When examining the position and norms of translated children’s literature, researchers tend to speak of the ‘Arab world’ rather than a specific country. Although the Arab world shares a language, it does not have a single culture, economy, politics, etc. Variations between different countries are reflected in its translated children’s literature. Picturebooks are made up of a verbal mode, visual mode and the combination of these two modes (i.e. intermodal relations). Nonetheless, researchers tend only to consider the verbal mode in regard to picturebooks, ignoring the visual mode and the intermodal relations. In light of these gaps, this research aims to assess the position and norms of translated children’s literature within the Saudi market as well as examine picturebooks in their entirety. To do so, this thesis asks five main questions: 1) What is the position of translated children’s literature in Saudi Arabia? 2) How are textual, paratextual and metatextual aspects of Arabic target texts correlated to the position of translated children’s literature in Saudi Arabia? 3) What translational initial norms are adopted to translate elements in the verbal and visual modes? 4) Which intermodal relations can be identified in the source and target texts, and how are they approached in translation? 5) What norms govern children’s literature translated from English into Arabic in Saudi Arabia?
Based on Even-Zohar’s polysystem theory (1990), Toury’s notion of norms (2012a) and Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2001) multimodal approach, a comparative multimodal analysis of elements, translation techniques and intermodal relations was carried out on twenty cases. All distributed in the Saudi market, these cases were published by four publishers originating from three different Arab countries: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Lebanon. The analytical framework combines the Composite Translation Techniques Model, the Composite Elements Model and Nikolajeva and Scott’s (2000) typology of image-text relationships. To assess the position of translated children’s literature, this study looks at the volume of translated children’s literature from and into Saudi Arabia, as well as the volume of translated Saudi children’s literature in comparison to original Saudi children’s literature and Saudis’ perception of the state of the latter. To explore the hypothetical links to the position of translation, textual (i.e. initial norms), metatextual elements (i.e. perception) and paratextual elements (i.e. price, binding type, publishing format and the (in)visibility of translators’ and authors’ names) are examined. There are three types of norms in this research: elements, translation techniques and element-specific translation technique(s), which are extracted using a comparative multimodal analysis to identify regularities of behaviour and are argued based on Chesterman’s (2017) normative forces. The dynamicity of norms in translated children’s literature in Saudi Arabia is explained in terms of Chang’s (2000) macro-polysystem hypothesis.
The results indicate that translated children’s literature in Saudi Arabia seems to occupy a central position in the children’s literature polysystem. However, contrary to Even-Zohar’s hypothesis, this position is mostly accompanied by a TL-oriented translation method. Similarly, metatextual and paratextual aspects examined in this research show no clear connection to the proposed position. Despite being multimodal, picturebooks are treated mainly as monomodal verbal texts in which each mode has a different translation method. The use of TL-oriented translation techniques, such as substitution, visual substitution, modulation and discursive creation has caused many intermodal relation shifts in TTs. A hypothetical link between a higher number of intermodal relation shifts and a higher degree of TL-orientation has been established, which is confirmed by an initial test. Results also identify several norms in translated children’s literature available in the Saudi market. Examples include the non-occurrence of alcohol, the clear presence of social and moral values, the adoption of visual repetition and the literal translation of elements involving mythical and magical creatures.
