Diversity can change the

world

Children’s literature, translation and

images of childhood

Prof. Dr. Jan Van Coillie

18 october 2017

Childhood memories

?

Translators of children’s literature as

bridge-builders between cultures

• Each translated children’s book is ‘a messenger that goes

beyond mountains and rivers, beyond the seas, to the very

ends of the world in search of new friendships’ (Paul

Hazard, 1944)

• Translating children’s literature should ‘further children’s

international outlook and their knowledge of different

cultures’ (Zandra Alkman, 2002)

Willy travels to Mexico

Selecting the

foreign

Uneven translation flows

The anglo-Saxon world: 2-5 % translations

• Great Britain: 5%

• United States: 2%

• ‘In a sense, the resistance that translated books face in the

U.S. comes from the same source as the lack of diverse

books. They are both perceived to be outside the norm,

lacking enough appeal to reach a wide (white?) audience.’

(Elena Abós, 2016, p. 38-39)

Uneven translation flows

The Low Countries: 34 % translations (2010-2015)

Globalisation and commercialisation

Globalisation and commercialisation

• ‘In the era of globalization, the publishing industry has

been increasingly dominated by large conglomerates that

impose fierce criteria of commercial profitability and

operation to the detriment of literary and intellectual

criteria.’ (Sapiro, 2016, p. 87)

• Impoverishment of local literature?

Local titles have a harder time gaining visibility

Successful series almost always lead to imitation

Globalisation as a threat to diversity

• Singapore, Indonesia (Miyake, 2006)

• India (Khorana, 2006)

• Cameroon (Van Coillie, 2017)

• Philippines and Arab countries (Ghesquiere, 2006).

• South Africa: “the power of English; the threat to diversity;

but also the intrusions of diversity upon English” (Dimitriu,

2002: i).

Reducing the

foreign

Cultural context adaptation

• Cultural context adaptation is one of the

most frequently quoted characteristics of

children’s literature in translation (Alvstad,

2010, p. 22)

Between source text and target reader

• A fundamental choice: to stay as close to the source text

as possible or to adapt it for the new audience.

• The impact of ‘images of childhood’: ideas about how

children are, what they like, what they can handle and

what is appropriate, good or useful for them.

• Translators who remove the foreignness:

young readers are not far enough along in their linguistic, literary or

cultural development to understand or perceive the foreign

elements.

• Translators who retain the foreignness:

young readers can handle a bit of strangeness and encountering

the foreign is an enrichment.

Emil or Michiel

• Peter Rabbit > Rémi Lapereau

• Emil > Michel; Michiel

• Alice > Alicia

• Ron > Rôni

• Foreign names: adult assumptions and child responses

O’Sullivan, 2000

Sung, Park & Kim, 2016: Korea - Japan

Hellings & Van Coillie, 2011: Le petit Nicolas

Trifle or babas?

• Affective content and cultural norms

(Lathey, 2016)

(Auvray & Rougier, 2001)

- sausages and fried tomatoes, steak-and-kidney pudding > O

- trifle > babas

(Zethsen, 2009)

- biscuit, sherbet lemons, football, rounders >

- cookies, lemon drops, soccer, baseball

Personal opinion (1)

• Foreignness can stimulate curiosity and creativity.

• The chance to stand in the shoes of another: exploring

diversity and discovering deeply human feelings.

• Literature also relaxes, stirs the imagination, hones

language fluency, offers an aesthetic experience.

Child images, taboos, norms and values

• sex and corporality,

• cruelty and violence,

• the relation between parent and child

• desirable versus undesirable behaviour

Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels

To pee or not to pee

Voilà qu’un terrible incendie ravage le palais …

Impossible de l’éteindre! L’eau vient à manquer!

Alors de façon très naturelle, je fais pipi!

Tu rigoles mais cela marche! Plus d’incendie!

Als op een dag het paleis brandt,

neem ik een dapper besluit.

Ik knoop als de bliksem mijn gulp

los

en plas dat paleisbrandje uit!

If one day the palace burns,

I will not dally about –

As lightning I’ll undo my fly

And pee that fire out!

How naked is the emperor?

How naked is the emperor?

From nothing (ikke noget) to little willie

(piemel)

Andersen (my translation) Vriens (my translation)

“But he hasn't got anything on," a little

child said.

"O Lord, listen to the voice of

innocence," said his father. And one

person whispered to another what the

child had said.

"But he hasn't got anything on!" all the

people cried out at last. The Emperor

was vexed, for he knew that the people

were right; but he thought the

procession must go on now! And the

lords of the bedchamber took greater

pains than ever, to appear holding up a

train, although, in reality, there was no

train to hold.

When the emperor was nearby, the

boy shouted: ‘I see his little willie!’

‘Be quiet,’ his father hissed.

The emperor passed by and the boy

shouted: ‘And now I see his buttocks!

The mother nodded and whispered to

her husband: ‘Little children tell the

truth.’

‘The emperor walks in the altogether,’

the boy shouted. Suddenly the street

became very quiet. Even the music

stopped.

Then someone squealed: ‘That boy is

right.’ The whole crowd started

shrieking, screaming and laughing.

‘Naked! Nothing on! The emperor in his

buff.’

Go the *** to sleep

Lie (the fuck) down, (my darling), and sleep

• “I know you're not thirsty. That’s bullshit. Stop lying. / Lie

the fuck down, my darling, and sleep.” (Adam Mansbach,

Go the FOk to sleep)

• “I know you’re not thirsty. You just had a drink. / Stop

goofing around now, and sleep.” (Adam Mansbach,

Seriously, just go to sleep)

• “Nee, je hebt geen dorst, dat is onzin. Niet jokken. / Ga

liggen, nu! En slapen.” (Brandt Corstius, Ga nu *** slapen).

(No, you’re not thirsty, that’s nonsense. Don’t fib. / Lie

down, now! And sleep. (my translation)

Fairy tales for sweet little children?

Children as vulnerable creatures, in need of

protection?

• ‘Dabei haben wir jeden für das Kindesalter nicht passenden Ausdruck

in dieser neuen Auflage gelöscht.’ (‘Thereby we have eliminated in this

new edition any expression that is not suitable for children.’) (Grimm,

1819)

• ‘[…] Although we want to treasure the fairies and magic palaces, the

brave knights and sleeping beauties and also the ideals of our own

childhood, so as to feed and awaken the children’s imagination, we

believe that scaring them with cannibalistic wild men and stepmothers,

with bloodthirsty wolves and Blue Beards, is outdated. We must avoid

exciting the imagination too much. The desire for the terrible, aroused

so easily in children, should not be kindled, but guided and developed

so that they learn to admire acts of courage and perseverance.’ (Ising,

1862)

To scare or not to scare: different images of childhood in the 21st century

• ‘Because we tried not to present the events too horribly,

we slightly adapted the stories here and there. A little

scariness is allowed, but we didn’t want to scare our

audience too much.’ (Busser & Schröder, 2011)

• ‘They reflect a bygone society, in which people thought

differently about social relationships, gender and race, and

in which for example the notion of a stepmother had a

different meaning than in the present time. [...] As such

cruelty was more normal than nowadays [...] Experience

shows that children have less difficulty with this than

adults.’ (Lemniscaat, 2005)

Jacques Vriens

• Marieke looked in

amazement at the two half

little men on the floor.

“Come,” she said to her

baby, “we’re going. This is

nothing for small children.” (Vol verbazing keek Marieke

naar de twee halve mannetjes

die voor haar op de grond lagen.

“Kom,” zei ze tegen haar

baby’tje, “we gaan. Dit is niks

voor kleine kinderen.”).

Thé Tjong Khing

• ‘That was terrible for the

little man, but the princess

was overjoyed. She took

her little baby from the crib

and danced around the

room.’

• (‘Dat was verschrikkelijk voor

het mannetje, maar de prinses

was dolblij. Ze haalde haar

baby’tje uit de wieg en maakte

een dansje door de kamer’).

To cut or not to cut

Charles Perrault (1697) ‘Le petit poucet’

• ‘En disant ces mots, il coupa sans balancer la gorge á ses

sept filles’. (‘Saying these words, without hesitation, he cut

the throats of his seven daughters’)

To cut or not to cut

• 1856: ‘hij doodt’ (he kills)

• 1920: O

• 1928: O

• 1978: ‘schrokte hij op’ (he

gobbled up’)

• 2004: O

• 2008: ‘hij eet op’ (he eats)

(Master’s thesis

Saskia Smeets, 2017)

To add or not to add

The complexity of a plural audience

• Translating for reading aloud (Van Coillie, 2014)

• The complexity of children’s books’ plural audience:

children and adults, who can take on different roles as

readers (both silent and aloud),

listeners

viewers.

• ‘But do you think he was satisfied now? No he wasn’t’

(“Maar dacht je dat hij nu tevreden was? Nee!”) (Thé Tjong

Khing, 2009)

Adaptations

crystallisations of

images of childhood

youth adaptations of classics written for adults

Adaptations of Conscience’s De Leeuw van

Vlaanderen (The Lion of Flanders)

• Erotic or violent passages are heavily edited.

• The nationalistic thrust is either strengthened or diluted.

• The most important changes are made in service of

reading pleasure:

passages that slow the momentum of the story are

removed.

(Van Coillie, 2016)

Film adaptationsDisney’s version of Andersen’s ‘The Little Mermaid’

Romantic versus dramatic ending

The little mermaids’ looks

• “[B]ut the youngest was the most beautiful of them all. Her

skin was soft and tender as a rose petal, and her eyes

were as blue as the deep sea, but like all the others she

had no feet. Her body ended in a fish tail.” (Andersen)

The little mermaid’s character

• “a strange child, quiet and thoughtful”

(Andersen)

But if you would just listen.

• Ariel: “I’m sixteen years old – I’m

not a child anymore.”

• Triton: “Don’t you take that tone

of voice with me young lady. As

long as you live under my

ocean, you’ll obey my rules!”

• Ariel: “But if you would just

listen.”

• Triton: “Not another word – and I

am never, NEVER to hear of

you going to the surface again.

Is that clear?”

Still defined by male standards

(Trites 1991; Bell et al. 1995; Wasko 2001; Lacroix 2004)

The Cinderella Syndrome

Personal opinion (2)

• How much can adaptations diverge from the source text

before they violate its qualities?

• The brothers Grimm’s adaptations as the beginning of a

long tradition that keep the tales alive for diverse

audiences.

• Important role to be played by adult intermediaries

They can expand the minds of children by bringing them

in contact with different versions of the same tale.

They can help develop children’s taste and critical

minds.

Fairy tale adaptations,

diversity and little rebels

Going digital

Digital books for young children

Toddlers and touchscreens:

love at first touch

• 0-2: 50 %

• 3-4: 85 %

(Iene Miene Media, 2017)

(Van Coillie & Raedts, 2016)

• Ca. 450 digital books for 0-8

• 24% apps, 76 % animated picture

books

• More research needed!

Advantages of digital books

• Animation and sound can have a positive impact on vocabulary development

and reading comprehension, when used to advance the storyline (Verhallen,

Bus & De Jong, 2004).

• Digital picture books allow readers with language deficiency to learn five to six

new words per day instead of the normal two to three (Smeets & Bus, 2014).

• When digital reading is supervised by an adult who speaks with the child about

the story, children learn even more (Segal-Drori, Korat, Shamir & Klein, 2010).

Risks of digital books

more research needed

• Apps that invite children to click on hotspots throughout the

story, appear to be less effective. (Takacs, 2015)

• Toddlers remember more of a story when read aloud by an

adult than when they listen to the story on their own in the

app. (Master’s thesis Emma Hollemans, 2017)

• App:

53 % of five-year-olds and 21 % of six-year-olds did not listen all

the way through to the end of the story because they immediately

began swiping ahead.

87 % clicked the hotspots to activate animations. Of these, 45 %

did not allow the story to play all the way through.

Digital children’s books and diversity

• Multilingual editions

• Foreign language learning

• Boekenbende aan Huis (Book Brigade

at Home)

Children as ambassadors of diversity

• ‘Imagine a World. Celebrating the Differences and

Appreciating the Similarities’ (Joyce Public School,

Toronto)

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zabcX_zoP0