Transadapting fable into a parable for Indonesian Muslim children: Strategies and impacts

SF. Luthfie Arguby Purnomo, Lilik Untari, SF. Lukfianka Sanjaya Purnama, Muhammad Zainal Muttaqien, Robith Khoiril Umam, Yustin Sartika, Muh Nashirudin, Shabrina An Adzhani

Abstract


The demand for domestication and localization of children’s literature compels translators to not only translate the texts but also transadapt them. Significant problems arise when the texts have to fit the cultures and religions of the target users. This qualitative study attempts to address this issue. Gathering teachers of Taman Pendidikan Al Qur’an (TPQ) or Qur’an study club for Muslim children in the Greater Boyolali area of Indonesia, children’s literature translators, and TPQ students in a Focus Group Discussion, we investigated the strategies of transadapting fables in English into Bahasa Indonesia with Islamic values as the core teaching along with the impacts ensued. Through the FGD constructed based on the purification strategy by Klingberg (1986), translation as adaptation and selection by Gengshen (2003), children picturebook translation by Oittinen (2000), narrative connectedness by Christman (2004), proairetic decoding by Nikolajeva (2010), and skopos by Reiss and Vermeer (2014), paratextualization, insertion, and bleaching strategies are constructed. Paratextualization adds clickable religious comments on the digital versions of the fables. Insertion adds religious lessons within the text. Bleaching refines any expressions considered unfit for the target religious values. These strategies trigger an impact called drifting. To reveal the extent of faithfulness, we constructed a drifting-level assessment. This assessment enables translators to reveal whether a transadapted children’s literature is still on track, slipped, or out of track. The study finding is expected to fill up the theoretical absence of transadaptation strategies and drifting level assessment. Its practical nature also brings benefits for children’s literature translators and TPQ teachers.


Keywords


Children’s literature translation; fables; parables; trans-adaptation; translation with religious purposes

Full Text:

PDF

References


Aladba, A. (2019). Transadapting the snow queen into the qatari culture (Publication No. 1381397) [Doctoral dissertation, Hamad Bin Khalifa University]. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.

Burke, M. (2003). Literature as parable: Editors’ preface. In J. Gavins & G. Steen (Eds.),Cognitive poetics in practice (pp. 127-140). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203417737

Burridge, K. (2012). Euphemism and language change: The sixth and seventh ages. Lexis Journal in English Lexicology, (7), 65-92.

Chaume, F. (2013). The turn of audiovisual translation: New audiences and new technologies. Translation Spaces, 2(1), 105–123. https://doi.org/10.1075/ts.2.06cha

Christman, J. (2004). Narrative unity as a condition of personhood. Metaphilosophy, 35(5), 695–713. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9973.2004.00345.x

Gade, A. M. (2004). Perfection makes practice: Learning, emotion, and the recited Quran in Indonesia. University of Hawaii Press.

Gambier, Y. (2003). Introduction: Screen transadaptation: Perception and reception. The Translator, 9(2), 171–189. https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2003.10799152

Gengshen, H. (2003). Translation as adaptation and selection. Perspectives, 11(4), 283–291. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2003.9961481

Holzberg, N. (2002). The ancient fable: An introduction. Indiana University Press.

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture. Where old and new media collide. New York University Press.

Kennedy, G. A. (2003). Progymnasmata: Greek textbooks of prose composition and rhetoric. Society of Biblical Literature.

Klingberg, G. (1986). Children’s fiction in the hands of the translators. CWK Gleerup.

Knutson, S. (2012). ’Tradaptation’dans le sens québécois: A word for the future. In L. Raw (Eds.). Translation, adaptation and transformation (pp. 112–122). Bloomsbury.

Lewis, J. E. (1996). The English fable: Aesop and literary culture, 1651-1740 (Vol. 28). Cambridge University Press.

Malenova, E.D. (2018). Creative practices in translation of transmedia projects. Journal of Siberian Federal University Humanities & Social Sciences. 11(5). 775-786. https://doi.org/ 10.17516/1997-1370-0269

Nadeau, R. (1952). The Progymnasmata of Aphthonius in translation. Communications Monographs, 19(4), 264-285. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637755209375070

Nikolajeva, M. (2010). Interpretative codes and implied readers of children’s picturebooks. In T. Colomer & B. K Meibauer & C. Díaz (Eds.), New directions in picturebook research (pp. 45–58). Routledge.

Oittinen, R. (2000). Translating for children. Garland.

Oittinen, R. (2014). On the ethics of translating for children. Children’s literature in translation: Challenges and strategies, 35, 259-274.

Petrucci, P. (2012). The translation of cinematic discourse and the question of character equivalence in Talk to me. Multilingua, 31(2–3). https://doi.org/10.1515/multi-2012-0011

Ping, K. (1999). Translatability vs. untranslatability: A sociosemiotic perspective. Babel, 45(4), 289-300. https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.45.4.02pin

Purnomo, S. L. A., Nababan, M., Santosa, R., & Kristina, D. (2017). Ludic linguistics: A revisited taxonomy of fictional constructed language design approach for video games. GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 17(4). http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2021-2101-06

Purnomo, S. L. A., Untari, L., Purnama, S. L. S., Asiyah, N., Muttaqien, M. Z., Umam, R. K., Sartika, Y., Pujiyanti, U., & Nurjanah, H. (2020). King size or all size: Proposing a typology of amplification translation technique for children picturebook translation. Studies in English Language and Education, 7(2), 558-575.

Purnomo, S. L. A., Untari, L., Purnama, L. S., Asiyah, N., Umam, R. K., Sartika, Y., & Inderasari, E. (2021). Ludic adaptation: Can we babyfy, chibify, bambify, or cherubify a literary text for younger audiences? GEMA Online Journal of Language Studies, 21(1). http://doi.org/10.17576/gema-2021-2101-06

Ramadan, D. (2019). Transadaptation and prototyping of an audio-tactile book for blind children [Unpublished Thesis]. Hamad bin Khalifa University.

Reiss, K., & Vermeer, H. J. (2014). Towards a general theory of translational action: Skopos theory explained. Taylor and Francis.

Saldanha, G., & O'Brien, S. (2014). Research methodologies in translation studies. Routledge.

Shavit, Z. (1981). Translation of children's literature as a function of its position in the literary polysystem. Poetics today, 2(4), 171-179. https://doi.org/10.2307/1772495

Spradley, J. P. (2016). Participant observation. Waveland Press.

Tlili, S. (2012). Animals in the Qur'an. Cambridge University Press.

Toorawa, S. M. (2005). Ibn abi tahir tayfur and arabic writerly culture. Routledge.

Touiserkani, F. (2015). Politeness in adaptation of Persian multimodal texts: The case of “half life2” videogame. Procedia-Social and Behavioral Sciences, 192, 796–802. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.06.098

Yahiaoui, R., & Fattah, A. (2020). Shifts in transadapting western socio-cultural references for dubbing into Arabic. A case study of the Simpsons and Al-Shamshoon. InTRAlinea: Online Translation Journal, 22(1), 1-11. http://www.intralinea.org/archive/article/2521




DOI: https://doi.org/10.17509/ijal.v12i2.29101

Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.


View My Stats

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.