The history of translation has been built on the notions that the translator either leaves the writer alone and moves towards the reader (domesticating the text), or leaves the reader alone and moves towards the writer (foreignising the text). These strategies have been called many names, but the translator has always been faced with the choice between domesticating or foreignising the target text. This study considers the options available to a translator when translating the proper nouns and neologisms in a fantasy novel. The translator should not move towards and stand next to the reader to create a target text that is unrecognisable compared to the source text. At the same time, the translator cannot remain next to the writer and thus not change the proper nouns and neologisms to ensure that the target-text readers can understand all – or most of – the potential meanings. If the translator does not move closer to the readers, they cannot have the same experience as source-text readers. This study looks at the translation theories, strategies and procedures that can be applied when translating proper nouns and neologisms used in Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods. It is limited to the study of the neologisms that act as proper nouns, and does not look at other neologisms in the novel. The study identifies translation procedures that retain the meaning potential of the proper nouns and neologisms in the source text in the process of translating them into an Afrikaans target text. It compares the procedures that may have been used by the Dutch translator, by Venugopalan Ittekot, of the novel, Kleingoderij, into Dutch with the procedures that are identified to be used by a translator of the text into Afrikaans. This study identifies the procedures most appropriate to a possible translation of proper nouns and neologisms in Small Gods to Afrikaans in order to retain the meaning potential. The translation procedures that has been identified are addition, cultural adaptation, internationalisation, literal translation, neutralisation, substitution, transference, transliteration and transposition. These procedures can be used to attain equivalence at word level and in such a way that the meaning-potential is retained. / Dissertation (MA) University of Pretoria, 2016. / African Languages / MA / Unrestricted

This thesis considers the translation of Dutch and Flemish picture books into Swedish from 1995 to 2006. The main aim of the thesis is to study what meaning the notion translation takes on where picture books are concerned and how the translation practice for picture books is influenced by international co-productions. The thesis includes a bibliographical study and a larger case study of the Dutch picture book artist Dick Bruna and his internationally renowned picture books about the rabbit Miffy in Swedish translation. Working within the theoretical frame of descriptive translation studies (DTS), I describe and analyse picture book translation as a phenomenon and a practice that occurs at a certain moment in time in a certain sociocultural context. Using the model of Toury (1995), I study translation norms governing the selection and translation of Dutch and Flemish picture books and of Bruna’s picture books about Miffy in particular. Toury’s model is largely designed for the analysis of written texts. As picture book texts combine both verbal and visual modes of expression, I use multimodal analysis combining the social semiotic visual grammar of Kress & van Leeuwen (2006) with systemic functional linguistics (SFL) as a tool to analyse the translation of picture book texts. By combining DTS and SFL, I study translation as a cultural and social semiotic practice. The analyses in the thesis indicate that picture book translation can be characterised as an international, target culture-oriented and multimodal translation practice. The multimodal translation analysis shows that, while translated picture books have the same images as their source text due to co-production, images can be combined with different social meanings, as for instance images of children and interaction with the reader, expressed in the written text. Images can also assume different meaning potentials and also referential interplay and plausible reading paths between words and images can change.