Manipulation in Translation of Children’s Literature

Abstract

The present study attempted to explore the manipulative aspects of translating for children, taking into account the linguistic and cultural differences between English and Persian, and to establish some common manipulative strategies used by translators. The study adopted a descriptive attitude toward the study of translation and the corpus was approached mainly from qualitative perspective with some elements of quantification. The categorization was mainly based on Dukate’s work on the typology of manipulation. Two well-known British children’s novels, i.e. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame and Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone by J. K. Rowling and their translated Persian versions formed the corpus of the study. The results show that in translation of children’s literature, whenever the given part of the text is not in conformity with the target language cultural, ideological and didactic considerations, it is omitted, substituted or attenuated in such a way as to conform to TL ideological and pedagogical values. However, even in cases where there were no cultural or ideological clashes between the source and target texts, the translators had tried to modify the source text so as to make it conform with the reading habits and linguistic expectations of target language readers.