Ideological Manipulation of Children's Literature Through Translation and Rewriting by Vanessa Leonardi

Abstract

Reviewed by: Ideological Manipulation of Children's Literature Through Translation and Rewriting by Vanessa Leonardi Jochen Weber Translated by Nikola von Merveldt IDEOLOGICAL MANIPULATION OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE THROUGH TRANSLATION AND REWRITING. Travelling across Times and Places. By Vanessa Leonardi. Series: Palgrave Pivot. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, 136, pages. ISBN: 978-3-030-47748-6 IDEOLOGICAL MANIPULATION OF CHILDREN'S LITERATURE THROUGH TRANSLATION AND REWRITING. Travelling across Times and Places. By Vanessa Leonardi. Series: Palgrave Pivot. Palgrave Macmillan, 2020, XV, 136 pages. ISBN: 978-3-030-47748-6 Palgrave Macmillan publishes a wide range of titles that explore the subject of translation from different perspectives. One of the most recent titles is the study by Vanessa Leonardi, associate professor of English and translation studies at the University of Ferrara (Italy). Using children's and young adult literature as an example, she illustrates the cultural and ideological changes that literary works can undergo through translation. Following current scientific consensus, Leonardi considers that the translation of a literary work is not a purely technical, neutral process, but an "ideological activity" that is influenced by factors such as the target language and culture, the target audience, the historical and political context, cultural and religious ideas and taboos, and last but not least, by the person of the translator and his or her individual approach to the subject. According to this view, literary translators do not create a "derivative and servile copy" of the original language work, but rather rewrite or recreate it. Since the original work is inevitably changed by this process, such a transformation through "manipulation" or, phrased more neutrally, "intervention" is inherent in every translation. In her monograph, Leonardi focuses on a particular aspect of this intervention, namely the question of what role, for example, morality, ethics, and politics or even taboos and censorship play in translation. According to her, children's literature is very well suited as an object of investigation. In the course of time, popular genres such as fairy tales or children's book classics have repeatedly been translated into different languages and cultures and thus changed ("manipulated") or transformed in different ways. In addition, one can observe frequent and significant simplifications, modernizations, adjustments, omissions, and other adaptations to the target language and culture, especially in translations of children's literature. The slim volume, about 140 pages, is clearly structured. Apart from the compact introduction and the concluding chapter, which gives an outlook on possible questions of future, in-depth research on the topic, the book contains three main chapters, which in turn are divided into several short subsections. The first chapter deals with fundamental aspects of the translation of children's literary works. After brief explanations of the definition and historical development of children's literature, it deals with the actors in the translation process (translators, editors, publishers, and others). The following two main chapters deal with the ideological manipulation of both intra- and interlingual translations—that is, the rewording and rewriting of a literary text within one language or during its transformation into another language. Leonardi demonstrates different forms of this manipulation with short case studies of internationally known children's literary works. In the chapter on intralingual translation, she discusses the rewriting of Carlo Collodi's Pinocchio during the fascist regime in Italy as an example of the politically motivated, ideological manipulation of an original text. The feminist rewritings of Snow White by Angela Carter and Emma Donoghue are further examples of the ideological manipulation of traditional fairy tales. In Harry Potter, Leonardi shows how the original text is decontextualized and adapted to the target culture through the intralingual translation from British to American English. [End Page 115] Pinocchio and Harry Potter are also the object of analysis in the chapter on interlingual translation. Using British and American Pinocchio editions, Leonardi examines how the subject of violence is dealt with in the two different translations. In this case, different sociocultural as well as historical contexts played a role in the ideological manipulation of the Italian original text. Using the example of names in the French, Italian, and Spanish Harry Potter translations, Leonardi explains strategies to either meet the expectations and cultural understanding of the audience in...