Culture-specific items : Translation procedures for a text about Australian and New Zealand children's literature

The aim of this study is to analyse the problems met when translating culture-specific items in a text about Australian and New Zealand colonial and post-colonial children’s literature into Swedish. The analysis quantifies and describes the different translation procedures used, and contrasts different strategies when there was more than one possible choice. It also outlines the reasons for the choices made when creating a text adapted for a Swedish audience. The translation methods applied are dynamic equivalence and domestication. As for the categorization of the material, the theories of Newmark (1988) have primarily been followed. The study shows that the frequency of each translation procedure depends on the type of culture-specific item, and the chosen translation method. It is argued that transference is the most commonly used procedure, and recognized translations are not as frequent as could have been expected with the choice of domestication. This is the case for proper nouns and references to literary works, where transference and dynamic equivalence has been given priority over domestication whenever the factual content was considered to be the most important aspect to follow. As for culture-specific items of the category social culture, neutralisation is the most commonly used procedure. In such cases the domestication method was more influential than dynamic equivalence as the consideration of ethics as well as avoidance of cultural taboos in the target culture were considered to be more important than content