Translation of current American school fiction into French

Abstract

This article presents a descriptive, corpus-based study of how the present-day world of school and schoolchildren is depicted in original and translated fiction for children in France. The corpus of works examined consists of 60 novels for eight- to 14-year olds published in the first decade of this century: 20 of these are original French novels, complemented by 20 American novels and their French translations. After describing the school systems of France and the US, I look at the similarities and differences in the way school life is depicted in the French and American novels. I then describe the overall translation strategy that can be deduced from the translated books, and discuss the adaptations translators made. Finally, I present numerous examples of two types of departure from the general strategy of denotative accuracy and textual fidelity, arguing that these are conscious or unconscious responses to target culture norms and assumptions.