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Team translation and other specificities of translating children’s literature in Ukraine: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from English into Ukrainian.

Oleksandra Kosiuha

Résumés

Cette étude met en lumière les défis spécifiques et la dynamique de collaboration de la traduction en équipe dans le contexte de la littérature pour la jeunesse. Elle examine comment la traduction ukrainienne navigue entre les considérations culturelles, linguistiques et littéraires pour adapter le texte à un jeune public tout en restant fidèle au récit original de J. K. Rowling. L’étude met l’accent sur plusieurs aspects : a) la dynamique de la traduction en équipe : la traduction d’un texte complexe et culturellement riche comme Harry Potter nécessite souvent un effort de collaboration. Il s’agit notamment de répartir les tâches de traduction, d’harmoniser la dimension stylistique et linguistique et de s’assurer de la cohérence de la terminologie, en particulier en ce qui concerne les noms propres, les termes renvoyant à la magie et les références culturelles spécifiques ; b) l’adaptation culturelle : les traducteurs ukrainiens ont dû relever le défi de la localisation des éléments de l’histoire, tels que les expressions idiomatiques, l’humour et les références culturelles, afin qu’ils trouvent un écho auprès des lecteurs ukrainiens. Pour ce faire, ils ont dû recourir à des stratégies telles que la localisation (adaptation des références à la culture cible) et la transformation (modification des éléments pour les aligner sur les attentes du public) ; et c) la traduction adaptée à l’âge : la traduction doit tenir compte de l’âge du public cible et de son niveau de compréhension de l’écrit en adaptant les thèmes complexes et les jeux de mots sans perdre l’essence du texte d’origine. Cette recherche souligne l’importance de la sensibilité culturelle et linguistique dans la traduction de la littérature pour la jeunesse et montre comment un travail en équipe peut répondre aux exigences multiples de tels projets.

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  • 1 The interview material was published on the websites of the Svoboda [Freedom] radio station and the (...)
  • 2 The interview was published on the website of Kultura [Culture radio station].

1This article focuses on translation of children’s literature in Ukraine and some of its specificities, including the recourse to team translation. My research for this article will consider an English novel, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling (2000), as well as its translation by contemporary Ukrainian translators, Viktor Morozov and Sofia Andrukhovych, who are well-known both in Ukraine and in the USA. Viktor Morozov, a translator from English and Portuguese, was the official translator of all seven parts of the Harry Potter cycle into Ukrainian;1 Sofia Andrukhovych is a writer and a translator from English and Polish.2

2One of the reasons why I selected a book from the Harry Potter cycle is because the volumes are about schooling: school stories or school-related narratives are highly codified texts, rooted in specific educational traditions and are therefore particularly likely to present cultural stumbling blocks for translators. Also, the target audience of these books is children and young adults with limited experience, which creates specific issues. This article is in part based on interviews with these translators and another Ukrainian translator of children’s books, Hanna Kyriienko.

3This paper will address issues raised by several processes related to translation practice in Ukraine, as illustrated by the books I selected; I will, in particular, discuss “team translation” as a specificity of Ukraine’s approach to translating children’s literature into Ukrainian.

1. Some processes of modern translation practice in Ukraine

4Translation is an important communicative activity that promotes cultural, scientific, technological, and social exchange between different peoples. It involves not only replacing the words of one language with equivalents in another, but also preserving the semantic, stylistic and emotional characteristics of the original text. The characteristics and problems of translation – in particular literary translation – have been studied by many scholars, theorists and practitioners, from ancient times to the present (from Cicero and Horace to Friedrich Schleiermacher, Gerrit-Jan Vermeer, Lawrence Venuti, André Lefevere, and Umberto Eco). These scholars and their works have largely shaped modern theoretical approaches to translation and its methodology.

5Translating from English to Ukrainian is a complex and multidimensional process that requires in-depth knowledge of both languages, cultural contexts, and linguistic specifics. Each text requires an individual approach to ensure the translation’s accuracy, adequacy and stylistic relevance. The problem of translating from English into Ukrainian, as in any other translation, precisely lies in dealing with the many elements that can affect the accuracy, adequacy and comprehensibility of the text. The main difficulties of translation arise from differences in language structures, vocabulary, and speech styles, as well as those related to cultural contexts.

  • 3 Interviewed in person on 31.03.2024.

6In an interview I was granted in March 2024 by Ukrainian translator Hanna Kyriienko, a translator of children’s literature from French, English and Italian,3 she describes the process of translating a children’s book from the very beginning, from her own point of view as a translator. The first step in selecting a book for translation is to check its reviews in the country (or countries) in which it has already been published. If children like the book and it is popular in the country or countries in question, then it is considered worth translating into Ukrainian. Kyriienko’s average translation speed is 4-5 pages per day. After the entire text has been translated, editorial changes may be made by the editor, which need to be reviewed and approved by the publisher. Usually in Ukraine, the publisher chooses the book’s title, and it is only after all these stages that the book is deemed ready for publication.

  • 4 Katri Mäkinen, Harry Potter and the challenges of translation: Treatment of personal names in the F (...)

7So far, what this particular translator describes roughly corresponds to translation practices in most European countries. In her work, Hanna Kyriienko adheres to the views of Antoine Berman as to the possibility and desirability of leaving some “foreign elements that are strange enough to ‘disturb’ the reader”.4 She gives the example of translating a book about dinosaurs. For young children in Ukraine, it is customary to use simplified names for strange or extinct animals like dinosaurs: a diplodocus, for instance, is generally called довгошиїй [dovhoshyii – long-neck dinosaur] rather than the more technical диплодок [dyplodok] or диплодокус [dyplodokus] coming from Latin. In the book she translated, Kyriienko left all the Latin names of these animals without providing any additional explanations: her nephew immediately started to google their definitions. This tends to show that even translating children’s books about nature involves some culture-bound elements, as both the perception of flora and fauna, as well as the vision of the child readership and their knowledge of the natural world may vary from one country to the next.

  • 5 Eugene A. Nida, Charles R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1969
  • 6 Tatu Zakiyatun Nufus, “Analysis Of Translation Problems Arising from Non-Equivalence at Word Level, (...)
  • 7 Antoine Berman, La traduction et la lettre ou L’auberge du lointain, Paris, Seuil, 1991.

8When addressing child readers, and depending on the purpose and type of text, there are many possible translation strategies, which may include the following transformations: equivalents, variable counterpart, rearrangement, specification, generalization, grammatical substitution, contextual substitution, addition, omission, adaptive translation, antonymic translation, transcription, tracing, borrowing,5 etc. These transformations solve the problems raised by the lack in the target language of equivalent terms for elements present at different levels in the source text – words, phrases, or idioms6 – and they can occasionally contribute to the development of the “deforming tendencies” (Antoine Berman’s “tendances déformantes7) that affect all translations, especially perhaps those motivated by the vision of child addressees as necessarily less skilled and less knowledgeable than adult ones.

  • 8 A chamber play (German Kammerspiel) is a play performed by a limited cast in the intimate space of (...)

9While these issues are faced by all individual translators, a specific practice in Ukraine is that of “collective” or “team translation”, a fairly common phenomenon in the country. This process can be explained by the constant lack of time and money on the part of publishers. An interesting example of this phenomenon is the translation of the play Home (2000) by British playwright and director Nicola McCartney. During the IVth Translatorium Literary and Translation Festival, which took place in Khmelnytskyi (Ukraine) in April 2019, four translators (including the aforementioned Hanna Kyriienko) were each asked to adopt and translate the voice of one of the protagonists. The resulting translation was not published, but the play was staged in Ukrainian at the Drama and Comedy Theatre in Kyiv. This play, still performed in its Ukrainian translation, also won a theatre award at the GRA (Great Real Art) Premia festival, following its nomination as the Best Chamber Play8.

10As we can see, this particular collective translation was a success, in the sense that it became a viable play in its own right. But the question arises: can all literary works be translated collectively? After all, each genre has its own peculiarities. Obviously, there is a huge difference between translating a play, which has a dialogic form or that of a polylogue, and a novel, which often has a clearly presented narrator, includes artistic digressions, descriptions, etc. The novel genre is prevalent in children’s literature and its translation, and it is in this category of narratives that the practice of team translation is most often found in Ukraine.

2. Translating Harry Potter from English into Ukrainian

11Indeed, another example of team translation into Ukrainian – and a more characteristic one – is that of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling.

  • 9 According to the site on 31.07.2017.

12As we know, the series of books about the young wizard’s adventures has become one of the most widely read works of children’s literature in history, gathering children, teenagers and adults into one readership. According to Bloomsbury’s official website, the Harry Potter books have been translated into 79 languages (even possibly 80, with the announced translation into Scots9). However, this number is quite controversial and may vary if we count translations other than the official ones, but also take into account the number of different translations into one single language that can be carried out by several translators for different publishers. The Harry Potter cycle has been translated not only into many official languages, but also into specific dialects. For example, there are editions in American as well as British English; there is one in the Valencian dialect adapted from the translation into the very close Catalan language; there are also editions in different graphic forms of the same language: the Serbian translation in Vukovica (Serbian Cyrillic) coexists with one written in Gaevica (a variant of the Latin alphabet based on Czech spelling); and the English original text also exists in Braille.

  • 10 “The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY’s objecti (...)
  • 11 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J. K. Rowling (2001) and Harry Potter and the Cursed Chi (...)
  • 12 She won the international Hermann Hesse Prize (2024) for her novel Amadoka (2020), which tells the (...)

13In Ukraine, the translation was carried out by a team of two well-known Ukrainian translators, Viktor Morozov and Sofia Andrukhovych. The former was included in the IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People) Honour List10 in 2022 for his translation of Roald Dahl’s Fantastic Mr Fox (1970) and is known as the translator of all the Harry Potter books, as well as prequels and sequels to them.11 As for Sofia Andrukhovych, she is better known as a writer than as a translator.12

  • 13 See Mona Baker, Gabriela Saldanha, Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, London and New Yo (...)
  • 14 Ibid., p. 142.

14While Viktor Morozov ended up translating all successive parts of the adventures of the young wizard from English into Ukrainian, for Sofia Andrukhovych, working with him on the fourth volume was her first major translation (both previous and subsequent volumes were translated only by Morozov). The principle adopted was simple enough: the book was divided into two equal parts, with chapters 1-20 to be translated by one translator (Morozov) and chapters 20-37 by the other (Andrukhovych). It is hard to say exactly why this decision was made, but it may have had to do with strict deadlines to be met. The perceived need for a second translator was probably also due to the sheer length of the book (with 617 pages in the original text). Usually, teamwork is typical practice for institutional translation in Europe,13 not for the translation of children’s literature. But in Ukraine, despite the fact that the country is now regarded as a Westernized European country, translators follow the tradition of team translation, which is more common in the Eastern part of Europe. In this respect, the process of translating fiction in Ukraine sometimes resembles the Chinese one, in the words of the outstanding Belgian linguist André Lefevere: “the Chinese tradition emphasizes what we would now call teamwork, while the Western tradition has often frowned upon that very concept”.14 Collective translation is often used within the context of computer-aided translation, when at every stage of the translation process (translation, revision, editing, proofreading), there is another person involved. The people involved don’t make collective decisions, only decisions regarding their part of the translation.

15Another point to bear in mind is that the translation of the heptalogy in Ukraine took place after the release of the films by Chris Columbus and Mike Newell (2001-2011), which is probably why J. K. Rowling’s literary agents sent a long list of words or phrases that should not be translated in a different way (from the films).15 Therefore, almost all proper names were preserved, in accordance with the requirements of the writer (they were not translated into Ukrainian, but simply borrowed from the original). Thus, in the Ukrainian translation, almost all the names have lost their “telling” or significant function: fictional names in fantasy novels often have an inextricable connection to the characters who bear them thanks to the connotations or meaning they carry. But here, contextuality has been lost. The Ukrainian reader has no idea of why the characters were named this way.16

16The process of obtaining translation rights for the Potter books had been a long one, and it was only three years after the start of the project that the first book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997) was published in Ukrainian translation (2000). This lapse of time, and the need to make up for lost time apparently account for some of the translation team’s strategies. The first three Harry Potter books, which had come out in 1997, 1998, and 1999 in Britain, were all published in Ukrainian translation in 2002; and the Ukrainian version of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire came out the year after, in 2003. The race against time to get the translation done as quickly as possible was therefore an important factor.

17According to the interview with translator Viktor Morozov, only in rare cases (such as when a name was difficult to pronounce in Ukrainian) was a name changed. Let’s not forget that the target readership of the books was primarily (but not only) made up of children and young teenagers who, unlike adults, pay attention to the sound of the name rather than to its semantic context. For example, the name of Hermione’s cat, Crookshanks, was simply translated as “Криволапик” [kryvolapyk] (Crooked), keeping the literal meaning of the word but losing the reference to the famous British illustrator and cartoonist George Cruikshank. This intertextual reference, although it is barely accessible to children, acknowledges the dual readership of the original Harry Potter novels, and the literal Ukrainian translation, even if it holds more meaning than a mere loan from the English, redirects the translation towards a child-oriented, or at least a popular readership unaware of the scholarly references behind the story. This name was kept in the film version too, perhaps in order to strengthen its commercial impact.

18One of the characteristics of team translation thus seems to be that it prioritises constraints linked to economic factors, and therefore seems to have less scope to make original translation choices with regard to such items as significant surnames or place names, or else the target age group of the book. Furthermore, the case of the translation of Harry Potter into Ukrainian is unusual insofar as the story was already extremely well-known when the translations started being published. Since children are the age group par excellence for whom it is generally impossible to read in a foreign language, they were already familiar with the world of Harry Potter before starting to read the series thanks to the film adaptation, as they had already seen the first two or three films with Ukrainian dubbing. From the point of view of the author’s agents and of the Ukrainian publisher, the translation of the books consequently had to meet the expectations of young readers who knew the young wizard and his world beforehand.

19But despite the limited freedom that the urgency of the situation allowed them, the two translators of the fourth book still managed to give their translations a certain trademark. In order to explore the strategy and translation operations applied to Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling more specifically, I have highlighted the translation of the categories of time and space as an example. I analysed the verbal ways of referring to space and time in the first three chapters of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and its joint Ukrainian translation by Morozov and Andrukhovych. I defined the translation operations used by these translators.

20My overall statistical sample consisted of 662 units, combining 252 units of verbal references to time and 410 references to space. In their translation of verbal references to time, the translators used the following operations:

  • equivalents – 86 times

  • variable counterparts – 65 times

  • rearrangement – twice

  • specification – 7 times

  • generalization – 12 times

  • grammatical substitution – 3 times

  • contextual substitution – 3 times

  • addition – 16 times

  • omission – 54 times

  • adaptive translation – twice

  • antonymic translation – twice

21Similarly, in the translation of verbal items referring to space, the translators used the following operations:

  • equivalents – 188 times

  • variable counterparts – 69 times

  • rearrangement – 8 times

  • specification – 29 times

  • generalization – 31 times

  • contextual substitution – 11 times

  • addition – 16 times

  • omission – 29 times

  • adaptive translation – 17 times

  • transcription – 6 times

  • transcription + tracing – 6 times

22The results are shown in the following diagrams (ill. 1 and 2, made by the author):

Illustration 1: Verbal means of referring to time.

Illustration 2: Verbal means of referring to space.

  • 17 This aspect will be discussed in more detail in my doctoral dissertation Verbal and non-verbal mean (...)

23As we can see, the main place in the diagrams is occupied by the use of equivalent and variable correspondences.17 But the most interesting thing is the high proportion of adaptations, domestications and exoticisations, which helped to make such a very British book closer to the Ukrainian reader. Some of these cases are shown in the table below:

Original text

Official translation

Literal translation

Explanation

1.

There was a pause

Якусь хвилю

For a minute

Хвиля” [khvylia] is an abbreviation of the word “хвилина” [khvylyna] – “minute”; it is an obsolete word, and is not used often in Ukrainian daily speaking.

2.

For miles around

В усій околиці

Throughout the neighborhood

The word “околиця” [okolytsia] has fallen out of active use.

3.

In a run down cottage on the ground of the Riddle House

У занедбаній хатині неподалік редлівського будинку

In an abandoned hut near the Redley house

The word “хатина” [khatyna] is a diminutive form of the word “хата” [khata], meaning a small house. It is an archaism now.

4.

At the bar

За шинквасом

Behind shinkvas

The word “шинквас” [shinkvas] was borrowed from the German language (it means “a vessel for wine”). In Ukrainian, it means a bar counter at which you can drink not only wine, but any alcohol. This archaism is rarely used.

5.

In the garden’s cottage far back

В садівниковій халупі

In the gardener’s shack

The word “халупа” [khalupa] refers to a small poor residential building, a run-down house. It is used only in colloquial speech.

6.

To his cottage on the grounds of the Riddle House

До своєї хатинки у редлівській садибі

To his hut in Ridley manor

The word “хатинка” [khatynka] is a diminutive form of “хата” [khata]. “Хата” is borrowed from the Hungarian word “haz” (house). It is the traditional house of Ukrainians, usually with a bracken or reed roof. This existed till the nineteenth century, so right now it is an archaism.

The word “садиба” [sadyba] in Ukrainian refers to a residential building and outbuildings with an adjacent garden and vegetable garden, which, together with them, are a separate estate. It is rarely used, it is an archaism too.

7.

Downstairs into the kitchen

На кухню

To the kitchen

The translator has omitted the word “downstairs” because in Ukraine, we do not have the same structure of house-building (as in Europe). Usually, all private houses have only one floor and all the rooms are next to one another.

8.

At the sink

Біля умивальниці

At the washbasin

The word “умивальниця” [umyvalnitsia] is a very rare word. It means a big bowl or basin for soaking. It is usually found in the Bible in relation to the actions of Jesus Christ.

9.

Back upstairs

Назад до спальні

Back to the bedroom

The translator has replaced the word “upstairs” with “bedroom”, again because of the different housestructure in Ukraine.

10.

(reached) a door

До чорного ходу

To the black door

The word-combination “black door” in Ukrainian means a passage in the building intended mainly for household needs.

11.

On either side of the front door

Обабіч парадних дверей

On both sides of the front door

The adverb “обабіч” [obabich] means “on both sides”. Ukrainians call it a “colorful adverb” because it is not often used.

Theword-combination “параднідвері” [paradnidveri] means “the front door” and was usually used in the nineteenth–early twentieth century. Commonly it consisted of two parts.

12.

On the bedside table

На столику біля ліжка

On the table by the bed

In Ukraine people don’t usually have a bedside table, but a nightstand. So, the translator has tried to describe this as “a table by the bed”.

13.

Through the curtains from the street lamp outside the window

Крізь фіранки від вуличного ліхтаря за вікном

Through the curtains from the streetlamp outside the window

The word “фіранка” [firanka] is a Polish word, mostly used in the Western part of Ukraine. It means a piece of textile with which the window or door is closed.

14.

On his forehead

На чолі

At the head

The word “чоло” [cholo] has fallen out of active use. It has been replaced by another word “лoб” [lob] – forehead. It is mainly used in phraseological units.

15.

In the cupboard under the stairs

В комірчині під сходами

In the closet under the stairs

The word “комірчина” [komirchyna] means “cubby”, it is a diminutive form of the word “комора” [komora]. This word means a room where food and household items are stored. Maybe the translator used it to emphasize the tiny size of the room.

The English word “cupboard”, used by the writer, has a lot of possible meanings in Ukrainian: a wardrobe, a sideboard, a closet, etc.

24As can be seen from the table, the translators of Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire have tried to use words and phrases of Ukrainian origin as much as possible, even if some have already fallen out of use. Ukrainian translators sometimes chose words that have a borrowed origin (for example, “shynkvas” from German or “khata” from Hungarian). This can be explained by the origin of both translators – they were born in the Western part of the country and such language constructions are characteristic of that territorial part (due to the proximity of neighbouring states). One of their goals may have been to motivate readers to use ancient Ukrainian words in the midst of their modern lives, as well as to bring them and the narrative closer together. The translators tried to adapt the text for their target audience, so that readers could identify with the characters in the novel. It can be assumed that the Ukrainian translators also aimed to produce an adaptive translation of this narrative in such a way as not to lose the authenticity of the original text: the events take place in Great Britain (the place and time of the actions are preserved), but all the dialogues are as close as possible to the colloquial Ukrainian language with the use of some original Ukrainian words.

  • 18 K. Mäkinen, Harry Potter and the challenges of translation, op. cit., p. 73.

25If we consider the translation of place names, then in the sample under consideration, we come across several examples: “The Hanged Man, the village pub” – translated as “у Повішенику” [u Povishenyku], сільському шинку” [silskomu shynku], “the Burrow” – “Барліг” [barlih], “Little Hangleton” – “Малий Генґелтон” [Malyi Hengelton], “Riddle House” – “редлівський будинок” [redlivskyi budynok], “Great Hangleton” – “Великий Генґелтон” [Velykyi Hengelton]. Ukrainian translators translated almost all of the names mentioned above (the translations are literal) except for the city of “Hangelton”, keeping the cultural context of the narrative.18

26According to both translators, their main strategy was to adapt the text to the Ukrainian reader. Instead of “Mr” and “Mrs” (terms which show a respectful attitude towards the other person, and serve successful communication), the translators thus introduced the Ukrainian addresses “пан” [pan] and “пані” [pani], which made it easier for the book to be perceived by readers as being written in their native language.19

  • 20 Ibid.
  • 21 He is probably referring to the International Conference Intercultural Dialogue through Harry Potte (...)
  • 22 Except the GOST 3974-2000 “Translation. General Requirements”.
  • 23 Antoine Berman. L’épreuve de l’étranger : Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique, Paris, (...)
  • 24 Antoine Berman, “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, translated by Lawrence Venuti, in: Law (...)
  • 25 Zohar Shavit, Poetics of Children’s Literature, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1986
  • 26 Gillian Lathey, Translating Children’s Literature, London, Routledge, 2015, p. 38.

27Generally speaking, there has been considerable debate about how to translate the Harry Potter adventures. For example, Viktor Morozov notes20 that at the conference of Harry Potter translators in Paris21, the participants were asked to discuss the role of translators in the translation of Harry Potter. Some translators argued that it was necessary to reproduce the original as accurately as possible, without changing or domesticating anything, while others, on the contrary, stood in favour of a complete adaptive translation of the entire heptalogy. In their own words, Ukrainian translators tried to stick to the golden mean. It should be said that in Ukraine, there is no general provision for the translation of children’s literature. Usually, publishers create their own standards and guidelines for translators, which include specific requirements for the quality of the translation, its consistency in style, its adaptation to age groups and in regard to cultural contexts.22 When it comes to translating cultural elements, Ukrainian translators endeavour to strike a balance between the practice of domestication (called “cultural context adaptation” by children’s literature scholar Göte Klingberg, one of the first specialists of translation for children), and the practice of foreignisation (i.e. a translation that retains the otherness of the source language and culture). The common tendency of children’s translators to make cultural elements more accessible to the target audience by transforming them is connected to several of the above-mentioned “deforming tendencies” identified by Antoine Berman in his essay L’épreuve de l’étranger23 (1984), or “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”24 in Lawrence Venuti’s translation (2000). Although Berman and Venuti make it clear that in their views, an “ethical” translation should refrain from domesticating the original text, as does Zohar Shavit in Poetics of Children’s Literature25 (1986), British translation studies scholar Gillian Lathey remarks that their position “has to be reviewed with care in the context of books for the young where children’s lack of experience may require a greater degree of adaptation than is necessary in adult fiction”.26

Conclusions

  • 27 Emer O’Sullivan, Comparative Children’s Literature, London, Routledge, 2005, p. 74.

28One of the main purposes of translating books for children and young people is to introduce children to other cultures and traditions, other educational systems, other worldviews from those they are familiar with. At the same time, translations are meant to enrich the common heritage of children’s literature. As Emer O’Sullivan suggests, “[t]here is a paradox at the heart of the translation of children’s literature: it is commonly held that books are translated in order to enrich the children’s literature of the target language and to introduce children to foreign cultures, yet at the same time that foreign element itself is often eradicated from translations which are heavily adapted to their target culture, allegedly on the grounds that young children will not understand it”.27

29No translation is an easy task, and each presents its own specific difficulties, depending on the pair of languages involved, the style of the text and the type of translation. Solving these difficulties require translators not only to know the languages in question, but also to have a deep understanding of cultural, contextual, and linguistic nuances. Since works of art are not only carriers of information, but also convey a particular type of style, mood, rhythm and emotional depth, the translation of such texts requires particular consistency and, in the case of collective translation, mutual understanding among the translators involved.

30According to translators, translating children’s literature is one of the most demanding, but at the same time, one of the most interesting challenges. It calls for the use of all the knowledge, vocabulary, and imagination of the translator. His/her familiarity with the culture of the people from whose language he/she translates plays a key role in translating the realities of the narrative for a young audience brought up in a different cultural context. That is why in the examples of translation from English into Ukrainian we have considered, there is a large percentage of such transformations as adaptive translation of words and phrases, the use of borrowed words, acronyms and hyponyms. This can be explained by the translators’ intention to bring readers closer to the artistic reality of the narratives.

  • 28 K. Mäkinen, Harry Potter and the challenges of translation, op. cit., p. 106.
  • 29 Emer O’Sullivan, “Narratology Meets Translation Studies, or, The Voice of the Translator in Childre (...)

31We have seen it is also very difficult to translate proper names, because they may guide the reader, enrich the narrative and give hints as to the corresponding characters in the original text.28 It is in such cases that the degree of language losses is the highest. As Emer O’Sullivan remarks, “When scholars or critics identify ‘changes’, ‘adaptations’, or ‘manipulations’ in translations of children’s literature, they often rightly describe and analyse them in terms of the differing social, educational or literary norms prevailing in the source and the target languages, cultures and literatures at that given time.”29

32The translation of children’s books into Ukrainian is still in its infancy, as Ukraine is a fairly young and independent country, and the development of translation has gone through many difficult stages because of the country’s history. The Ukrainian language has finally overcome most of the obstacles in its way, and since independence, Ukrainian translation has flourished. But it retains some specificities, such as team translation of literary texts, which add specific problems to those inherent to the transposition of a text into another language. In recent decades, Ukrainian translation studies have taken many steps forward. In addition, the number of translators from different languages has also increased significantly. Thanks to Ukrainian translators, a long list of translated children’s literature is now available to young readers. We can only wish that this trend, which has already made access to children’s literature written in a foreign language much wider, may continue in the coming years.

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Notes

1 The interview material was published on the websites of the Svoboda [Freedom] radio station and the Dzerkalo Tyzhnia [Mirror of the Week] information portal.

2 The interview was published on the website of Kultura [Culture radio station].

3 Interviewed in person on 31.03.2024.

4 Katri Mäkinen, Harry Potter and the challenges of translation: Treatment of personal names in the Finnish and German translations of the first three Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling, Master’s thesis in English, University of Jyväskylä, 2010, p. 20.

5 Eugene A. Nida, Charles R. Taber, The Theory and Practice of Translation, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1969.

6 Tatu Zakiyatun Nufus, “Analysis Of Translation Problems Arising from Non-Equivalence at Word Level, Above Word Level, Grammatical Level, Textual Level, And Pragmatic Level Based on J. K. Rowling’s Manuscript of ‘Harry Potter’”, Journal of Positive School Psychology, vol. 6, n° 6, 2022, p. 2587-2594, URL : https://journalppw.com/index.php/jpsp/article/view/7662/7516.

7 Antoine Berman, La traduction et la lettre ou L’auberge du lointain, Paris, Seuil, 1991.

8 A chamber play (German Kammerspiel) is a play performed by a limited cast in the intimate space of a small theatre. See Patrice Pavis, Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, concepts, and analysis, Toronto, Buffalo, University of Toronto Press, 1988, p. 297.

9 According to the site on 31.07.2017.

10 “The IBBY Honour List is one of the most widespread and effective ways of furthering IBBY’s objective of encouraging international understanding through children’s literature.” URL: https://www.ibby.org/awards-activities/awards/ibby-honour-list.

11 Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by J. K. Rowling (2001) and Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by Jack Thorne, J. K. Rowling, and John Tiffany (2016).

12 She won the international Hermann Hesse Prize (2024) for her novel Amadoka (2020), which tells the story of a soldier with a disfigured face, who has also lost his memory. The author raises the question of the disappearance of entire cultural worlds, such as the Jewish world in Ukraine, or the extermination of the Ukrainian intelligentsia in the 1920s and 1930s (during Holodomor).

13 See Mona Baker, Gabriela Saldanha, Routledge Encyclopedia of Translation Studies, London and New York, Routledge, Taylor and Francis Group, 2009, p. 142.

14 Ibid., p. 142.

15 Viktor Morozov’s interview with Radio Svoboda (2017): https://www.radiosvoboda.org/a/28598054.html.

16 K. Mäkinen, Harry Potter and the challenges of translation, op. cit., p. 30.

17 This aspect will be discussed in more detail in my doctoral dissertation Verbal and non-verbal means of creating artistic time and space in fantasy fiction and film texts (based on J. K. Rowling's works and their screen adaptations).

18 K. Mäkinen, Harry Potter and the challenges of translation, op. cit., p. 73.

19 Viktor Morozov’s interview with DzerkalocTyzhnya: https://zn.ua/ukr/ART/viktor-morozov-nash-tvorchiy-soyuz-z-ivanom-malkovichem-i-garri-potterom-trivatime-vichno-_.html.

20 Ibid.

21 He is probably referring to the International Conference Intercultural Dialogue through Harry Potter Translations, which was held under the auspices of UNESCO on 8 September 2009 in Paris, with the aim of rehabilitating the role of translators by recognising their contribution to the success of J. K. Rowling’s bestseller.

22 Except the GOST 3974-2000 “Translation. General Requirements”.

23 Antoine Berman. L’épreuve de l’étranger : Culture et traduction dans l’Allemagne romantique, Paris, Gallimard, coll. « Tel », 1995 [1984].

24 Antoine Berman, “Translation and the Trials of the Foreign”, translated by Lawrence Venuti, in: Lawrence Venuti (ed.), The Translation Studies Reader, London, Routledge, 2000.

25 Zohar Shavit, Poetics of Children’s Literature, Athens, University of Georgia Press, 1986

26 Gillian Lathey, Translating Children’s Literature, London, Routledge, 2015, p. 38.

27 Emer O’Sullivan, Comparative Children’s Literature, London, Routledge, 2005, p. 74.

28 K. Mäkinen, Harry Potter and the challenges of translation, op. cit., p. 106.

29 Emer O’Sullivan, “Narratology Meets Translation Studies, or, The Voice of the Translator in Children’s Literature”, Meta, vol. 48, n° 1-2, 2003, p. 197-207

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Légende Illustration 1: Verbal means of referring to time.
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Oleksandra Kosiuha, « Team translation and other specificities of translating children’s literature in Ukraine: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from English into Ukrainian. »Strenæ [En ligne], 25 | 2024, mis en ligne le 01 novembre 2024, consulté le 16 février 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/strenae/11462 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/130ti

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Oleksandra Kosiuha

University of Rouen Normandy, France ; University of Kherson, Ukraine

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