Translating Culture-Specific Items in Horrid Henry Series by Francesca Simon

Abstract

Literary texts reflect the social and cultural aspects of society. Culture-specific items play a key role in reflecting the culture in the texts. In this regard, translation is a way of cross-cultural communication. Children's literature requires special attention in this context. Translation of children's literature means not only transferring one language to another, but also opening the door to a foreign world. Culture-specific items have important roles in translation of children’s literature. Through exploring the culture of the ‘other’ worlds, a child can broaden her/his horizon, thanks to translation, the child reader meets new and foreign worlds. Thus translation of culture-specific items in children’s literature requires special treatment. Culture-specific items in children's literature should be translated using the appropriate translation strategies, creating the same effect as in the source text and in a way that the child reader can understand. Which translation strategies to adopt, depends on the target reader’s age as well. In today’s world, translation of children’s literature is dominated by many ‘adults’ such as authors, translators, editors, publishers, teachers, and parents. They are the ones who decide how much of the ‘foreign’ world and culture is transmitted to the child. In this study, translators’ choices and strategies are dealt with within the framework of Venuti’s translation approaches which are domestication and foreignization and Davies’s translation strategies which are preservation, omission, addition, creation, localization, transformation and globalization. The objective of this study is to research to what extent and how much of the culture-specific items have been transferred in the translations of Horrid Henry series. This thesis examines translation strategies adopted by the translators in the light of Davies’s translation strategies which are used to explain the translation of culture-specific items. This study also examines the translation strategies used in Horrid Henry series within the framework of Venuti’s foreignization and domestication approaches.