Translating Neologisms in Children’s Literature: Two Tales By Dr. Seuss- Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? And the Lorax

Abstract

Children’s literature is a genre characterized by a playful language that abounds in neologisms in general and nonce words in particular. Nonce words constitute a subtype of neologisms - newly coined lexical units- that serve to enrich the lexicon. In children’s stories, words of this kind are widely used as a stylistic device to surprise and entertain the reader, as well as to help them better visualize the scenes and incidents being depicted. This article aims to explore the use of nonce words in children’s literature with special focus on the challenges involved in translating such words. Within this context, two tales written by Dr. Seuss, Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are? and The Lorax, along with their Turkish translations, have been selected for the study. In the article, a number of nonce words taken from the two tales and their translations have been analyzed on the basis of Dirk Delabastita’s taxonomy of neologisms and B.J. Epstein’s strategies for translating nonce words (‘neologisms’ as she refers to them) in children’s literature. Analyzed within the framework of Delabastita’s categories of neologisms, most of the nonce words in the original text have been found to fall into the sub-category of coining, a particular technique designed to create a new lexical item in order to enrich the narrative and produce phonetic effects. Also, the findings demonstrated that in both tales the translator has mainly employed two strategies: (1) Adaptation; (2) Replacing a neologism with another neologism. In translation, these strategies have been intended to carry over to the target text the lexical effects created by the use of neologisms in the source text. Furthermore, these translation procedures have been endorsed by an effort to simulate the literary devices employed in the original tales -onomatopoeia, alliteration, and assonance in particular- each being a stylistic technique designed to produce playful sound effects.