27 Apr 2016 2:30pm - 4:30pm Seminar room SG2, Alison Richard Building

Description

Daniel Hahn (Writer, Editor, and Translator)
Dr Gillian Lathey (Reader in Children's Literature, Department of English and Creative Writing, University of Roehampton)
Professor Maria Nikolajeva (Professor of Education, Director of the Cambridge-Homerton Research and Teaching Centre for Children's Literature, University of Cambridge)

Moderator: TBC

Children’s literature is an increasingly important strand of the publishing industry, and the study of such texts is becoming a well-established field of academic research. However, there have been comparatively few studies of translations of children’s literature, especially in Anglo-American culture where English versions of children’s books originally written in other languages have never been particularly numerous. Nonetheless, prompted in part by the burgeoning interest in world literature and the rise of multiculturalism, there has been an increasing demand for foreign children’s books. This in turn has resulted in a larger number of translations and a significant growth in academic scholarship (Oittinen 2000; O’Sullivan 2005; van Coillie and Verschueren 2006; Frank 2007; Gonzáles Davies and Oittinen, 2008; Lathey, 2006 and 2010; Di Giovanni, Elefante, and Pederzoli 2010). Georges Mounin (1964) regarded children’s books as perhaps the most challenging of all for a translator because of their hybrid voice (e.g., narrative, poetic, dramatic), the constraints imposed by visual elements, the oral dimension (e.g., baby talk, non-verbal language), the double readership they address (the children and the adults that select them), and other factors. These are all important questions that have started to receive the critical attention they deserve.

The panel discussion will offer an opportunity for academics and professional translators of children’s literature to assess current trends in the theory and practice of translating such works, and to explore the peculiar and distinctive challenges these texts present.

 

 

 

Open to all.  No registration required
Part of Cambridge Conversation in Translation Research Group Seminar Series

Administrative assistance: gradfac@crassh.cam.ac.uk

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