Babysitting the Reader

European literature for children and young adults in an inter-cultural context 1 Babysitting the Reader Translating English Narrative Fiction for Girls into Dutch (1946-1995) von Mieke K.T Desmet 1. Auflage Babysitting the Reader – Desmet schnell und portofrei erhältlich bei beck-shop.de DIE FACHBUCHHANDLUNG Peter Lang Bern 2007 Verlag C.H. Beck im Internet: www.beck.de ISBN 978 3 03911 147 3 Inhaltsverzeichnis: Babysitting the Reader – Desmet Introduction Despite its low status, the task of writing or translating children’s literature is a complex one requiring the simultaneous appeal to two audiences: adults, who are in a position to make judgements about the work’s quality, and children, the implied readers. Children’s literature is also caught between two semiotic sys- tems: the educational one, which judges the work according to its pedagogical values, and the literary, which applies aesthetic values. Although it does not belong to the canon of “high” literature, it has its own canon, determined by adults, and its set of disapproved non-canonical literature which nevertheless often competes quite successfully for children’s attention (Anderson 2000: 276). This extract from the children’s literature entry in the Encyclopedia of Literary Translation Into English (Classe 2000) deftly summarizes the many aspects which are seen to affect children’s literature1 and its translation. As will be discussed below, the book will attempt to link the general characteristics of children’s literature, i. e. its educational and literary qualities, and its stratification into sub-genres of differential status to translating practice. The main aim of this thesis is to try to answer the question: How is children’s literature translated? More particularly: Is there a specific way of translating children’s literature which can be related to a concept of children’s literature as different from other kinds of literature? And even more specifically: Is it possible to identify consistent patterns in the transla- 1 In English the term ‘children’s literature’ is used most often, although one can also find the term ‘juvenile literature’ or ‘young adult literature’ (YA). In Dutch, the terms ‘kinderliteratuur’ and ‘jeugdliteratuur’ are commonly used. Rita Ghesquiere (1982; 1993: 10) points out that ‘kinderliteratuur’ refers to that literature aimed at children under 12, while ‘jeugdliteratuur’ has both a narrow and a wider sense. In the narrow sense, ‘jeugdliteratuur’ refers to literature aimed at twelve to sixteen-year-old children, while in the wider sense it embraces the whole age bracket from zero to sixteen and thus incorporates all ‘kinderliteratuur’. Furthermore, the term ‘adolescentenliteratuur’ may be used to refer to literature for the over fifteens which corresponds to the English ‘young adult literature’. Since I am writing in English I will use the term ‘children’s literature’ as an overall term to denote the whole age group of zero to eighteen. In Dutch, I prefer to use the joint term ‘kinder- en jeugdliteratuur’ to refer to the whole range of age groups. 15 tion of children’s literature which may be linked to the educational principles which inform writing for children and/or the status of the text? Children’s literature is usually defined in opposition to adult literature. Whereas aesthetic considerations dominate present-day discussions of adult literature a major concern in children’s literature discussions is its pedagogical function. Many critics have argued that a central issue in children’s literature is the education and socialization of its intended audience and hence they have identi- fied as the distinguishing feature of children’s literature the fact that it combines literary with educational goals (Bottigheimer 1998; Hunt 1995b; Stephens 1992). The tension between didactic and literary aspirations also affects the translation of children’s literature (Kling- berg 1986). Different, and often contradictory, goals not only inform the choice of children’s texts for translation but also help determine the shape which the translation of a particular book into the target cul- ture2 takes. The educational concerns governing children’s literature may influence the translation of children’s literature in different ways, and they may include practices in which the foreign is explicitly introduced to children as well as their opposite, in which the foreign is avoided either because adults fear children will not be able to understand or because they consider the material to be inap- propriate for children and not in line with their values, i.e. the values of the receiving culture. Although boundaries between adult and children’s literature are not always clearly drawn, children’s literature as a whole occupies a separate and marginal position in the wider literary field (Bottig- heimer 1998; Hunt 1998; Ghesquiere 1982; 1993). Children’s literature is often considered to be of less significance and to have lower status than adult literature (Hunt 1995c; Ghesquiere 1992; Holtrop 1986; Shavit 1986). In turn, several critics have argued that children’s literature itself can be stratified according to a variety of criteria, 2 In this dissertation the following terms and abbreviations will be employed: source text (ST) will be used to refer to a text which is being translated and which originates in a foreign culture, the source culture (SC), while target text (TT) is used to refer to the ST’s translation into the receiving or target culture (TC). 16 resulting in different types of texts to which critics attribute distinct value and status within the field (O’Sullivan 2000; Hunt 1998; Shavit 1986). Based on gender constructions pertaining to the intended reader it is possible to identify and define narrative fiction for girls as a sub-category of children’s literature. This sub-category, the fo- cus of the present investigation, is often considered to be of low status within the children’s literature field (Foster & Simons 1995; Lierop-Debrauwer 1994; Reynolds 1990). Moreover, girls’ fiction can itself be further subdivided employing textual and other criteria. Within girls’ fiction adult critics value certain text types and consider them to be of high status whereas they judge other types to be of less value and to possess low status. It is worth asking if the low status of children’s literature as a whole has a bearing on the way source texts are translated. Zohar Shavit claims that the peripheral position and low status of children’s literature within the literary polysystem means that transla- tors can permit themselves many more liberties with their source texts (Shavit 1986: 112). In this research project I intend to put this claim to the test. I propose to investigate whether and to what extent the stratification of texts according to status within children’s literature, and particularly within girls’ fiction, plays a role in the way texts are translated. I want to consider how educational concerns combine with rela- tive status of particular texts and sub-genres in the field to determine the form which translations of girls’ fiction from English into Dutch in the period 1946–1995 take. In order to answer this question I propose the following: I will discuss what children’s literature is and how it relates to adult literature with which it is most fre- quently contrasted, and provide an indication of the issues and de- bates which concern the concept of children’s literature. I will also provide a short history of the field in the Netherlands and Flanders and define the sub-genre of narrative fiction for girls. From the ideas surrounding the translation of children’s literature I distil a number of concepts and establish a research model to undertake the analy- sis of the narratives for the different case studies. A key initial task consists in gathering lists of titles to study. The corpus is extracted from a comprehensive bibliographical overview of how much original Dutch work and how much translated fiction is available in the sub-genre narrative fiction for girls in the period 17 under investigation. Patterns of literary importation are discussed and examined. The evidence shows that translated work makes up a large proportion of girls’ fiction. Analyses are then carried out on selected titles and discussed in the case study chapters; the selection will be guided by the concept of the differential status of the source texts. Within narrative fiction for girls it is possible to distinguish between text types which demonstrate particular textual characteristics and also perform different functions in the field. Based on the presence of specific textual features in a narrative and on the function of the text type it belongs to, adults assign esteem: some text types are judged to have little value and are therefore considered to be of low status, while others are perceived to be of higher quality and are granted high status. This dissertation will attempt to show how distinct educational goals inform the translation strategies used to bring text types with perceived differential status into the target culture. The views on the different functions and perceived status of certain text types inform the attitudes towards their translation, the range of texts translated, and the particular translation strategies applied. I have distinguished between three types of texts with different status within the field based on distinctions made by various critics which to some extent overlap (see O’Sullivan

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