La traduction de l’onomatopée dans les livres pour les tout-petits : la relation texte-image-son

Abstract

The Translation of Onomatopoeia in Early-concept Books: The Text-Image-Sound Relationship The purpose of the study is to observe the functioning of onomatopoeia in the translation of picture books for young children (under three years old). The textual, visual and sound layers remain strongly interdependent in these books, and their conception is often based on onomatopoeia, which is connected to the development of language in children.Taking Soledad Bravi’s Le Livre des bruits and its Spanish and Polish translations as an example, we distinguished several translation problems related to (1) the need to give the onomatopoeia a written form in the target language, (2) the independence of their pronunciation from their written form, and (3) the interdependence of picture and onomatopoeia in terms of meaning. Furthermore, we observed that some onomatopoeia were perceived by adult readers as representations of negative stereotypes in terms of children education, which resulted in a kind of “pedagogical control” on their behalf.

Keywords

• translation
• onomatopoeia
• early-concept books
• illustration
• children’s literature