Translation paper update.

After trying in vain to track down one of the books I had intended to study for my research paper, I have decided on a different direction. Rather than comparing various Creole translations of a work of French-language Haitian fiction, my new plan is to analyze a work of English fiction, and the strategies it will take for me to translate it into Creole. As I noted in my Introduction, I previously co-translated C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe into Haitian Creole, and, since there are six remaining books in the series, I would like to use this opportunity to define the skopos and analyze various difficulties I will face in producing a second translation in the Chronicles of Narnia suite. And so...

Research question:

Drawing from Hans Vermeer’s skopos theory, as well as a number of Translation Studies articles dealing specifically with children’s literature, I will analyze the translatability of C.S. Lewis’s children’s novel The Magician’s Nephew. I will begin by defining the skopos of the project. For this there are several factors to consider. First, when translating children’s literature one must pay extra attention to readability, as a young reader is more likely to give up if the prose is particularly challenging or unfamiliar—as is often the case with translations. Second, I must take into account the status of Creole as an emergent literary language. Third, I must of course be aware of the many differences and similarities between the cultures of 1950s England and contemporary Haiti. And finally, I can take Lewis’s own skopos into consideration, as he wrote about his views on writing for children.

After I have devised a workable skopos I will employ it as a framework for examining three aspects of the original text that will pose problems for the translator. First, I will deal with onomastics; the central dynamic in the Narnia books is the contrast between the “real” world, and the imaginary world of Narnia, and this is best exemplified by the characters’ names. On the one hand, you have ordinary names like Polly and Uncle Andrew (but also Digory, “what a funny name!”), and on the other hand you have magical and euphemistic names like Reepicheep, Rumblebuffin and Puddleglum. It will be a challenge to find equivalences in Creole for names in both categories. Next, I will look at British cultural items, and how best to render them into the target text. Writings on translations of the Harry Potter series by theorists like Eirlys R. Davies will be useful for this segment. And finally, I will consider the mythical/magical element. Magic is by no means an unfamiliar concept to the typical Haitian youngster, but I will have to deal carefully with it in order to avoid unwanted connotations within the Haitian context. In the end, I hope to lay a solid foundation for a coherent and effective translation of this classic work of English children’s literature, which will be a worthwhile contribution to the growing corpus of world literature in Creole translation.

Initial bibliography:

Bedeker, Laetitia and Ilse Feinauer. “The translator as cultural mediator.” Southern African Linguistics and Applied Language Studies 24 no. 2 (2006): 133-141.

Davies, Eirlys R. “A Goblin or a Dirty Nose? The Treatment of Culture-Specific References in Translations of the Harry Potter Books.” The Translator 9 no. 1 (2003): 65-100.

Domínguez-Pérez, Mónica. “Derivative Translation.” Neohelicon 39 (2012): 223-233.

Fosdick, Charles. “Translation in the Caribbean, the Caribbean in Translation.” Small Axe 48 (November 2015): 147-162.

Lang, George. “Translation from, to and within Atlantic creoles.” TTR 13 no. 2 (January 2000): 11-28.

Liang, Wen-chun. “A Descriptive Study of Translating Children’s Fantasy Fiction.” Perspectives: Studies in Translatology 15 no. 2 (2007): 92-105.

Lefevere, André. “Mother Courage’s Cucumbers: Text, system and refraction in a theory of literature.” In The Translation Studies Reader, 1st ed., edited by Lawrence Venuti, 233-249. New York; London: Routledge, 2000.

Lewis, C. S. The Magician’s Nephew. 1955. Reprint, New York: HarperCollins, 2002.

Lewis, C. S. “On Three Ways of Writing for Children.”  In On Stories and Other Essays on Literature, 31-44. San Diego: Harcourt, 1982.

Mussche, Erika and Klaas Willems. “Fred or farīd, bacon or bayḍun (‘egg’)? Proper Names and Cultural-specific Items in the Arabic Translation of Harry Potter.” Meta 55 no. 3 (2010): 474-498.

O’Sullivan, Emer. “Narratology meets Translation Studies, or, The Voice of the Translator in Children’s Literature.” Meta 48 no. 1-2 (2003): 197-207.

Vermeer, Hans J. “Skopos and Commision in Translational Action.” In The Translation Studies Reader, 1st ed., edited by Lawrence Venuti, 221-232. New York; London: Routledge, 2000.