Seminar with Sara Van Meerbergen, Associate Professor and Senior Lecturer in Dutch Studies, and Valérie Alfvén, Lecturer in translation studies with a focus on translation (sociology of translation), with the title "Retranslation of children’s literature".

Abstract

Our presentation focuses on a chapter we wrote on retranslation of children’s literature providing an overview of research in the area and reasons for retranslation, including factors like age, ideology, social and cultural norms, and commercial reasons. Retranslation is important for sharing classic works and shaping national and international literary identities. The chapter discusses how difficult it can be to define retranslation in children's literature, suggesting a broader definition that includes both words and images, which cannot be separated in this context. The chapter also looks at the retranslation hypothesis, a key idea, but debated, in translation studies, and its relevance for children's books. The chapter ends by a scope of recent research on how retranslated children's books are received and suggests that new ideas like "remediation" and "transcreation" could be useful for future studies on retranslation. In our seminar we will also present some examples of case studies on retranslation of children’s literature.

Valérie and Sara have written an article that will be included in The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Young Audiences.

Read more about the book on Routledge's website

The seminar will be in English. Please contact Hanna Henryson (hanna.henryson@tyska.su.se) for more information and for the Zoom link (when applicable)!