including therefore translation itself,

may be conceived as an action, as the name implies. Any action has an
aim, a purpose. . . . The word skopos then, is a technical term for the
aim or purpose of a translation. . . . Further: an action leads to a result,
a new situation or event, and possibly to a “new” object. . . . The aim of
any translational action, and the mode in which it is to be realized, are
negotiated with the client who commissions the action.24

While stressing the importance of the function of the translation, Reiss

and Vermeer also see a translation as part of the world, as an act, a
process, carried out in a certain situation. Vermeer points out that a trans-
lator is a human being and a translation is an interpretation, a new text in
a new culture.25
Even if it seems easier for us to discuss texts as acts, it seems less
easy to admit that translators, too, act in translation situations. As I see it,
it is far too often that we neglect the function of the different human be-
ings in a translation situation.26 Texts do not function without human be-
12 Translating for Children

ings. Thus the function of a text is not “as such” but is redefined every
time the text is read. A text in translation is influenced by the author, the
translator, and the expectations of the target-language readers. Like
Christiane Nord, I would call this loyalty, loyalty to the future readers of
the translation, and this implies loyalty toward the author of the original,
too. In Nord’s words:

The translator is committed bilaterally to the source text as well as to

the target text situation, and is responsible to both the ST [source text]
sender . . . and the TT [target text] recipient. This responsibility is what
I call “loyalty.” “Loyalty” is a moral principle indispensable in the re-
lationships between human beings, who are partners in a communica-
tion process, whereas “fidelity” is a rather technical relationship
between two texts.27

Once again, we face the problem of equivalence. If we think of

translation in terms of target-language audiences and ask the crucial
question, For whom? we cannot keep to the equivalence (in the sense of
sameness) as our guiding principle. Rather we have to ask Is this transla-
tion successful for this purpose? Translations are always influenced by
what is translated by whom and for whom, and when, where, and why.
As the readers of translations are different from those of original texts,
the situation of translations differs from that of originals, too.
As Nord points out, the target-language scope assumes that “the
equivalence between source and target text is regarded as being subordi-
nate to all possible translation scopes.”28 The scopos of a translation
may well be, and to my understanding, always is, different from that of
the original, because the readers of the texts, the original and the trans-
lation, are different: they belong to different cultures, they speak differ-
ent languages, and they read in different ways. Their situations are
different.

NOTES
1Snell-Hornby
1988: 42.
2See,
for equivalence, in Nida 1964, Catford 1965, Reiss 1971, Baker 1992,
and Chesterman 1997:9–10. As the American scholar Douglas Robinson points
out in The Translator’s Turn, in “mainstream translation theory in the West,”
equivalence (as “sameness” between two texts) has even been considered the ul-
timate goal of translation. Robinson 1991: 259; see also for “metonymy,” Ibid.,
Beginning 13

141–52. See also for Lilova’s discussion on “the perfect translator,” Rose 1987:
9–18.
3
1988: 3, 22; see also Ibid., 13–22, and Tabakowska 1990: 74.
4Cf. Koskinen 1992 and 1994.

5Nida 1964: 159, 167; 1969: 24; and Nida and de Waard 1986: 36. Susan

Bassnett has the same idea of a faithful translation: “the poem is perceived as an
artefact of a particular cultural system, and the only faithful translation can be to
give it a similar function in the target cultural system.” Bassnett 1991: 56. This
idea has a long history: see Schlegel and Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, in Lefevere
1977: 52, 105.
6Nord 1991b: 23; see also Reiss and Vermeer 1984.

7See also Mona Baker’s In Other Words: A Coursebook on Translation

1992, where she thoroughly discusses the problems of equivalence.

8Toury 1980.

9See Godard 1990: 92.

10See Robinson 1991: 284, 259.

11Pym 1992: 115.

12Cf. Martin Buber’s Einmaligkeit, “onceness,” in Robinson 1991: 95.

13See Barwise and Perry 1986: 5; Fish 1980: 32.

14Fish 1980: 3, 25–27, 106; Snell-Hornby 1988: 112–13; 189: 141–60; Iser

1990: 281; Bakhtin 1990: 290; Chabot 1989: 22–32; Lotbinière-Harwood 1991:
120–22.
15Cf. Hermans 1985: 9; see also Gentzler 1993.

16Simon in Bassnett and Lefevere 1990: 110, 116; see also Enoranta 1992.

17Nord 1991a: 95. See also Robinson 1991: xii, for “notoriously apologetic”

prefaces.
18See, e.g., Palma Zlateva’s Translation as Social Action 1993: translation is

seen as a social and cultural activity that is determined by, e.g., the economic
structures of society. See also Chesterman’s discussion on translation as commu-
nication, 1997: 33–36.
19See Vermeer 1989: 174, 181. See also Reiss and Vermeer 1984: 64ff; and

Paepcke 1978: 47–67, and 1986: 86–101.

20Nord 1991b: 35–38.

21Snell-Hornby 1988: 69.

22See Nord 1991b: 4.

23Reiss and Vermeer 1986: 67–68.

24Vermeer in Chesterman 1989: 173–74.

25Vermeer 1986: 281, 302.

26See also Díaz-Diocaretz’s discussion on translator’s function, in 1985: 19.

14 Translating for Children

27
Nord 1991b: 29; see also Nord 1991a: 91–109; and for expectation and
anticipation in Iser 1990: 278, 281.
28
As Nida and Taber say in The Theory and Practice of Translation 1969, if
we pose the question, Is this a good translation? we should ask another question,
For whom? See also Nord 1991b: 24. I am using the term in the English form
“scopos” for the English-language eye and ear. Vermeer uses the term in the form
“Skopos” and Nord primarily in the form “scope,” although she has used both
versions. See Reiss and Vermeer 1984: 146; Nord 1991a: 91 and 1991b: 24.