Translating children's literature: Intersemiotic perspectives

This chapter focuses on the issue of illustrations in translations of the books for children. Its relevance can hardly be underestimated, since most children’s books are illustrated and thus translating books for children means
interpreting both the verbal and the visual. Moreover, illustrations in books can also be seen as intersemiotic translations of verbal descriptions and images or, to be more precise, of the objects / characters and events portrayed verbally. The research aims to outline some typical strategies and difficulties in translating children’s literature that originate in its intersemiotic nature.
The combination of linguistic and pictorial material within a text provides for its creolized, polycoded, or intersemiotic character which, in its turn, requires translation strategies capable of reproducing the text as a homogeneous multimodal ensemble in a new cultural environment. Proceeding from theoretical and practical observations, the following strategies were outlined: (i) illustrations can be transmitted into the target book intact; (ii) they can be substituted for by new illustrations drawn by another artist; (iii) they can be transmitted into the target book with a number of transformations (similar to verbal ones); (iv) they can be excluded from the target book. Case studies confirmed the popularity of the first three strategies among Ukrainian publishers, while the fourth strategy is believed to be unacceptable, since stripping a children’s book off its illustrations reduces its commercial allure. The paper claims that the application of each strategy is stipulated by the cumulative effect of various factors: linguistic, socio-cultural, ideological, economic, personal, etc.