From: Barbara Tobin <barbarat>
Date: Sat, 27 Mar 2004 13:27:33 -0500

I just wanted to add an aside to Katy's intriguing vignette of her students not focussing on the setting of a translated story in their initial discussions. I hope it's not too off-topic, but it's part of the broader issue of setting and its importance in young peoples' understanding and appreciation of literature. In the research I conducted many moons ago in an Australian (all white) elementary school, I found my seventh graders curiously oblivious to setting in the book I was reading aloud to them on a daily basis. Now this was not a translated book, in fact, the setting was their own country, and there were very overt textual cues in regard to indigenous flora and fauna. And yet the story was a fantasy that invoked Aboriginal land spirits in ways that seemed 'foreign' to these mainstream young readers. The white author's attempt to bring to light some obscure local folk spirits, to celebrate the rich poetry of this indigenous literature, for the benefit particularly of the white culture, went right over the heads of these children. Despite the prolific textual cues about Aboriginality, spirituality, and setting, when asked at the end of the book where they thought the story was set, they suggested America, India, England, all over the place--just a few zoomed in on Australia (and only one recognized both the Australian setting and Aboriginality).

This award winning book was almost like a translated book to them. The author had 'translated' the folklore of a parallel culture in such a way as to make it seem 'foreign' to them. They had no expectation for the books they read to be set in their own country; and they seemed unable/unprepared to connect the knowledge they had gleaned in social studies and through local media to the fantasy literature they read
(things have probably changed a lot now). They read for plot, overriding cues that didn't fit their existing schema. Setting seemed irrelevant. The story sounded exotic and unfamiliar at the plot level, so they set it in a foreign country, when pushed.

I wonder to what degree that particular book changed in meaning when translated into other languages? The author very carefully selected her terminology for describing the folk spirits, deferring to the indigenous term "spirit". Yet it was this that threw off my young readers, because their floaty, ghost-like concept of 'spirit' did not fit the very tangible lizard-like creature that ran up trees. A single word choice can affect the whole interpretation of a book. How much more so in the translation of a book into another language. What an awesome responsibility a translator has in co-writing a translated book.

Barbara Tobin (barbarat at gse.upenn.edu)
Received on Sat 27 Mar 2004 12:27:33 PM CST