The following is an extended outline for my paper, “Aslan of the Antilles: A Commission and Skopos for a Haitian Creole Translation of C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew.”
Part One: An Experiment in Auto-Commission
The first section of this paper is conceived as a Vermeerian auto-commission for a Haitian Creole translation of C. S. Lewis’s The Magician’s Nephew. I will begin by examining the Haitian social context, the growing emphasis on mother tongue instruction in the country, and the need for literature (particularly children’s literature) in this emergent literary language. I will make reference to Even-Zohar’s concept of the potential centrality of translation in a “young” or “peripheral” national literature, and make the case that twenty-first century Haiti represents such a situation.
I will then describe the logic of contributing this particular text to the growing Creole corpus. The novel contains many features which make it appropriate to the Haitian context, and these will each be examined in turn. I will also comment briefly on the two accepted orders of the seven books of the Chronicles of Narnia series, and make a case for following the recent publication of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe with The Magician’s Nephew, though this order differs from both the original publishing order and the order preferred by Lewis himself.
Having explained the logic underlying the project, I will attempt to articulate the objective, or skopos, of the proposed translation. Vermeer insists that the skopos of a translation is rarely identical to that of the source text. Nevertheless we are fortunate to have access to Lewis’s own reflections on writing for children. We can, therefore, understand Lewis’s own skopos, and decide the extent to which it can be incorporated into the objectives of the translation.
After summarizing and analyzing Lewis’s objectives, I will delineate my own intentions. This will involve a look at the history of translation into Haitian Creole, and a detailed analysis of both the state of education and literary culture in Haiti and of socio-political issues surrounding the language itself. I will thus demonstrate the capacity for this publication to serve a distinct and necessary function in Haitian society. To produce a functionally optimal translation, however, the translator must navigate the specific requirements and pressures inherent in children’s literature on the one hand, and Haitian society and publishing on the other. These requirements and pressures (or poetics and patronages, as described in Lefevere’s systems theory) will be considered in succession.
I will consider the unique aspects of children’s literature, and highlight the special value of acceptable translation (to use Toury’s term) in this particular genre. Emer O’Sullivan’s work on narratology in children’s literature and Wen-Chun Liang’s research on resistance to “adequacy-oriented” Taiwanese versions of the Harry Potter books will serve to add depth to this section.
Having examined universal aspects of children’s literature, I will zero in on the poetics specific to Haitian children’s literature. By combining research around the storytelling tradition in Haiti with Bedeker and Feinauer’s work on functionally optimized Afrikaans versions of the Harry Potter books, I will determine how best to adapt the text to narrative sensibilities of young Haitians.
The final issue to consider will be the status of Creole itself. This section will consider theories regarding the unequal relationship between the two languages in question (as formulated by Lang and Fosdick), and will go on to examine the role of the Haitian Creole Academy. Acceptability in the Haitian Creole case will have to confront the needs of young Haitian readers as well as the requirements of institutions tasked with overseeing the use and development of the language. The question of neologisms will be examined in detail.
I will conclude this section by summarizing the workable skopos devised above. I will then turn to the application of this skopos to finding solutions to specific translative difficulties presented by the source text.
Part Two: Skopos in Action
In this section I will employ my skopos as I consider three aspects of the source text which will present difficulties for the translator: proper names, British cultural items and magic. First, I will look at proper names in the novel. By drawing from translation research around the Harry Potter series (Mussche and Willems), and bearing my specific skopos in mind, I will define how best to deal with the various names of people and places in the novel.
The Magician’s Nephew contains several references to items foreign to Haiti. To produce a functionally optimal translation I will need to decide the best way to approach these British cultural items. I will refer to Eirlys R. Davies’s work on translations of the Harry Potter books into various languages and how diverse translators have confronted things like Yorkshire pudding and Guy Fawkes Day. I will also look at French and Spanish translations of The Magician’s Nephew (and more linguistically disparate translations, provided I can track them down and overcome my own language limitations) to see how the cultural items specific to the text have been rendered in other versions.
Finally, I will look at the magical and mythical elements in the novel. Due to the prevalence of folk tales and both Catholicism and Vodou, magic is a fact of life in Haiti. This will be a benefit and an obstacle as I deal with the fantastic element of The Magician’s Nephew. On the one hand, Haitian folklore provides parallels to things like curses and talking animals, and there is a vast vocabulary from which to draw. On the other hand, I have to be careful not to make disrespectful and unwanted associations between the popular religion and the magical element in the novel.
I will conclude by summarizing the various problems and solutions outlined above. I will make a final case for the overall value of the project, and reflect briefly on the future of children’s literature, translation and education in Haiti.
This is very good Matt and it looks like you have (at least in your mind) almost completed the paper. One issue I would like you to consider while writing the paper is the question of "function". You keep referring to "a functionally optimal" translation - but what does that really mean? Always keep the diversity of the target audience in your mind. It is impossible to identify the exact functions realised by the original text vis-a-vis British children, so your attempt at trying to control and optimize the function of your translation over the target readers may remain somewhat naive. I am not saying that you should not be using the term function. On the contrary, it seems like it will guide you both in the paper and in your actual translation, but make sure you problematize it enough.
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