Children's First Reading Experience
Since childhood is a crucial period in human life, and that the first reading experience happens in this period, children are special readers of literary works who require a particular form of writing and translation. Actually, a translation with appropriate quality can increase the reading inclination in children who practice their first years of the reading experience. The investigation of the extratextual and intratextual factors has been among the most addressed research topics in the investigation the of translation studies. Thus, the present research aimed at evaluating the qualities of extralingulism as well as intralingual of J.
K. Rowling’s Fiction book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret based on Christiane Nord’s model.
One of the translation’s crucial roles is its widespread usage in children’s literature. There are a lot of translation works that are concerned with children’s literature which are used around the world and because of different translation objectives and various target language audiences, a source text can be translated in several ways in target language especially with regards to extratextual and intratextual factors and means.
Children’s literature has special characteristics. Because of this reason, children’s books are always demonstrated and intended to be read vociferously. Classifying the literature audience is the age; hence, children are inside the particular literature audiences. The aim of this study is to apply Nord’s model of Translation Quality Assessment on extratextual and intratextual means of a story for children, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secret by J.
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K. Rowling. The researcher practices some examples in both extratextual and intratextual factors to make the statements clearer.
Nord is one of the theoreticians who have considered text analysis in translation. She believes that a text is a communicative action that can be realized by a combination of verbal and nonverbal means. “It is clear that in translation-oriented analysis, you will first analyze these factors and their functions and then compare them with the corresponding factors in the target text situations, since the target text like the source text, will be embedded in a communicative interaction which determines its reception”. Thus, the factors of the communicative situation in which the source text is applied, are of crucial significance for analyzing text because they specify its communicative function.
Nord divided these factors to two groups: extratextual or external factors and intratextual or internal factors. She explains that “extratextual (or external) factors, analyzed by the translator right before reading a text, are the starting point of the analysis. She notices that they help the translator to determine a source text function. The set of extratextual factors follows sender, intention, recipient, medium, place, time, motive, and text function. According to Nord intratextual factors mean that these, on the contrary, relate to a text itself and include even non-verbal elements. Intratextual factors include content, subject manner, presuppositions, text composition, nonverbal elements, lexis, sentence structure, and suprasegmental features.
It is essential to mention that in this research, with Nord’s perspective, the extratextual and intratextual factors have been investigated in children and adolescents literature for the translated text. According to Jobe (1996), the translation of children and adolescent literature is recognized as one of the most demanding and complicated tasks for translators. He states that translating for children and young people is a complex challenge. Tabbert (2002) explains that there are many challenges to be faced by the translator of children’s literature. Among these issues, the author points out issues linked to the text source. For example, register, dialectal variations, and sociolects, stylistics, the combination of images and text, cultural references, playful use of language and dual-target audience (children and adults). Regarding the target text, there appear to be ideological issues, such as language purification and simplification with a view to readability.
Even textual analysis, an essential part of any translation process, is always carried out within a situation and for a purpose, which Christiane Nord also points out in her book Text Analysis in Translation. Nord presents a model of translation-oriented text analysis including three sets of factors: extratextual (situative: who? why? to whom?) and intratextual (what? which nonverbal elements? in which words?), as well as effective. Any translation has a communicative function that influences the ways the texts translated are analyzed. Nowadays, the status that has been considered for the book: Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets book pushed forward a plethora of translators to translate from the original book by J. K. Rowling that is a special position which resulted in selling translations of her books in large numbers.
This very fact was unprecedented in the history of the Iranian translations. According to Hawaii, the reason for the success of this book is to be extratextual and intratextual factors that the ST writer has been used. The ST writer has used sorcery and witchcraft and fantasy factors and it caused a new form and led to attracting teenage people. The present research seeks to scrutinize extratextual and intratextual factors based on Nords model in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets book and its translations, and to show how many these factors can be useful and productive in the sale and attraction of a work. It also seeks to show the importance that these factors make in understanding the audience from a very early age.
Statement of the problem
Translating is a complicated task and its production has always been evaluated by its addressees, its translator, other translators and so on. There are problems that will be manifested throughout the translation process, as any language delineate the discourse in a different way is related to a particular culture and has its own syntactic conformation, grammar rules, and syntax differences as well as extratextual and intratextual factors’ perspective. For instance, some compositions seem meaningless when one wishes to remain in the same grammatical category and to remain the same cultural meaning without having a well-done approach to its extratextual and intratextual means. The translation is not only the replacement of words, phrases, and sentences but also it must convey all the meaning, delicate points, and concepts of the original text and including the role of extratextuality and intratextuality in the relevant text.
The perceptibility of a translation means that the translation version could make the same understanding and emotional load for the target reader as the original one. Children’s literature has its own special characteristic: children’s books are often illustrated and seem to be read vociferously. Thus children’s book is among the special kinds of literature, the translation of that can be as much as complicated for translators. Hence, the subject of assessing the quality of translated prescriptions of children’s literature will be important. Iranian children and adolescents show more interest in translated books. Most of them tend to read foreign fiction. Therefore, the extent of translation is high and the responsibility of the translators becomes more significant. The majority of people believe that the translation of the book for children and adolescents are easy to work but this is not.
The translation of children and adolescent books has high sensitivity and precision and should be attended at different aspects of children’s translation. In this regard, translators face some problems, because the child’s literature should not be placed lower than adult literature. A translator of the child’s book should be creative and audience-oriented and simultaneously familiar with the target language. Nevertheless, the translator should translate according to their different ages and their needs. These problems are sometimes cultural, grammatical, etc. Hence it will be important to analyze the translated text of child and adolescent literature. One of the suggested ways of analyzing the text was proposed by Nord. Nord has divided this analysis into two factors. Extratextual factors and Intratextual factors.
Extratextual (or external) factors, analyzed by the translator right before reading a text, are the starting point of the analysis. She notices that they help the translator to determine a source text function . The set of extratextual factors follows sender, intention, recipient, medium, place, time, motive, and text function. Intratextual factors: Intratextual factors mean that these, on the contrary, relate to a text itself and include even non-verbal elements”. Intratextual factors include content, subject manner, presuppositions, text composition, nonverbal elements, lexis, sentence structure, and suprasegmental features. As it was mentioned in the previous section, the purpose of this research is to implement the Nords viewpoint on the translation of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets book by J. K. Rowling. This book has been selected because the original author as well as its Persian translator has been conceded that these two factors are extremely used in the book.
Research Questions
With the assumption that investigation of the extratextual and intratextual factors in source and target-oriented approaches are the most recent and developed theories of translation and yet one of the most appropriate approaches towards fulfilling the act of translation of books in such genre, this study is an attempt to answer the following questions as well as what was stated above: Considering Nords Model, how did the translator use the extratextual factors in the book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? Considering the Nords Model, how did the translator use the intratextual factors in the book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets? In this research, we deal with finding answers to the following questions as the main questions in the row of the purpose of this study and the researcher tries to find the final answers to them.
Definition of the Key Terms
Children’s literature can be seen either as literature produced and intended for children or as literature read by children. Every item in children’s books e.g., the cover, the name of the publisher, author, and translator; different literary aspects such as themes, motifs, and points of view; stylistic and linguistic features such as frequent words, syntactic complexity, and the use of dialect is the result of decisions made by those involved in the translation process. Extratextual (or external) factors, analyzed by the translator right before reading a text, are the starting point of the analysis. She notices that they help the translator to determine a source text function. The set of extratextual factors as follows: sender, intention, recipient, medium, place, time, motive, and text function.
Based on the extratextual influence, the intratextual factors, relating to the text itself, are analyzed by enquiring about the subject matter the text deals with, the information or content presented in the test, the knowledge presuppositions made by the author, the composition or construction of the text, the non-linguistic or paralinguistic elements accompanying the text, the lexical characteristics and syntactic structures found in the text, and the suprasegmental features of intonation and prosody. The model must be comprehensive enough to be suitable to any text and particular enough to consider as many as problems of generalizable translation as possible. “The model is largely concerned with the language-independent aspects of culture, communication, and translation”. “Translation can be defined as the result of a linguistic-textual operation in which a text in one language is re-contextualized in another language. As a linguistic textual operation, translation is, however, subject to, and substantially influenced by, a variety of extratextual factors and conditions. It is this interaction between inner linguistic-textual and outer extra-linguistic, contextual factors that make translation such a complex phenomenon.
Significance of the Study
The significance of the present study lies in the following assumptions
Now that books related to children and adolescents are impressive books, so their translation is also important. Tabbert (1980) divides children’s literature and its functions into two categories: didactic and creative. The translation of these books should have the same effect on target language audiences. The book: Harry Potter and the Chamber of the Secrets is one of the most unique masterpieces in the literary field. According to Hawaii and PourJafar, this fiction book is an outstanding representative of a kind of narrative text that it emphasizes the literary value and the audience.
This book magnetizes many translators to translate. Due to many translations of this book throughout the world, the researchers were induced to analyze this literary masterpiece. Nowadays, the analysis consummates a variety of perspectives, for example, Reiss and Vermeer, Waddington, Williams, and Nord. The present research has been done to analyze Nords’ point of view. According to Hijavani, the reason of Harry Potter’s achievement is the intratextual factors (the values of the text’s own) and the extratextual factors (media power). Nord refers to the analysis of text in translation into two factors. Extratextual factors and Intratextual factors.
Extratextual factors mean that external factors analyzed by the translator right before reading a text, are the starting point of the analysis. She notices that they help the translator to determine a source text function. The set of extratextual factors follows sender, intention, recipient, medium, place, time, motive, and text function. Intratextual factors: Intratextual factors mean that these, on the contrary, relate to a text itself and include even non-verbal elements. Intratextual factors include content, subject manner, presuppositions, text composition, nonverbal elements, lexis, sentence structure, and suprasegmental features. Analysis of extratextual and intratextual factors helps translators and readers to understand translated texts well. Sometimes, these factors can make more sales and predominate the writing.
Limitations and Delimitation of the Study
During the process of completing this study, there will be some limitations. The first one is the investigation of extra- and intratextual factors in translation which is very broad and also it makes it difficult. Simultaneously, it is time-consuming, so the researcher delimits it to the area of children’s literature. The second one is Harry Potter books are actually in seven volumes. It is voluminous, and the researcher delimits this study to the one-volume (Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets). The third one is both the source and translated books are expensive; hence, the researcher has to delimit PDF books. Also, the present study utilizes Nord’s model on its case of study of a story for children, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J. K. Rowling. There are different models for investigation on extratextual and intratextual factors and means such as the Reiss model, Halliday’s model, Williams model etc.
Among these models researchers has applied, Nord’s model for this study. Undoubtedly, in the practical process of investigation, the influences of some factors such as setting, and etc. cannot be controlled by the researcher and some factors were absolutely out of the control of the researcher, too. The theoretical basis of analysis adopted for the implementation of the study is restricted among many theories to Nord’s descriptive translation studies and theory. The nature of the study is a descriptive and qualitative one and is conducted within synchronic translation studies. Furthermore, the original book was translated into Persian by a Persian translator, but due to the limited extent of the study the researcher limited it to investigating of only extratextual and intratextual factors of the fiction book of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
Children's First Reading Experience. (2021, Dec 11). Retrieved from https://paperap.com/children-s-first-reading-experience/
