Translating Picturebooks by Oittinen Riitta Garavini Melissa Ketola Anne & Anne Ketola & Melissa Garavini

Author:Oittinen, Riitta,Garavini, Melissa,Ketola, Anne & Anne Ketola & Melissa Garavini
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Reproduced with permission from Otava.

Original: Hän otti suksensa, pitkän lylyn ja lyhyen kalhun , ja lähti hiihtämään.

(“He took his skis, the long lyly and the short kalhu, and started skiing.”)

Even though the words referring to old-fashioned skis, the long lyly and the short kalhu, are not well known to Finnish average readers either, they will still recognize the words. Again, due to the closeness of language and culture, the Karelian-language translation is quite similar to the Finnish original. The skis are named, too, even though the short ski, kalhu, has a different name in Karelian, kattava:

Karelian: Hiän otti šukšeh, pitän lylyn ta lyhyön kattavan ta läksi hiihtämäh.

(“He took his his skis, the long lyly and the short kattava, and started skiing.”)

Moreover, the Swedish-language translation describes the skis and mention sthe length of them but does not name them, probably because there are no special names for this kind of skis in the Swedish language:

Swedish: Han tog sina skidor, den korta och den längre , och åkte i väg på dem.

(“Taking up his skis, the short one and the long one, away he went.”)

In this case, while the Swedish translator mentions the length of the skis, which helps the reader to understand the situation, the English translator leaves out both the names and the description of the skis. In this way, the English translator relies heavily on the image showing the difference of the skis. Yet, without any reference to the length of the skis, the English- and Italian-language readers may just think that the skis are funny because the character, the cat Lemminkäinen, is funny: a funny character may have a funny way of skiing, too. Indeed, the Italian and the English translators have adopted the same translation strategy: they have both deleted the description of the visual detail concerning the different length of the skis. However, such strategy could puzzle readers, because it affects the symmetrical word–image interaction (Garavini 2014, 193):

English: Taking up his skiing gear, away he went.

Italian: Con gli sci ai piedi , partì per la caccia.

(“Taking up his skis, away he went to hunt.”)

The different translation solutions are mainly due to the differences in culture, language, tools and utensils, and the way people dress. They are quite similar in 19th-century Finland, Karelia, and Sweden, but the situation with the English and Italian translations is quite far removed: the landscapes, housing, utensils are all quite different from those in Finland, Karelia, and Sweden. In other words, the images and stories are probably more familiar and thus easier to understand by a Swedish speaker than an English or Italian speaker.

However, at this point, the detailed folkloristic information about old Finnish traditions given by the author-illustrator are all wiped out from the English and the Italian translations. As a general trend, the Italian translation tends to leave out any cultural reference: as the Italian publishing house points out, Italian children, being probably not very interested in the Finnish culture and culture-specific items, would find the culture-specific details too difficult to understand (Garavini 2014, 224).

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.