This thesis aims to contribute to the growing body of knowledge concerning the adult basic literacy education in the Nordic countries and broaden research on literacy from its traditional focus on verbal texts to include images and visual texts. The thesis comprises a research survey concerning adult literacy and two empirical, exploratory studies focusing on the use of visual texts in the basic Swedish language programme for adult immigrants, Svenskundervisning för invandrare (sfi). The first study presents international and Nordic research on literacy with a focus on current sociocultural, and critical perspectives. Together with the three concepts of mutual respect, meaningfulness and participation, an ‘expansive’ model for adult literacy instruction is also presented. The second study deals with the teachers´ views on appropriate visual materials for second language and literacy teaching. The results show an extensive but diversified usage of visual material but also that literacy teachers pay very close attention to participants´ sociocultural background in their image selection but tend to underestimate their cognitive ability. From a critical perspective the teachers´ statements can be regarded as part of a discursive practice in which they unintentionally contribute to a discourse construction of an identity of deficiency of the learners. The third study examines and compares, how adult second language learners interact with and understand a number of Swedish election posters. The analyses identify processes and variations in the learners´ interaction. The results show that the reconstructions of the visual texts are influenced by the participants´ linguistic, educational and cultural ‘repertoires’, as well as the posters´ graphic, visual and textual design. A certain level of linguistic proficiency as well as formal schooling and knowledge of the current discourse seem to be indispensable for making the intended interpretations.

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.