Translating foreign tales for children: a “foreignizing” approach seeking consistency and flexibility
Résumé
When I undertook to translate a selection of Sorche Nic Leodhas’s Scottish ghost stories into French, I had to face the well-known dilemma of choosing between a source-oriented approach and a target-oriented one. These tales, rewritten by a Scottish American author, were initially handed down from generation to generation, hence their strong Scottish flavour, which cannot be disregarded by the French translator. Yet the cultural content of each story has to be accessible to the “superaddressee” (Oittinen 2000 : 24), who can either be a child, a teenager or an adult. My goal was thus to preserve the Scottish essence of these tales in such a way as to put it within the reach of the youngest readers. In addition, I intended to preserve the author’s fluid and lively prose style, for the text’s stylistic value highly contributes to its great attractiveness. How could all these constraints be addressed? I endeavoured to treat all the Scottish culture-specific items I came across according to a coherent and flexible “system” able to combine “foreignization” (Venuti 1995: 20) and accessibility. As will be shown through a number of examples, although this approach hinges on the assumption that all readers wish to be somewhat disoriented (Henry 2000), it relies on a set of strategies that aims at discreetly adapting the text for the youngest or weakest or laziest readers. My translation is thus devised to offer two levels of understanding: one addressed to the less experienced readers, and another one suiting the curiosity of the more advanced readers.