Testing the Tastemakers: Children’s Literature, Bestseller Lists, and the “Harry Potter Effect”

2012 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-107 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebekah Fitzsimmons
Author(s):  
Anna Čermáková

In this paper I explore the potential of a corpus stylistic approach to the study of literary translation. The study focuses on translation of children’s literature with its specific constrains, and illustrates with two corpus linguistic techniques: keyword and cluster analysis — specific cases of repetition. So in a broader sense the paper discusses the phenomenon of repetition in different literary (stylistic) traditions. These are illustrated by examples from two children’s classics aimed at two different age groups: the Harry Potter and the Winnie the Pooh books — and their translations into Czech. Various shifts in translation, especially in the translation of children’s literature, are often explained by the operation of so-called ‘translation universals’. Though ‘repetition’ as such does not belong to the commonly discussed set of translation universals, the stylistic norms opposing repetition seem to be a strong explanation for the translation shifts identified.  


2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynn Penrod

By May of 2008 worldwide sales of Harry Potter books hovered around the 400 million mark, making these texts the most widely-read works of children’s literature in history. To date the books have been translated into 67 languages. Given the particular translation issues involved in the translation of these highly imaginary English texts (culture, rhymes, anagrams, acronyms, invented words, proper nouns and names, among many others) combined with the series’s incredibly lucrative sales success, it is not surprising that the international translation process has become highly competitive as well as highly problematic. Unauthorized or pirate translations, fake translations, Americanization as translation—all of these lead us to a basic questioning of the role of the translator and just how much of an impersonator s/he is required to be by the task of translation.


Author(s):  
Sarah Mygind

“Children’s Literature Erupting. Transmedia Movements in Contemporary Children’s Literature”The rise of large transmedia storytelling systems such as Harry Potter, The Hunger Games and Game of Thrones suggests that transmedia storytelling is the most important narrative mode of our time. However, transmedia storytelling also exists and works on other scales. This article focuses on a growing transmedia storytelling practice that has remained underexposed as such in the field of research due to the dominance of the large transmedia franchises. This practice is indeed related to transmedia storytelling but it also challenges existing theories. With a number of different media publications all named The Numberlys produced by Moonbot Stu- dios as its point of departure, the article explores the underlying structures, relations and mechanisms in and between these publications in order to elucidate aesthetic consequences of the transmedial ‘eruptions’ in contemporary media entertainment products for children.


2019 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-162
Author(s):  
Caroline Reis Vieira Santos

The present research covers the intersection between Descriptive Translation Studies and Children’s Literature and aims to investigate the important role of the translator as mediator of marked language, more specifically by dialect and slang. This paper is based both on Santos’s (2010) concluded mastering thesis which investigated the translation of the dialect of the character Rubeus Hagrid and Santos’s ongoing PhD research which deals with translation into Brazilian Portuguese of slang words in the Harry Potter series. The initial hypothesis is that dialects and slang words will be translated by standard language and this translator choice is influenced by the particularities of its readership.


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