Translating picturebooks: Re-examining interlingual and intersemiotic translation

Abstract

The paper explores picturebooks and their translation, analyzing the three Finnish translations of The Tale of Peter Rabbit by Beatrix Potter, all of which are based on a different illustration version. The paper approaches picturebook translation from the viewpoint of Jakobson’s (1959) renowned classification of translation types, namely intralingual, interlingual and intersemiotic, focusing on the latter two. First, the paper examines the idea of book illustration as intersemiotic translation, analyzing how the illustration versions differ in recreating the story. Second, the paper provides examples of how the translations of picturebooks are, in fact, negotiated from the combination of verbal and visual information and therefore suggests that the translation of a picturebook does not fit into Jakobson’s typology as such; instead, it is, to certain extent, a combination of interlingual and intersemiotic translation. The paper therefore suggests that the types of translation should not be considered as exclusive of each other.