Cultural-context Adaptation in Translation of Children's Short Stories from English to Persian

Abstract

The importance of children’s literature in comparison with the traditional form of translation is something trivial and this is regrettable since translating for children should be done so skillfully that there may be no mental or emotional harm for children. Puurtinen (1994) believes that writing and translating for children which is often regarded as a simple and insignificant matter will be governed by numerous constraints, which normally vary from culture to culture. The present study makes an effort to examine the implications of different adaptation methods proposed by Klingberg (1986) in children’s literature to investigate the claim that the process of translation in children’s literature should consider the level of target text reader’s knowledge and their understanding. In this study, the level of adaptation is evaluated through Klingberg’s theories, in which undue adaptation is disparaged since an undue adaptation keeps children away from new world knowledge.