Translating picturebooks: Key topics

Of all the categories of children’s books, picturebooks are among the most translated, but serious attention has only been paid to them since just before the turn of the millennium. Many issues discussed in translation studies generally are also relevant when discussing translating picturebooks, such as the norms identified by Gideon Toury in the context of descriptive translation studies or what Lawrence Venuti calls “foreignization” and “domestication”. While these are also addressed in this chapter, the focus is primarily on issues exclusive to the translation of picturebooks. The combination of verbal and visual modes, its fundamental bimodality, which is the most evident challenge in picturebook translation, is the first issue to be tackled and is followed by a consideration of further modes associated with the multimodal picturebook – the aural and performative modes involved when reading aloud. The question of adaptation generally is addressed, zooming in on the role of the presumed receptive capabilities of children in translating for this audience, genre-specific issues in adaptation, the kinds of verbal and visual dissonance which can be generated by partially adapted or domesticated picturebooks in translation and the issue of adapting ‘cultural incompatibility’. The influence of globalisation and cultural homogenisation on this branch of children’s literature is discussed before the chapter concludes with presenting three hitherto comparatively under-researched issues of gender, paratexts and layout.