Translation of Feminist Children’s Literature: a Writing Project

Abstract

Within the framework of Feminist Translation Studies, translation is considered a writing project to resist misogynistic conventions of patriarchal language and (re)create discourses with womanist perspectives. The aim of this study is to focus on the approaches adopted by a Turkish feminist translator in translating the feminist author Sheri Radford’s children’s work, Not Just Another Princess Story, written from a feminist point of view and published by a Turkish publishing house working with feminist ideology. The language used in children’s literature has an impact on children’s conceptualization of the world by creating cognitive patterns of gender, race, class, and sexuality. Bearing this in mind, this study aims to reveal the preferences of the translator in translating the fairy tale and modelling a world in which girls have control over their lives. The descriptive analysis demonstrates that when the feminist author, the feminist translator, and the feminist publishing house act together on a writing project, the translator, still somehow visible, tends to use a literal translation strategy dominantly and act faithfully in the translation process. The translator also has the purpose of reflecting the ideology of the writer rather than opting for feminist translation strategies such as subtitling, footnoting, prefacing, hijacking, and italicizing, which are frequently adopted in the translation of the non-feminist works. © 2021 Ovidius University. All rights reserved.