The main purpose of this master’s thesis is to explore the challenges of translating children’s literature using the example of the picture book Pasji zakaji by Lila Prap and its French translation Pourquoi les chiens se reniflent-ils les fesses ? by Mathias Rambaud. The theoretical part illustrates some key views on children’s literature and the translation of picture books, providing a detailed insight into the historical development of children’s literature in Slovenia whilst paying special attention to picture books. The study also introduces the author, her work as a writer and illustrator as well as her success in Japan where her illustrated characters were brought to life in a completely new form that goes beyond picture books. Finally, we also describe the picture book in question and its translation, highlighting their key characteristics in terms of content and form. In the empirical part, a thorough translation-oriented contrastive analysis was carried out to compare the translator’s solutions with the original text. We drew on the theoretical insights of some of the leading translation scholars and codified the recorded observations into (sub)categories. As our aim was to capture all translation strategies as well as possible, we adapted their terminology to our examples. The empirical part focused on the different translation solutions used by the translator and the form changes that took place in the translation.
The study has shown that the translator has endeavoured to produce a translation that is as natural, authentic and readable as possible, giving the young audience the feeling that they are reading an original French text and not a translation. We have also found that the main structure of the picture book has been retained in the translation, albeit with some minor variations, namely the use of a different font and writing style and a different arrangement of text and paragraphs. After reviewing the available sources on this topic, we have come to the conclusion that translating children’s literature is much more complex than it may seem at first glance.
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