Traduzione per l'infanzia e questioni di genere: viaggio tra i classici francesi e inglesi tradotti in italiano

Abstract

The research aims at investigating contacts and connections between the translation of children’s literature and feminist translation theory. More specifically, the study explores the possibility of translating with a gender-sensitive approach. By focusing mainly, but not exclusively, on children’s classics translated by women, the research examines if, how and to what extent a gendered approach to the translation of children’s literature can be identified and verified if in translating classics for children an increasing attention has been paid to gender and gender-related issues. The research was further limited in genre and addressee terms to classic novels aimed at school-age readers. We also decided to work within a diachronic and comparative frame so as to identify linguistic, textual and paratextual strategies adopted with regards to gender-related aspects when translating for children. The analysis of the relations between gender and the translation of children’s classics was divided into two different but complementary parts. A quantitative study was first carried out on a collection of 1,136 Italian translations of 4 French and 4 English classics published from 1930 onwards. Drawing on this quite extensive collection, three specific case studies have been identified (La petite Fadette, Poil de Carotte, and The Secret Garden) and fifteen Italian translations have been selected for a qualitative textual analysis of gender-related translational practices. While the qualitative textual analysis highlights the strategies through which the relations between gender and translation are textually constructed and revealed, the quantitative study gives an overview of the presence of male and female translators in that specific field of children’s books, that is children’s classics. The main linguistic, textual and paratextual strategies identified in the translation of gender-related aspects in children’s classics are grouped into four main sections: representation of characters; representation of mother figures; linguistic remarks; and paratextual spaces.