Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

ALDOUS HUXLEY’S CHILDREN’S TALE “THE CROWS OF PEARBLOSSOM”

Daniela Hăisan Lecturer, PhD, ”Ștefan cel Mare” University of Suceava

Abstract: Aldous Huxleyřs Childrenřs Tale ŖThe Crows of Pearblossomŗ / ŖCiorile din Pearblossomŗ offers a comparative glimpse at Aldous Huxleyřs only childrenřs tale, written Christmas of 1944 specifically for his niece, Olivia de Haulleville, and its 2016 Romanian edition. Based on some recent works on childrenřs literature in translation (OřSullivan, 2005; Lathey, 2010; Nikolajeva, 2011; Hunt, 2014 etc.), the analysis carried out on the Romanian version of Huxleyřs text follows several key aspects in the field (e.g. varying degrees of adaptation, intensification, translatorřs voice, colloquialism etc.).

Keywords: childrenřs literature, translation, adaptation, intensification, colloquialism.

Childrenřs literature, as a (marginal as yet) segment of literature at large, is intrinsically hybrid as it comprises works from highly heterogeneous sources. Many books for children are actually crossover books, i.e. adaptations of works from adult literature (see Robinson Crusoe, Gulliverřs Travels, Don Quixote etc.); others recycle traditional narratives often originating in oral stories (see Perraultřs, Grimmřs or Andersenřs celebrated collections of fairy-tales); others, still, areworks of literature written specifically for children, or for children as well as adults (hence the genreřs intrinsic duality). The common denominator of all sources, no matter how far apart, is obviously the audience:

The true defining feature of childrenřs literature is [...] its audience: childrenřs literature is indeed literature for children. (OřSullivan, 2010: 4)

I see childrenřs literature as literatureread silently by children and aloud to children. (Oittinen, 2000: 4)

However, if the addressee is a more or less stable vector in this model of interpersonal communication, the nature of the addresser varies according to different factors: a Swift or a Defoe never meant to address children but ended up being their classics; an Enid Blyton wrote extensively for children (only), whereas a third category of authors (making up yet another trichotomic classification), already enjoying or awaiting their prestige as established writers for grown-ups, occasionally wrote pieces for their own (grand)children or (grand)niblings. One such case, in British literature, is Virginia Woolf, who collaborated with her two teenage nephews, Julian and Quentin Bell, on a small but witty family newspaper they called The Charleston Bulletin. It was in this paper that Woolf published as Bulletin Supplements her two little-known childrenřs stories, The Widow and the Parrot (1923) and Nurse Lugtonřs Curtain (1924). The former, a rather conventional, (mock-)Victorian story with a moral, is about Mrs. Gage, a widow who travels to her deceased brotherřs home to claim the inheritance, only to find a house in disuse, no sign of the 3000 pounds she had been told about, and a parrot called James. After a sudden fire in her brotherřs old

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Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 house, the widow desperately searches for the parrot, deeply concerned for his well-being; the parrot, who had been sheltered by some neighbours, finally comes to the window and directs her to the riches. The story only entered the world posthumously, in 1965. As for the latter, Nurse Lugtonřs Curtain (that depicts a whimsical animal world contained in the pattern of the drawing-room curtain sewn by Nurse Lugton, which comes alive as soon as she falls asleep), it was not published until 1991, with watercolour pictures by one of Australiařs foremost illustrators, Julie Vivas. Other such long-lost gems recently uncovered by publishing houses are James Joyceřs The Cat and the Devil (a charming 1981 picture-book based on a letter Joyce wrote to his grandson, Stephen James Joyce, on August 10, 1936, and illustrated by celebrated French artist Blachon) and The Cats of Copenhagen, written a few weeks later, equally addressed to a four-year-old Stephen living in France while Joyce himself was in Denmark. As with Woolf, these extraordinary tales reflect the authorřs lighter side, a somewhat diluted style due to a keen concern for didacticism. Finally, our case in point serves as a last example. Aldous Huxley (1894-1963), the English writer most commonly associated with his dystopian novel Brave New World (1931) which continues to outshine his other fifty books (novels, travel writing, film stories, scripts, essays etc.), also authored a childrenřs tale, The Crows of Pearblossom. He wrote it in 1944 as a Christmas gift for his niece, Olivia de Haulleville, who actually lived in Pearblossom (in northern Los Angeles County, California), having Mr. and Mrs. Yost (who are mentioned in the story) as neighbours. The Crows of Pearblossom was first published (thanks to the Yosts, who had fortunately kept a copy) in 1967 by Random House, with illustrations by Barbara Cooney. More recently, in 2011, it appeared in the Abrams Books for Young Readers series, illustrated by Australian-born artist Sophie Blackall. A funny story about the triumph of ingenuity over gluttony1, Huxleyřs only tale for children is allegedly more redolent of A. A. Milne than it is of his own mainstream literature. Every now and then, however, any Huxley aficionado will take note of his humorous, ironic (at times pedantic) style which, though not as highly wrought and as allusive as in his major works, still makes a point about both the authorřs satirist side and his concern for Ŗproper living.ŗ (Attarian, in Bloom, 2003: 9) In 2016, Huxleyřs childrenřs tale was translated into Romanian and published with Sophie Blackallřs illustrations (from cover to cover). In the present paper, which offers a comparative glimpse at the English text and its Romanian translation, we will therefore use as a corpus the 2011 Abrams Books edition and its only (so far) Romanian version (Ciorile din Pearblossom, translation by Laura Albulescu, Arthur, 2016). If we take into account the fact that translation studies within childrenřs literature scholarship have actually grown from two (opposite) schools (i.e. on the one hand, Göte Klingbergřs 1986 book, ChildrenřsLiterature in the Hands of the Translator,which vehemently denounces all deviations from source text, especially if made under the assumption that young readers lack the ability to fully understandculturalphenomena; on the other hand, Riitta Oittinenřs 1993 and 2000 books whose dialogical approach encourages liberties in translation ofchildrenřs books), then Laura Albulescuřs version,

1In short, the tale is about a family of crows living in a cotton tree at Pearblossom, whose eggs are constantly eaten by a rattlesnake living at the bottom of the tree. After she catches the snake red-handed (eating her 297th egg that year), Mrs. Crow asks her husband to kill the snake, but Mr. Crow prefers going to a friend (Mr. Owl) and asking for his help. Mr. Owl comes with a very ingenious solution: he bakes mud into two stone eggs, paints them to make them look like Mrs. Crowřs eggs, then places them in the nest to trick the snake. Unawares, the snake eats the dummy eggs the next day and, in great pain, ends up tying himself in knots around the branches. Mrs. Crow goes on to hatch four families of seventeen children each and Ŗuses the snake as a clothesline on which to hang the little crowsř diapers.ŗ 184

Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 although adhering to the foreign text, is closer to Oittinenřs view of dialogical translation, in that it allows a number of insertions and a slight change of tenor which cannot pass unnoticed. Even to a slightly-trained eye, this is not to be understood as a strict attachment to Ŗdomesticationŗ (in Lawrence Venutiřs terminology) but rather as a succession of domesticating choices along a cline of translation seen as a continuum with an infinite number of gradations from one extreme (the source text / culture) to the other (the target text / culture). A(ny) textual manipulation made by translators is more easily accounted for in the field of childrenřs literature, given the peripheral status of childrenřs literature in the literary system. Within the ambit of functionalist theories of translation, cutting, omitting, adjusting language, adding information or any such procedures are even more defensible, depending on the required purpose. Surely, these minor or major adjustments are not usually made indiscriminately. According to Zohar Shavit, translators must resort to adaptation only on two conditions: first, that they make it appropriate and useful to the target audience, in compliance with the social relations that determine what it is good for children; and second, that the adjustment of the story, characterization and language refer to the perceptions of society on the target audiencesřs ability to read and understand text. (Shavit, 2006: 26) According to Alvstad (2010), the text can be manipulated by the translator in basically two ways: either by simplifying it, in order to make it more accessible to the reader, or by complicating it (i.e. increasing its lexical density, as a way to enrich the vocabulary of its readers). For many a translation theorist all textual adjustments can be subsumed under the all-encompassing (though sometimes rather vague) term adaptation. Of all the possible types of adaptation (matter-choosing, form-choosing, style-choosing, medium-choosing), in keeping with Klingbergřs classification (2008: 13-14), we are here mainly interested in a set of translational interventions applied stylewise to parts of the text only and not globally, to the whole text, and which include paraphrasing, omission, addition and the like. The given corpus imposes thus a vision of adaptation not far from what Maria Nikolajeva details in her definition:

Adaptation means that a text is adjusted to what the translator believes to be the needs of the target audience, and it can include deletions, additions, explanations, purification, simplification, modernization, and a number of other interventions. (Nikolajeva, in Shelby et al., 2011: 408)

Mention must be made from the start that the alterations operated in transposing Huxleyřs text into Romanian are quite subtle: the text is not abridged, and there are no ostentatious instances of expurgation or retelling. Apart from a few omissions, substitutions and simplifications, most of the alterations consist of slight additions, usually paired with explicitation, intensification or a change of register (colloquialisms). A glimpse at the way proper names are dealt with (a neverending concern in childrenřs literature translation) shows little intervention. Some toponyms are transfered (Pearblossom, Llano), while others, seens as more connotative than the rest, are translated (Little Rock Ŕ ŖPietricicaŗ; Palmdale Ŕ ŖCopăceiŗ). Inconsistency in the treatment of proper names in translating childrenřs literature is not rare, the Ŗdegree of preservationŗ (Ballard, 2001) depending on many a factor. Nevertheless, if Pearblossom, Llano and Palmdale are scattered here and there in the text not only as cultural signifiers, as real places in northern Los Angeles, but as a way of smoothing five-year-old Oliviařs transition into a new home, as an attempt to make those places in her vicinity more

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Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 familiar, more pleasant, then this choice of translating Palmdale as ŖCopăceiŗ [literally, small trees], while at the same time leaving the more expressive Pearblossom aside, comes as a surprise. As for the anthroponyms, Mr. Yost is kept as such, whereas, naturally, Mr. and Mrs. Crow are translated (Ŗdoamna / domnul Cioarăŗ), as well as Mr. Owl, but here there is a small intervention in terms of gender-markedness (Ŗdomnul Bufniţŗ Ŕ masculine gender, when the commonly used name for the species is feminine: Ŗbufniţăŗ). Therefore, on the one hand, replacing a proper name by another one with a different, additional connotation results in a change of the emotional function2. On the other hand, the use of the diminutival form ŖCopăceiŗ echoing ŖPietricicaŗ / Little Rock, does testify, at least to some extent, to the translatorřs concern for the emotional as well as the informative function of proper names in translation. The only omission in the Romanian text is negligible, easily defensible (one of the so-called translation universals has to do with avoiding repetition and redundancy in translation) and, what is more, compensated for by an addition:

ŖAbraham, youřre scared!ŗ said Mrs. Crow. / ŕ Abraham, ţi-e frică, e clar! [said Mrs. Crow is omitted; on the other hand, Ŗe clarŗ (lit. it is quite clear) is added to emphasize Mrs. Crowřs reply]

Substitution, explicitation and simplification occur from the storyřs very first sentence:

Once upon a time there were two crows who had a nest in a cotton-wood tree at Pearblossom. / A fost odată ca niciodată o familie de ciori care-şi avea cuibul într-un plop din Pearblossom.

On the one hand, two crows are replaced by o Ŗfamilie de cioriŗ [a family of crows]; on the other, cotton-wood tree [whose Romanian counterpart would be Ŗplop deltoidŗ] is rendered simply as Ŗplopŗ [poplar], as an adjustment for the young Romanian readers. The tall poplar which is mentioned later in the story (So he flew off to the tall poplar in Mr. Yostřs garden...) is, again, Ŗplopŗ in the Romanian version, an homogenisation which, however, does not affect the global meaning of the story. The practice of addition is usually accompanied by explicitation and / or simplification. Take, for instance, after tea, which is, in Romanian, Ŗdupă ceaiul de la ora 5ŗ [after five ořclock tea]. More technical, nautical terms, like clove hitch or running bowline knot, are dealt with in the same manner:

...at last he got its tail tied up in a clove hitch around another branch of the tree... / ...încât a sfârşit prin a o prinde definitiv într-un nod Ŗfoarfecă simplă”, cum zic marinarii, de o altă creangă a copacului. [the clove hitch is explained by analogy with a pair of scissors; the origin of this type of knot is also elucidated by means of Ŗcum zic marinariiŗ (as sailors call it / in sailorsř slang)]

...he tied his neck in a running bowline knot around the branch... / a reuşit să-şi prindă gâtul de creangă într-un nod marinăresc de toată frumuseţea... [running bowline knot / a splendid sailor knot]

2 ŖIt is notable how infrequently names that carry specific connotations are translated literally. Sometimes a literal translation would result in a change of the emotional function.ŗ (Van Coillie, in Van Coillie & Verschueren, 2014: 128)

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Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

Very often, with addition comes along intensification, as in the following examples:

In a hole at the bottom of the tree lived a rattlesnake. He was very old and very big... / Într-o gaură de la rădăcina acestui copac trăia bine-mersi un Şarpe-cu-clopoţei. Era cumplit de bătrân şi cumplit de mare... [the rattlesnake does not simply live at the bottom of the tree, but he lives Ŗbine-mersiŗ (safe and sound); he was not very old and very big, he was Ŗcumplit de bătrân şi cumplit de mareŗ (terribly old and terribly big)]

Every now and then, the Romanian version adds the adverb Ŗcuminteŗ [nicely, quietly], which is possibly not only a mere verbal automatism, but also a way of inducing a certain state of mind, if not conduct:

...so after tea she laid another one.... / ...aşa că, după ceaiul de la ora 5, se aşeza cuminte şi mai oua unul... Mr. Crow took a seat... / Domnul Cioară s-a aşezat cuminte pe un scaun...

Another addition very often used concerns adverb Ŗfrumosŗ, with its diminutival form, Ŗfrumuşelŗ, yet another way of expressing what Ŗcuminteŗ often does [nicely]:

And he glided down the tree and into his hole. / Şi după aceea s-a prelins frumuşel din copac până în gaura lui de şarpe. Then the two friends flew back to Owlřs house and had supper. / După aceea, cei doi prieteni au zburat înapoi la casa Bătrânului Bufniţ şi au luat frumos cina. Old Man Owl took the eggs out of the can and placed them in the nest. / Bătrânul Bufniţ a luat ouăle din cutie şi le-a pus frumos în cuib. ...he flew off toward Llano... / ...şi după aceea şi-a luat frumos tălpăşiţa spre Llano...

Like a sharp in music, adverbs (and sometimes adjectives) are used in the Romanian text to add an extra flavour, to make certain expressions more forceful. Mr. Snake is not merely swallowing Mrs. Crowřs latest egg, he downs it leisurely:

Mrs. Crow came home earlier than usual and caught Mr. Snake in the act of swallowing her latest egg. / ...într-o zi, doamna Cioară a ajuns acasă mai devreme ca de obicei şi l-a prins pe domnul Şarpe exact când dădea tacticos pe gât ultimul ei ou.

Likewise, Mr. Crow does not only shake his head, he shakes his head pensively (Mr. Crow shook his head. / Ŗ...acesta [Domnul Cioară] a dat din cap îngânduratŗ). For her part, Mrs. Crow was not only frightened, she was beside herself (...she was frightened... / Ŗ...s-a speriat până peste poate...ŗ). Owl is not just a thinker like any other, he is a true thinker (Owlřs a thinker. / ŖBufniţ e un gânditor adevărat.ŗ). Mr. Snake does not simply come gliding out of his hole up the tree, he does it Ŗartisticallyŗ (Mr. Snake [...] came gliding out of his hole up the tree... / ŖDomnul Şarpe [...] a ieşit din gaura lui, s-a târât artistic în sus, pe trunchiul copacului...ŗ). The translator also improvises on the textřs semantics and offers a creative rendition of one of Mr. Crowřs statements (something Huxley apparently used to say): This is the sort of thing that somebody will have to do something about. In Romanian, this is: ŖE genul acela de situaţie în care cineva trebuie să ia problema în gheare şi s-o rezolve.ŗ [It is that kind of a situation where one must take the matter into oneřs own claws and get it taken care of.] Ŕ which echoes one of Huxleyřs own puns: Keep your beak shut and do exactly what I do. / ŖCiocu‟ mic şi fă exact ce-ţi spun!ŗ (in Romanian, 187

Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9 with a highly colloquial but humorous expression Ŗciocuř micŗ as the best choice for keep your beak shut). Other examples of addition for the sake of explicitation can be seen in:

Excuse my being in bedroom slippers. / Te rog să mă scuzi că sunt în papuci de casă, dar abia m-am trezit. [Please excuse my being in slippers, but I have just woken up.] After that he stretched himself along the branch in the sunshine and began to sing a little song... / După acest ospăţ regal, s-a întins cât era de lung pe creangă, lăfăindu-se la soare, şi a început să cânte un cântecel. [After this royal feast, he stretched himself out full-length along the branch, basking in the sunshine, and began to sing a little song.]

More often than not, additions tend to favour orality and colloquialism to a greater extent than the original text. The verb swallow, for instance, repeated several times in the story to describe the way the snake feasted on the crowřs eggs, is constantly rendered as Ŗa haliŗ (a familiar, Romany term similar to scoff). What had happened is, in Romanian, Ŗtoată tărăşeniaŗ (a very familiar term for adventure). Similary, for get up, the translator uses the popular term Ŗa face ochiŗ. ŖTamanŗ, an adverb of Turkish origin, used exclusively in familiar language, for the English just or exactly; Ŗde numa-numaŗ [excessively], a decidedly demotic expression; Ŗcâte zile oi mai aveaŗ [a slightly corrupted form of for as long as I shall live], for for ever; the archaic Slavic word Ŗa păliŗ [strike], used to render the more neutral he began to have (the most frightful stomachache) or she felt (very brave); the rather unpleasant reflexive Ŗs-a executatŗ for Mrs. Crow did as she was told; the extreme (and utterly futile) regionalism Ŗrăpănoasăŗ [filthy] in Ŗo cutie răpănoasă de conservăŗ, for an old tin can Ŕ all contribute to the same feeling that the global strategy adopted by the translator aims at making the text very familiar. This is not automatically objectionable; however, the translatorřs choices do not constitute a consistent set of coherent choices: there is a real, jarring discordance between old- fashioned, regional, highly familiar terms used side by side with more modern, standard language terms like Ŗasistent managerŗ, Ŗspectaculosŗ, Ŗa manevraŗ, Ŗa constataŗ etc. Literature for children is frequently written to be read aloud: vocabulary is more often than not purified and simplified; change of tenor is also not uncommon. Therefore, there is nothing shocking in the translator favouring readability, orality and unsophisticated language over other aspects of Huxleyřs text. While this is not, perhaps, the very best example of asserting what in a recent trend in (Socio-)translation studies is called the translatorřs voice, Ciorile din Pearblossom remains, nevertheless, an auspicious cultural event which should be hailed accordingly.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Alvstad, Cecilia, ŖChildrenřs Literature and Translationŗ, in Gambier, Y.; Van Doorslaer, L. (eds.). Handbook of Translation Studies, John Benjamins, Philadelphia, 2010, pp. 22-27 Ballard, Michel, Le nom propre en traduction, Ophrys, Paris, 2001 Bloom, Harold (ed.), Aldous Huxley [Bloomřs Modern Critical Views], Chelsea House Publishers, New York, 2003 Garcia de Queiroga, Marcìlio; Fernandes, Lincoln P., ŖTranslation of Childrenřs Literatureŗ, in Cadernos de Tradução, vol. 36 no.1, Florianñpolis, January / April 2016, retrieved from www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2175- 79682016000100062 (November 11th, 2016) 188

Section: Literature Iulian Boldea (Editor) - Literature, Discourses and the Power of Multicultural Dialogue Arhipelag XXI Press, Tîrgu Mureș, 2017. eISBN: 978-606-8624-12-9

Hunt, Peter (ed.), Understanding Childrenřs Literature, Routledge, London & New York, 2nd edition, 2003 [1999] Huxley, Aldous, The Crows of Pearblossom, Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2011 Huxley, Aldous, Ciorile din Pearblossom, traducere din engleză de Laura Albulescu, Arthur, Bucureşti, 2016 Jobe, Ronald, ŖTranslationŗ, in Hunt, P. (ed.). International Companion Encyclopedia of Childrenřs Literature, Routledge, New York, 1996, pp. 519-529 Klingberg, Göte, Facets of Childrenřs Literature Research, Swedish Institute for Childrenřs Books no. 99, Stockholm, 2008 Lathey, Gillian, The Role of Translators in Childrenřs Literature. Invisible Storytellers, Routledge, New York & London, 2010 Nikolajeva, Maria, ŖTranslation and Crosscultural Receptionŗ, in Wolf, Shelby A.; Coats, Karen; Enciso, Patricia; Jenkins, Christine A. (eds.), Handbook of Research on Childrenřs and Young Adult Literature, Routledge, New York, 2011, pp. 404-416 Oittinen, Riitta, I Am Me Ŕ I Am Other: On the Dialogicsof Translating for Children, University of Tampere, 1993 Oittinen, Riitta, Translating for Children, Garland Publishing, New York & London, 2000 OřSullivan, Emer, ŖNarratology meets Translation Studies, or, The Voice of the Translator in Childrenřs Literatureŗ, in Meta (Traduction pour les enfants), volume 48, n° 1-2, mai 2003, pp. 197-207 OřSullivan, Emer, Comparative Childrenřs Literature, Routledge, London & New York, 2005 Rossi, Paula, ŖTranslated and Adapted Ŕ The Influence of Time on Translationŗ, in Meta (Traduction pour les enfants), volume 48, n° 1-2, mai 2003, pp. 142-153 Shavit, Zohar (ed.), The Translation of Childrenřs Literature, Multilingual Matters, Frankfurt, 2006 Van Coillie, Jan; Verschueren, Walter P. (eds.), Childrenřs Literature in Translation. Challenges and Strategies, Rouledge, London & New York, 2014 [2006] Venuti, Lawrence, The Translatorřs Invisibility, Routledge, New York, 1995

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Section: Literature