Children’s literature in/and translation: The oeuvre as corpus

Kirsten Malmkjær

doi:10.5007/2175-8026.2018v71n1p135

Authors

Kirsten Malmkjær University of Leicester

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-8026.2018v71n1p135

Abstract

In this article, I argue that whereas Lewis Carroll builds the fantastic world of Alice’s dreams primarily through narration, Hans Christian Andersen uses patterns of lexical choices that recur throughout his opus to build a universe divided solely in terms of a distinction between what is genuine and what is artificial; and this distinction is a central player in all of his work. Arguably, therefore, attention to Andersen’s wider corpus, and to his use of lexis in it, are key to producing translations of Andersen’s work that reflect its essence.

Author Biography

Kirsten Malmkjær, University of Leicester

Professor of translation studies at the University of Leicester, UK, having previously taught at the universities of Birmingham, Cambridge and Middlesex. Her PhD (University of Birmingham, 1984) is called “Translation in Context”. She is especially interested in translation theory, Danish literature in translation into English, the relationships between translation and other academic subjects, for example linguistics, philosophy and language learning, and in the relationship between translation and creativity. Recent publications include the Routledge Handbook of Translation Studies and Linguistics (ed. 2018) and the collection of articles, Key Cultural Texts in Translation (John Benjamins 2018), co-edited with Adriana Serban and Fransiska Louwagie.