This article outlines the aims and methodology of a new study in the field of children's literature. The research makes use of a composite corpus representing original English, original Finnish and translated Finnish from English. The initial focus of this investigation is the analysis of nonfinite constructions, taken as a measure of readability of children's books. Ultimately its aim is to infer, through the interpretation of the lexico-grammatical patterns emerging in the corpus, the ideological norms prevailing in the literary systems of English and Finnish children's fiction.Cet article décrit les buts et la méthodologie d'une nouvelle recherche dans le domaine de la littérature pour enfants. L'étude se fait à partir d'un corpus composite - textes originaux en anglais et en finnois ainsi que des textes finois traduits vers l'anglais. L'auteur se penche d'abord sur les constructions non finies en tant que mesure de la lisibilité des livres pour enfants; mais le but de l'article est d'inférer, par l'interprétation de modèles lexico-grammaticaux observés dans le corpus, les normes idéologiques qui prévalent dans la littérature anglaise et finnoise pour enfants
The purpose of the study outlined in this article is to compare the acceptability of style in two contemporary Finnish translations of L. Frank Baum's The Wizard of Oz with special reference to the effect of sentence structure on acceptability. For the purposes of this study, acceptability is defined in terms of the norms and expectations prevailing in the language and style of Finnish children's fiction which include the requirements of a high degree of readability and natural style. The hypothesis is that the use of complex nonfinite constructions in one translation decreases readability and consequently lowers acceptability, whereas the other translation is expected to be more readable and acceptable due to its natural, dynamic style characterized by simple finite constructions. The syntactic structures relevant to the readability of the translations are analysed with the help of two linguistic models: a modification of phrase-structure grammar and a propositional model. Three empirical tests, i.e. a cloze test, subjective assessment and a reading test, provide information about the readability and acceptability of the translations. Résumé: Le prisent article se propose de comparer l'acceptabilité du style de deux traductions contemporaines du Wizard of Oz (L. Frank Baum) en finnois, et d'examiner en particulier les effets produits sur elle par la structure phrasti-que. L'acceptabilité est, en l'occurrence, définie en termes de normes et d'atten-tes linguistiques et stylistiques imposées par la littérature finnoise pour enfants, dont les exigences en matiire de lisibiliti et d'un style naturel sont élévies. Une hypothise est avancie: l'usage de constructions complexes et non finies dans la premiére traduction entraîne une baisse de la lisibiliti et, corollairement, de Vacceptabilite, tandis que la seconde traduction atteint un niveau supirieur de lisibiliti grâce à son style naturel et dynamique, dont timoignent les constructions simples et finies. Deux modeles linguistiques servent a dicrire les structures syn-taxiques: une version modifiie du modéle des régies syntagmatiques, et un mo-dele d'analyse propositionnelle. Trois tests empiriques (un "cloze" test de lisibilite, un jugement subjectif et un test de lecture) informent sur la lisibiliti et l'ac-ceptabiliti des traductions.
The article applies to translation some ideas from critical discourse analysis and discusses the potential effects of translational solutions on the ideological content of texts in the light of a small-scale study on student translations. Ideology refers here to the ways in which linguistic choices made by the writer or translator of a text, first, create a particular perspective on the events portrayed, second, may reflect the writer's opinions and attitudes, and third, may be used to influence readers' opinions. Particular linguistic structures, such as vocabulary, finite and nonfinite constructions, active and passive forms, and grammatical metaphors, can be seen as conscious or unconscious strategies which realise ideological meanings. In translation, ideologically motivated linguistic structures of a source text may be manipulated either unintentionally because of insufficient language and/or translation skills or lacking knowledge of the relationship between language and ideology, or intentionally owing to translation norms, requirements of the translation commission or the translator's own attitudes towards the source text subject. The analysis of Finnish translations of English magazine articles made by translation students focused on explicitating and implicitating translation strategies. Implicitation was found to be much more frequent than explicitation. Explicitation included, for instance, replacing a source-text nominalisation with a Finnish verb phrase and making clausal relations more explicit by adding connectives to the texts. Implicitation involved turning verb phrases into nominalisations and complete relative clauses into complex premodified noun phrases. These strategies changed the viewpoints and occasionally even modified the opinions expressed by the source-text writers. The students' non-systematic application of opposite strategies suggests that source text manipulation was mainly caused by insufficient skills and knowledge rather than ideological motivations.
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