Exploring the Impact of Translation Strategies on the Reading Experiences of Parent-Child Dyads: A Comparative Analysis of Reader’s Responses to Humorous Picturebooks in Source Texts, Foreignized Translation, and Domesticated Translation

Having once been left out of academic studies, the theory of translation of children’s literature is now an important subject of research. Yet in spite of the increase in publications in the field, an important gap remains. There is still a lack of empirical studies exploring the responses of children to translations which are necessary to complement this theoretical knowledge. To gain insight into this field and start filling the research gap, this study analyses children’s responses to the translation of two humorous picturebooks: The Bear Who Did by Louise Greig and Laura Hughes, and Bunnies on the Bus by Philip Ardagh and Ben Mantle. In collaboration with students in translation and professional translators, these picturebooks have been translated into two different versions: one following a foreignization strategy, and the other one following a domestication strategy. As coined by Lawrence Venuti (1995), these two strategies of foreignization and domestication have different translation aims and may therefore produce different reading experiences. In being source-text-oriented, the foreignization strategy tries to stay as close as possible to the original text, while the domestication strategy is target-oriented and tries to acommodate the same reading experience as in the original audience. As yet, however, no empirical study has shown which of these strategies would best favour understanding and enjoyment in children’s reception of translation.
In this study, these picturebooks and their translations were read to British and French children twice in a week by their parents. The British dyads read the source text and the French dyads read either the domestication or the foreignized translation. A total of 33 dyads participated in the research. The video recordings of the reading and the
responses to a semi-structured interview following the reading were analysed qualitatively and quantitatively.
The study shows that the strategies of translation offer different reading experiences, influence reading prosody and mediation styles, and have different impacts on understanding and enjoyment which was particularly underlined in the second reading. The findings shed some empirical light on the theory of translating children’s literature and offer practical insights into the process of translating for children.