Abstract

Since their publication in the early twentieth century, Beatrix Potter’s tales have been translated into more than forty languages. Despite this, Romanian translations are relatively few and recent. This thesis identifies the challenges of translating Potter’s tales into Romanian, based on analyses of the source and target texts and contexts, complemented by discussions of the general challenges of translating children’s literature and those of translating Potter’s tales into other languages. The translation challenges are categorised into extra-textual (relating to the publishing process) and textual (regarding the verbal and the visual elements of the works). This study concludes that extra-textual challenges include selecting Potter for publication in Romania, selecting specific tales and book formats for publication, marketing the translated editions and assessing reception. The textual translation challenges comprise the translation of “syntext” (a term used instead of “paratext”, inadequate with regard to Potter’s books), of culture-specific items, proper names, challenging vocabulary, read-aloud and stylistic features, humour and narrative verb tenses. This thesis contributes to children’s literature translation scholarship by focusing on Beatrix Potter’s works, which have been little researched from a translation perspective, and on contemporary Romania, a little-known cultural and literary space.