Translation criticism meets multimodality: evaluating the translation of a picturebook – an experiment

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The German picturebook Eins Zwei Drei Tier (one, two, three, animal) (1999), written and illustrated by Nadia Budde for children aged three years and over, contains a total of 98 words, 64 humorous illustrations of people and animals, 18 pages and 17 rhymes. At first sight, it seems untranslatable, yet it has been published in many languages, one of which is Portuguese. A picturebook is usually read to and by children, which means that its message is transmitted through the auditory and visual channels, and sometimes also through the tactile one too. Given these multimodal characteristics, how can the translation be evaluated? Translation criticism theories from the 1990s have usually focused on the text-level, and Heidrun Gerzymisch-Arbogast’s translation criticism model (1994, 1997, 1998) is no exception. This paper conducts the experiment to apply her model to a picturebook.
KEYWORDS: Multimodality, Picturebooks, Translation Criticism