‘If I’ve arksed youse boys once, I’ve arksed youse boys a thousand times!’: Translation Strategies in the German Translation of Phillip Gwynne’s Deadly, Unna?

Abstract

The primary focus of work in the area of translation studies is to observe the continuum in which a translation takes place; the textual and extratextual constraints imposed on the translator (Bassnet & Lefevere 1998, pp. 123-4) when creating a translation strategy. The following aspects have been cited as most integral to the study of translated children's literature :(1) the assumption that children's books build bridges between different cultures; (2) textspecific challenges to the translator; (3) the polysystem theory which classifies children's literature as a subsystem of minor prestige within literature; and (4) the age-specific addressees either as implied or real readers (Tabbert 2002, p. 303). The merging of cultural studies with translation studies in the 1970s gave rise to the polysystem theory as a way of viewing the function of literary translation in a certain (cultural) context or system. The final product of the act of translation is the result of the relationship between a 'source system' and a 'target system' (Even-Zohar 1981). In viewing translation as part of a transfer process, the translation occurs from one language to another, but also from one system to another (Shavit 1986, p.111). Children's literature exists within this literary polysystem. This article will focus on the key question of how certain Australian cultural signifiers are transferred from the Australian source text to the German target text through the act of translation.