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A Descriptive Study of Translating Children's Fantasy FictionWen-chun Liang a

a School of Modern Languages, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Online Publication Date: 01 May 2007

To cite this Article Liang, Wen-chun(2007)'A Descriptive Study of Translating Children's Fantasy Fiction',Perspectives,15:2,92 — 105

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A Descriptive Study of TranslatingChildren’s Fantasy Fiction

Wen-chun LiangSchool of Modern Languages, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Owing to the imperfect knowledge and language ability of child readers, translatorsoften encounter great difficulties and challenges in translating children’s literature.It can, therefore, be assumed that when translating children’s fantasy literature,which is in a highly local cultural form, translators often encounter translatingproblems concerning culture-specific items and are easily trapped in the dilemma ofwhether to ‘foreignise’ or to ‘domesticate’ such items. This study focuses ontranslation problems and strategies regarding culture-specific items by analysingthe first five Harry Potter (HP) books and their corresponding Taiwanese versions.More specifically, the present study aims to shed light on the implications of how theadopted strategies affect target readers’ acceptance, and whether those strategiesare innovative or established, by looking at the relation of the HP translations andthe polysystem of translated children’s fantasy literature in Taiwan. The effective-ness of the translation strategies chosen � which may be used as a yardstick whendiscussing acceptability in translating culture-specific items in children’s fantasyliterature � was evaluated by observing 15 target readers’ response throughquestionnaires.

doi: 10.1080/13670050802153830

Keywords: Harry Potter, culture-specific items, foreign implantation, readers’response, literary polysystem

IntroductionLiterary translation has long been viewed as a cross-cultural form of

communicative behaviour and is probably one of mankind’s most complexactivities. Yet, owing to the lack of a comprehensive understanding of culturaldifferences and cross-cultural interactions, translation scholars and translatorsoften find literary translation a thorny issue. Translation scholars, therefore,endeavour to find solutions to such predicaments, and the focus of TranslationStudies (TS) before 1970s was confined to the fields of linguistics and linguisticphilosophy, which are prescriptive and source-oriented.

The advent, in the early 1970s, of polysystem theory and its derivateconcepts, such as translational norms, agents of power, ideology andtranslation, has led TS toward a new horizon. As a result, literary translationhas received scrutiny in a wider cultural context with a focus on thetranslational norms and constraints that govern the production and receptionof literary translation. This is precisely the conception of the ‘cultural turn’,which holds that translation is not a conglomeration of words and sentencesbetween two languages, but is emblematic of its cultural context and is acultural entity emerging from two divergent cultural universes (Bassnett &

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Lefevere, 1998). Translations are believed to reflect the cultural and historicalconditions in which they have been produced. Many translation scholarstherefore make inquiries about the relationship between translation andculture by looking at how culture influences and constrains translation, andfurther investigate the manipulative textual processes of translation (Bassnett& Lefevere, 1998: 123). This shift of focus in literary translation is one of themost groundbreaking achievements in TS, and approaches to literary transla-tion have been regarded as descriptive, target-oriented, functional andsystemic.

Although the development of globalisation stimulates cross-cultural inter-actions and engenders better mutual understanding as human beings becomeacquainted with one another’s culture, imbalance in power relations is a pricklyreal world fact which can create an imbalanced cultural understanding. TheAnglo-American and Indo-European cultures are more visible in the globalcontext than other, minority cultures. This statement is generally true; however,there are parts of the Western cultures that are not so visible to minority cultures,for instance myth, folklore, legend and history, owing to their intrinsically minorstatus in the cross-cultural interactions. In literature, the aforementionedsubsystems of culture are often found in the fantasy genre. For example,many Western fantasy literatures were permeated by Greco-Roman myth andlegend and, even today, a substantial portion of Anglophone fantasy literatureremains more or less unreadable without a knowledge of classical mythologyand mythopoeic history. It is therefore generally true that the cultural contextseven of the highly visible cultures may be less well known within the context offantasy fiction.

As Manlove (1975) has stated, fantasy is a genre that creates wonder, containsa substantial and irreducible supernatural element, and is a highly localisedform peculiarly expressive of the country where it develops. This suggests thattranslators of fantasy fiction should be equipped with a comprehensiveunderstanding of both source and target cultures. Yet, when the target readersare children, even if the source culture prevails over the target culture, children’simperfect knowledge of other cultures may create difficulties for translators. Ingeneral, the purpose of this study is to examine the literary position of translatedchildren’s literature in Taiwan and to discuss the translational norms at work ata microstructural level. Specifically, this study aims to discover the translationstrategies translators adopt in order to deal with culture-specific items, and theimplications of how the adopted strategies affect target readers’ acceptance.

The Literary Position and Translational Norms of Children’sFantasy Fiction in Taiwan

Bassnett and Lefevere’s (1998: 123) concept of the cultural turn suggests thattranslation is not an aggregate of strings of words or sentences between twodifferent languages, but is rather a characteristic of its cultural context and isitself a cultural entity. Translation should be viewed as cultural transfer. Thisapproach indicates that the study of translation should be situated in anexamination of wider cultural context, instead of merely linguistic context. Thedevelopment of the view of translation as a cultural entity can be traced back

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to the creation of polysystem theory by Israeli scholar Itamar Even-Zohar,which was based on the foundation laid by the Russian Formalists at thebeginning of the 1970s.

The main tenet of polysystem theory holds literary systems to beinterrelated, stratified and dynamic. More tellingly, each literary system isconceptualised as a network of relations that obtain through a number ofactivities called ‘literary’ and these activities are themselves observed throughthe network (Even-Zohar, 1978, 1990). One implication of polysystem theory isthat literary systems are never equal, but hierarchised, taking up central orperipheral positions in the polysystem. According to Even-Zohar (1990: 131),children’s literature occupies a peripheral and secondary position in theliterary polysystem. In other words, it rarely actively participates in shapingthe centre of the literary polysystem, and its repertoires are not regarded ascanonical. Seen in this light, children’s literature in translation can also beassumed to be situated in a peripheral and secondary position in the literarypolysystem.

The literary polysystem is heterogeneous and consists of two (or more)literary systems: for example, children’s literature or adult’s literature, andeven original literature or translated literature (Even-Zohar, 1990). Continuingin this vein, viewed as a polysystem, children’s literature may also be seen ascomposed of heterogeneous subordinate literary systems, for instance fairytales or fantasy fiction, folklore or fables, and so forth. Every literary systemassumes a different position within the literary polysystem of children’sliterature.

Translation of children’s fantasy fiction in Taiwan began in 1979 when theZhang-Qiao Publishing House selected and published five novels from C.S.Lewis’s series The Chronicles of Narnia. The development of fantasy fiction inthe West had been going on since the 1950s, yet translated works onlyappeared in Taiwan from the late 1970s onwards. This delay is partlyattributable to the linguistic and cultural barriers between the West andTaiwan. During the late 1970s to early 2000s, fairy tales, adventure stories,fables and picture books assumed the primary and central position in theliterary polysystem of (translated) children’s literature in Taiwan. The publichardly even recognised there was such a thing as translation of children’sfantasy fiction.

This situation continued until 2000, when the first of the seven Harry Potterbooks was translated and published in Taiwan. By 2003, the first fourtranslations of the Harry Potter books had surpassed 3.5 million sales inTaiwan (Chen, 2003) and are believed to have far exceeded this figure since.The Harry Potter phenomenon has totally revolutionised the literary position oftranslation of children’s fantasy fiction in Taiwan. It is without a doubt thebest-selling translated children’s literature Taiwan has ever seen.

Owing to their dominant global position and close contact with Taiwan,Anglophone countries (such as the UK and the USA) were the main source ofmaterials for translation in the fantasy genre. Ever since the success of HarryPotter in translation, its popularity has brought children’s fantasy fiction tooccupy the central position in the literary polysystem of translated children’sliterature in Taiwan, and its repertoires should have become canonised within

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the domain of the children’s literature polysystem. Even-Zohar (1990) suggeststhree sets of circumstances in which translated texts take a central position inthe literary polysystem: when a polysystem is nascent; when a literature isweak or in peripheral position within a larger group of literature; or when aliterature is in a literary vacuum or crisis. One more situation might be addedto these three: when translated texts constitute what becomes the most activeliterary system in a given literary polysystem, they can even occupy the centralposition. To present a clearer picture of the Potter phenomenon before andafter the publication of the first translation, Table 1 shows the publication datafor translations of children’s fantasy fiction from 1996 to early 2006.

The 347 titles were published by eight Taiwanese publishers. It can be seenfrom Table 1 that the publication of translations of children’s fantasy fictionreached a peak in 2003. Many of the translated children’s fantasy titlespublished were chosen from serial novels, for example C.S. Lewis’s TheChronicles of Narnia, which consists of seven novels, Phillip Pullman’s His DarkMaterials, which is a trilogy, and Darren Shan’s The Saga of Darren Shan, whichcomprises 12 novels, to name just a few. Some novels might turn out to be splitinto different volumes, such as George R.R. Martin’s Thrones’s Game, whichwas split into three separate volumes, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit, whichcame out in two separate volumes. If the data are taken into a more detailedexamination, 75 items of children’s literature of various genres fromAnglophone countries were translated in 2000; 28 out of the 75 translationsbelong to the fantasy genre, while titles dealing with emotional and familyissues came second with 11 items, and fairy tales occupied the third place withnine translations. Another example can be seen from the 2004 publication

Table 1 The number of published translations of children’s fantasy fiction in Taiwan

Year of publication Number of translations published

1996 1

1997 5

1998 12

1999 8

2000 28

2001 25

2002 77

2003 81

2004 53

2005 26

2006 31

Total 347

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figures. There were 154 titles of translated children’s literature of variousgenres from Anglophone countries in 2004; 53 of these were translations offantasy, accounting for more than one third of the total, while fairy tales andfiction with emotional and family topics came in second and third, with 26 and21 titles, respectively. These figures show that fantasy is the single most activesystem in the literary polysystem of translated children’s literature. The abovedata therefore suggest that the flourishing of translation of children’s fantasyfiction has helped the genre to occupy the central position in the literarypolysystem of translation of children’s literature in Taiwan, and consequentlythe translational norms of this genre, and even of the translation of children’sliterature as a whole, must have been changed either at a micro- ormacrostructural level.

It was Toury (1978, 1995, 2000), a colleague of Even-Zohar, whose seminalwork on translational norms brought the notion into wider use. Toury’s theoryof translational norms scrutinises what translators do. Toury proposes threeclasses of translational norms forming part of the translation process in termsof their functions: the initial norm, preliminary norms and operational norms.

According to Toury (1995: 57), the initial norm determines whethertranslations should incline towards source-text or target-text norms. Thechoice between these two tendencies may be seen as the pursuit oftranslation’s ‘adequacy’ or ‘acceptability’. The tendency toward adequacy oracceptability should be understood as depending on the position of the literarysystem in the literary polysystem. The conceived position of the literarysystem of translation in a given culture at a particular time can determinewhich translational tendency is used (i.e. whether it is oriented more towardsadequacy or acceptability). That is to say if a literary system holds the centralposition, translators and other manipulators will be more willing to adoptsource repertories encompassing a source-oriented tendency and leading to anadequacy-translation.

In terms of actually applied translational norms, Toury (1995: 58�59)distinguishes two kinds: preliminary and operational norms. Preliminarynorms govern the choice of texts to be translated and the directness oftranslation, while operational norms deal with actual decision-making duringthe translation process. The preliminary norms govern what kind of languagesor text-types should be chosen and translated to a given culture in a givenperiod of time. Operational norms arise during the actual process oftranslation and determine which target language material is substituted forthe corresponding source language material; they govern the distributions ofcertain linguistic elements; and they govern the manipulations of textualsegmentation. Toury (1995) stresses that the relation between preliminary andoperational norms is linked to the initial norm and that the three classesintersect to determine whether a translation leans towards adequacy oracceptability.

As mentioned above, the translation of children’s fantasy fiction in Taiwanhas in recent years occupied the central position in the literary polysystem ofchildren’s literature. As Even-Zohar (1990) states, once a literary system hastaken up the central position, translators would endeavour to bring ininnovative elements so as to ensure it does not petrify or retreat to a peripheral

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position while other literary systems are more conservative and keep to theestablished repertoire. If this statement is used to interpret the actualapplication of operational norms at a microstructural level, it can be seenthat translation belonging to the centralised literary system may follow sourcetext norms with some modifications so that the final product is moreadequacy-oriented. In contrast, translations belonging to a peripheral literarysystem may obey target text norms, or a compromise between the two, so thatthe final product is more acceptability-oriented. This actually provides ayardstick for an analysis of the general relation between the Harry Pottertranslations and the polysystem of translated children’s fantasy fiction.

A Case Study of Harry Potter TranslationsThe following case study of strategies for translation of culture-specific

items in the first five Harry Potter translations is conducted in accordance withthe assumptions and concepts detailed above. Yet, owing to limits of space,only culture-specific food and goods are presented and elaborated upon in thispaper. Translation strategies can be viewed as actual applications of opera-tional norms by translators in the translation process. In Even-Zohar’spolysystem theory, if a literary system assumes the central position, therepertories of the system become more innovative and would be moreadequacy-oriented. This can build up a pre-assumption for the study thatnew and exotic elements, namely foreign implantations, are embedded in theHarry Potter translations. Thus, this study aims to examine whether and howforeign implantations are created in the translations of the first five HarryPotter books and to shed light on target readers’ responses to such implanta-tions.

The first five Harry Potter books are listed below in chronological order:

(1) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (hereafter, ‘Stone’)(2) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (hereafter, ‘Chamber’)(3) Harry Potter and Prisoner of Azkaban (hereafter, ‘Azkaban’)(4) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (hereafter, ‘Goblet’)(5) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (hereafter, ‘Phoenix’)

The first translation within the Harry Potter series was published in 2000 andthe first four Harry Potter translations were translated by Ms Qianwen Pengand published by Crown Press in Taiwan, while the ‘Phoenix’ was translatedby a group of translators including Ms Peng, in line with the Crown Presspublishing strategy.

As fantasy writers often adopt native mythology and employ particularcustoms, religious beliefs and history of their own countries in their storylines,it would seem a challenge for translators to deal with those culturalspecificities if source and target cultures are distinctly different. Davies(2003), therefore, suggests a series of translation strategies for dealing withculture-specific items: addition, omission, globalisation, localisation and preserva-tion. These strategies will be discussed in what follows with examples taken

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from the Harry Potter translations. It should be noted that not all of thesestrategies are in fact used by the translators in this case study.

Microstructural level analysis of the culture-specific items

In translating the Harry Potter books, the culture-specific items, such as foodand goods, pose translating challenges for the translator, as the items in thestories may lack equivalents in the target culture. It may be assumed that theauthor of the source texts, J.K. Rowling, originally targeted British teenagers asher audience and set the storyline around scenarios with which most of heroriginal target readers would be familiar. Viewed in this light, the definition ofculture-specific items in this study is interpreted as something that does notexist in the target culture or for which target readers do not share the samevalue as the source readers.

With each aspect of the discussion on the culture-specific food and goods, abrief explanation of the applied translation strategies will be given.

Culture-specific items: FoodIn the Harry Potter translations, translation strategies based on ‘preserva-

tion’ and ‘addition’ are used to deal with culture-specific item of ‘food’.

Translation strategy: Preservation. The ‘preservation’ strategy is usedwhen there is no close equivalent in the target culture; translators often have tocompromise by retaining the original source scripts in the translation.Preservation can occur where the actual source text words are not preserved,but where a cultural reference receives a literal translation, with no furtherexplanation.

Example 1:ST: . . . he was ready to buy as many Mars Bars as he could carry . . . (Stone, p.76)TT: (He wanted to buy as manyplanet Mars chocolate sticks as he could carry.) (p. 112)

Example 2:ST: Harry was just helping himself to a jacket potato when . . . (Stone, p. 127)TT: (When Harry was hurryingto put a potato cooked in its skin on his food tray, . . .) (p. 181)

Example 3:ST: . . . helping him to a Cornish pasty . . . (Goblet, p. 537)TT: (stretched out hand to get a kang-wa-er[Cornwall] stuffed pastry . . .) (p. 644)

The Mars Bar in Example 1 is a common brand of chocolate bar in Britainmade of chocolate-malt nougat topped with a layer of caramel and coveredwith milk chocolate. The jacket potato in Example 2 is a traditional Englishfood: a baked potato served with the skin on; it can be served with a wide

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variety of stuffing (such as cheese, salad or anything leftover from a previousmeal). The Cornish pasty of Example 3 developed from the simple diet ofCornish people hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately, although British cultureis quite visible in the global context, it seems not to function well within thetarget culture in these instances. None of the three foods has been imported orintroduced into Taiwan and therefore there are no equivalents in the targetculture. In Examples 1 and 2, the translator literally translated the Mars Barsand jacket potato. Although the original source word ‘Cornish’ was notpreserved in the translation, Cornish pasty in Example 3 was translated withits sound and meaning. All three examples indicate that their original sourceflavours were all preserved to a certain degree. It may be assumed that thetranslator either deliberately left the exotic flavour of the items and translatedthem literally into the target texts where there were no equivalents in the targetculture, or intentionally introduced new source-culture elements into thetarget texts by way of acculturation.

The ‘preservation’ strategy is often adopted in situations where the literarysystem of the work under translation is at the centre of the literary polysystem.Translators and manipulators of the centralised literary system make efforts tobring in new elements, so as to make the system more innovative and avoidpetrifaction. Under such conditions, the translational norms in use tend to bemore adequacy-oriented, with the repertoires lying closer to the sourceculture. Seen in this light, foreign implantations are embedded in translationsby preserving the source culture images and flavours.

Translation strategy: Preservation�addition. Another strategy used intranslating culture-specific items in Harry Potter translations is to employ amixture of translation strategy of ‘preservation’ and ‘addition’. Davies (2003:77) argues that preserving of the Otherness of the source culture may lead toobscurity; therefore, a translator may decide to keep the original items butsupplement the text with whatever information is judged necessary. The actualapplication of such a strategy can be found in the use of footnotes, endnotes,glossaries, parentheses, italics and so forth. The drawback of the adaptation of‘addition’ is that additional information may hold up the narrative or burdenreaders with irritating details.

Example 4:ST: ‘What’s that?’ . . . ‘Bouillabaisse,’ said Hermione. (Goblet, p. 221)TT: Bouillabaisse (‘What isthat?’ . . . ‘Bouillabaisse’ (Footnote: a Provencal fish soup), said Hermione.)(p. 271)

In Example 4, ‘Bouillabaisse’ was preserved in its original script in thetranslation and an additional explanatory footnote was provided to explainthe nature of the food. This scene is, in fact, intended by J.K. Rowling to implyHermione is very knowledgeable, as ordinary British children would not knowwhat bouillabaisse is unless they had actually been to Provence and eaten it. Itmay be assumed that, in consideration of the target readers’ reading compre-hension, a footnote was provided in the translation to explain what the food is.

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The use of ‘preservation’ demonstrates the phenomena characteristic of aliterary system occupying the central position. In this situation, linguisticrepertoires tend to be adequacy-oriented; in other words, foreign implantationoccurs within the target texts. However, Toury (1995) also stresses thatattachment to extreme source-oriented or target-oriented norms is atypicalin translational practice. Translators would therefore tend to adopt moremoderate methods between the two extremes.

Culture-specific items: GoodsIn addition to the foods discussed above, goods specific to Britain also

created challenges for the translators. In general, this study found two extremetranslation strategies for coping with them: ‘preservation’ and ‘localisation’.

Translation strategy: Preservation. As mentioned above, the utilisationof ‘preservation’ can be the preservation of the source script or the literaltranslation of the source item. It is more adequacy-oriented, mostly being usedwhen a literary system occupies the central position in the literary polysystem.

Example 5:ST: Perhaps it had something to do with living in a dark cupboard . . . (Stone,p. 20)TT: (It is perhaps something to dowith living in a dark bowl-cabinet) (p. 33)

In the original texts, Harry Potter lived in a cupboard before he moved up to anormal room in the home of his foster family, the Dursleys. In Britain,‘cupboard’ usually refers to an item of furniture for storage or a built-in spaceunder the stairs. Yet there is no such furniture or architectural space in thetarget culture and the term was rendered by preservation. This foreignimplantation occurs over and over in the first five translations. It may beassumed that the translator either mistranslated the term owing to insufficientcultural understanding or deliberately wanted to bring in a vivid image ofHarry being mistreated by his foster family. The translation of ‘ /bowlcabinet’ might give target readers the impression that Harry has to squeezetightly into a bowl cabinet and live there. However, this rendition can still beregarded as a foreign implantation that preserves its original literal meaning.

Translation strategy: Localisation. Apart from the strategy of ‘preserva-tion’ adopted in coping with culture-specific items, the translation strategy of‘localisation’ was found in the Harry Potter translations. The purpose of thelocalisation strategy is to anchor a reference firmly in the culture of the targetaudience (Davies, 2003: 84). In most cases, translators do not seek to effect atotal localisation of the whole literary work, but resort to this method forindividual culture-specific items.

Example 6:ST: Sellotaped to the note was a fifty-pence piece. (Stone, p. 147)TT: (The note had a five mao coin stuck to itwith transparent tape) (p. 208)

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Example 7:ST: At Dudley’s fifth birthday party, Aunt Marge had whacked Harry aroundthe shins with her walking stick to stop him beating Dudley at musical statues.(Azkaban, p. 19)TT:

(At Dudley’s fifth birthday party, Aunt Marge intentionally used her walkingstick to hit Harry’s shins while everyone was playing Da-feng-chui) (p. 37)

Examples 6 and 7 demonstrate the use of the ‘localisation’ strategy to rewritetext referring to culture-specific items. In the UK, the minimum unit of moneyis the penny and a hundred pence make up a pound sterling. In the sourcetext, the Dursleys gave Harry a fifty-pence coin as a Christmas gift. Toeliminate the foreign flavour, the translator deliberately used ‘localisation’ toreplace the source text item by one specific to the target culture. ‘ /mao’ wasthe minimum unit of money in the target culture around 50 years ago and is nolonger used. In Example 7, ‘musical statues’, which is not played in the targetculture, is replaced by ‘Da-feng-chui’, a well known childhood game of thetarget culture similar in concept to musical chairs. Preserving the originalflavour might have confused readers owing to their unfamiliarity with theoriginal game. The translator therefore adopted the strategy of ‘localisation’ toassimilate the game to ‘ /Da-feng-chui’ and make the rendition morereader-friendly.

Within the categories of ‘foods’ and ‘goods’, only the translation strategiesof preservation, localisation, and the combination of preservation and additionare found in the present study. In the following section, the implications of thefindings will be explained.

Implications of the ResultsThe above examples show two extremes in translators’ behaviour at the

microstructural level: on the one hand, translators tend to be more adequacy-oriented, which means that translation is adequate with respect to the sourcetext, while translators adhere to target repertoires, which means adopting amore acceptability-oriented approach, on the other.

The first instance actually conforms to the main hypothesis of the literarypolysystem theory that if a literary system assumes the central position, it willbe more adequacy-oriented and its repertories will be canonised. Thus, itcomes as no surprise to see that, after the first Harry Potter translation cameonto the market, the publication of translations of children’s fantasy fictiongrew rapidly, amounting to 293 fantasy translations published after 2000 (seeTable 1). Yet, the second instance suggests a situation where the literary systemoccupies a secondary position, and is more conservative and inclines toalready established target repertoires. This paradox within Taiwan’s literary

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system of translation of children’s fantasy can actually be a good starting pointfor reexamining Even-Zohar and Toury’s hypotheses.

Regrettably, owing to the present study’s limits of scope and space, acomprehensive picture of the relation of Harry Potter translations to othertranslations of children’s fantasy fiction, which might lead to a clearerexplanation of the aforementioned paradox, is out of reach. However, it maybe assumed that, owing to the centralised position of translation of children’sfantasy fiction, translators are more or less willing to adopt more innovativestrategies to enable transcultural comprehension and introduce the hegemonicEuro-American cultures to target readers. Yet, when translating children’sliterature, translators also need to take into account children’s interests,demands, responses, knowledge and reading ability (Klingberg, 1986). There-fore, it may be assumed that, even when a translated genre has achieved thecentral position in the literary polysystem of children’s literature, translatorsare still very cautious about the use of foreign implantation. In this light, thecritical issues impinging on children’s responses to foreign implantation aretheir reading ability and imperfect understanding of other cultures.

Target Readers’ Responses to Foreign ImplantationIn order to understand children’s acceptance of foreign implantations,

questionnaires were conducted with 15 Taiwanese young people between theages of 10 and 15. The questionnaires consisted of open-ended and closed-ended questions. The closed-ended questions were used to evaluate the degreeof acceptance of the chosen target text examples, while the open-endedquestions were employed to gather information on the subjects’ opinions ofthose examples. Each example was linked to a scale of 1�5, where 1 meant‘least satisfactory’ and 5 meant ‘most satisfactory’. Table 2 shows the answersof the questionnaire.

In Examples 1, 2, 3 and 5, where the strategy of preservation was adopted bythe translator, our target readers gave different responses. In Examples 1, 2 and5, the degree of unacceptability surpasses that of acceptability. Eight and 13out of 15 subjects showed their dissatisfaction with Examples 1 and 2,respectively. For example, ‘jacket potato’ was translated literally into the targetlanguage and most subjects mentioned that the image of a potato served withits skin was not at all appetising. The same responses were forthcoming inrelation to the translation of ‘Mars bar’: some subjects thought that thechocolate bar was produced on the planet Mars and should be as hard as rock.However, although the translation of ‘Cornish Pasty’ was produced in linewith a ‘preservation’ strategy, it received more positive responses. It may beassumed that, by preserving the original exotic flavour of the Cornish pasty,the transliteration does not rely on a rigid image as is the case with theprevious examples.

In Example 4, the original script for of the source text item, ‘bouillabaisse’, ispreserved with an additional annotation, and this elicited very positive

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Table 2 Target readers’ responses toward the translation of culture-specific items: food and goods

Examples Strategy

Degree of satisfaction among readers

Number of readers

5: 4: 3: 2: 1:

Ex. 1 (Mars bar) Preservation 2 1 4 6 2

Ex. 2 (jacket potato) Preservation 2 4 9

Ex. 3 (Cornish pasty) Preservation 4 3 8

Ex. 4 (bouillabaisse) Preservation�Addition

1 9 5

Ex. 5 (cupboard) Preservation 1 2 7 5

Ex. 6 (50 pence) Localisation 9 6

Ex. 7 (musical statues) Localisation 10 5

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responses from the subjects. In fact, 10 out of the 15 subjects thought theadditional information helpful for their understanding of the source text food.In Examples 6 and 7, the source text items were translated as target-culturespecific items, and all of the subjects expressed their satisfaction with these twoexamples. Strictly speaking, only the adoption of a ‘localisation’ translationstrategy is emblematic of an acceptability-oriented approach. The tendenciescharacterising the translations show that the translators mainly used sourceculture repertories; for instance, Examples 1, 2, 3 and 5. However, the readers’responses imply that although translations with foreign implantations are moreadequacy-oriented, target readers did not find this approach acceptable.

ConclusionThis study describes the position of the translation of children’s fantasy

fiction in the literary polysystem of translated children’s literature in Taiwanand demonstrates the relation between the genre as a whole and the HarryPotter translations. It is shown that the genre occupies a central position in theliterary polysystem of translated children’s literature, and its system andrepertories tend to be more adequacy-oriented. However, with the examina-tion of target readers’ responses, it can be seen that this tendency does notfunction well in practice. This raises another question as to whether readers’responses can reconstruct the translational norms used in the translationactivities. Readers’ responses directly affect the marketability of the literarygenre and impact directly on the position of the literary system; once theposition of a (sub)system in a literary polysystem has changed, its translationalnorms may also change. This is exactly why Even-Zohar stresses that literarysystems are not static but are constantly fighting with each other to enter thecentre of the literary polysystem, and why Toury claims that translationalnorms are unstable.

Primary sources, all authored by J.K. Rowling:(1997) Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. London: Bloomsbury.(2000) [Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone] (Q. Peng,trans.) Taipei: Crown Culture Corporation.(1998) Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. London: Bloomsbury.(2000) [Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets] (Q. Peng,trans.) Taipei: Crown Culture Corporation.(1999) Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. London: Bloomsbury.(2001) [Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban] (Q.Peng, trans.) Taipei: Crown Culture Corporation.(2000) Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. London: Bloomsbury.(2001) [Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire] (Q. Peng, trans.)Taipei: Crown Culture Corporation.(2003) Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. London: Bloomsbury.(2004) [Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix] (CrownCulture Corporation Translation Group, trans.) Taipei: Crown CultureCorporation.

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CorrespondenceAny correspondence should be directed to Wen-chun Liang, School of

Modern Languages, University of Newcastle, Newcastle, UK (w.liang@btopenworld.com).

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