Translating Children's Literature: translation process and analysis of Raquel Olcoz Moreno's "Zuppa di Arcobaleno"

Zuppa di Arcobaleno is a short story wrote by Spanish-Italian author Raquel Olcoz Moreno about a little girl who faces a common struggle shared by many children all over the world: she doesn’t like vegetables. However, her stubbornness is challenged when she starts shrinking in size and turning grey because of the lack of vitamins in her diet. The story has a strong moral lesson that can be foreseen from the start and becomes more evident as the reader goes deeper into the story, through colorful visual prompts and fantastic narration. Visual imagery is a strong tool in this book, every scene carries a detailed description of shapes and colors, necessary to stimulate the child’s imagination, which will be eventually be paired up with actual illustrations as support. This paper will analyze both the aspects of children’s literature as a literary genre and children’s literature in translation by including the analysis of the translation of the aforementioned children’s book. In the first chapter, the book chosen to be translated will be introduced and children’s literature will be analyzed from a more theoretical point of view, elaborating on the definition of children’s literature, its origins, and translating literature for children. This chapter will also elaborate further on illustrated children’s books and the importance of illustrations in children’s literature. Secondly, the translation process followed while translating the text will be analyzed, giving relevant examples and applying the theoretical concepts to the case study. The translation strategy includes a series of critical points and translation choices: they will be explained in detail and the choices in relation to the translation strategy will be explained.