Translating Postmodern Picturebooks: The Incredible Book Eating Boy in Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese

Abstract

Metafiction emphasises a text’s fictionality by drawing the reader’s attention to how texts create meaning through numerous textual devices. This paper examines translations of the postmodern picturebook The Incredible Book Eating Boy (2006) by Oliver Jeffers. It compares the original English text to its Japanese, Traditional Chinese, and Simplified Chinese translations across verbal translation, visual and verbal-visual interactions, specifically focusing on metafictive devices. Using Gideon Toury’s model for descriptive translation analysis indicates that socio-cultural contexts influence preliminary norms and are closely related to operational norms applied by both translators and publishing houses.