Translating Educational Children’s Books: A translation and analysis of Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories series
Summary
This thesis focuses on the translation of educational children's books. The corpus consists of three parts of Terry Deary's Horrible Histories series: Awesome Egyptians, Knights and The Wicked History of the World. The main research question is which problems arise while translating Deary's Horrible Histories series into Dutch and what is the most desirable way of dealing with these problems. This thesis incorporates a theoretical background consisting of theories on both translating children's books and translating humour, my own translation of several chapters from the three parts of the series and an analysis of the translation process, which includes a comparison to the existing Dutch translations. The main problems which arise while translating these educational children's books are related to the knowledge and vocabulary of the target audience and the style of the author. Deciding on which vocabulary to use and on the extent to which certain terms need an explanation was quite challenging. Moreover, the Horrible Histories books are written in a very humorous and light-hearted way, which requires a lot of creativity and an eye for detail. The extensive process which is part of translating Deary's educational books proves, as many scholars claim, that translating children's literature is a challenge. However, it is an amusing one.