The version of source text that I used in the study is published in 1986 by Michael Joseph Ltd and it is illustrated by Graham Rust. Other works by Rust include illustration to books such as A Little Princess and Little Lord Fauntleroy by Burnett (Illustrated by Graham Rust 2018).
The initial Finnish translation Salainen puutarha by Toini Swan was first pub-lished in 1920 by WSOY. A search from Fennica, the National Bibliography of Finland, shows that the latest, 13th edition of Toini Swan’s translation is from 2007. According to the search, editions have been taken in 1947 (2nd), 1951 (3rd), 1961(4th), 1965 (5th), 1971 (6th), 1982 (7th), 1985 (8th), 1990 (9th), 1994 (10th), 1995 (11th), 2000 (12th), 2007 (13th). In addition, the text has been published in 1977 as a of publications of the book sales club Suuri nuorten kirjakerho.
In this study, I have used the 10th edition from 1994 published by WSOY. What is particular about this book is that the pictures on the cover and the back cover are from the film adaptation of The Secret Garden from 19931. In addition, the book has an attachment which contains 16 pages of images from the film. These images function as an illustration for the story.
Interestingly, Salomaa (2013) used the first edition of the initial translation from 1920 in her study, and she mentions that Swan has domesticated the name Martha as Martta.
However, the name is in its source-text form in the 10th edition of the book. In addition, Sa-lomaa (2013) notes that the first edition of Toini Swan’s translation, which she used in her material contains footnotes. However, there are no footnotes in the 10th edition.
Sari Karhulahti’s translation Salainen puutarha was first published in 2006 by Art House and its second edition was published in 2012. A search from Fennica provided infor-mation only of the 2006 edition, although the page had an image of the cover of the second edition. The Finna.fi database, however, contained information about the second edition. Ac-cording to a brief introductory text included in the second edition (2012), the cover picture as well as the two pictures at the beginning of the book and the two pictures at the end of the book are the same pictures by Maria L. Kirk that were used in the original impression of Burnett’s text in 1911. The first edition of Karhulahti’s (2006) translation does not have illustration apart from the cover picture.
1 The Secret Garden 2018 April 2. Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108071/
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Emilia Numminen’s translation Salainen puutarha was published in 2008 by Eg-mont kustannus. According to Fennica, no new editions have been published (in 2018). This translation of the book has a comprehensive illustration. In fact, the illustrator Inga Moore is also marked as an author and her name is also placed on the cover of the book. Thus, it can be assumed that Emilia Numminen’s translation is based on the English version with Inga Moore’s illustration from 2007. Moore is a renowned artist who has illustrated other several classics during her career. Her work includes classics such as Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Wil-lows and Oscar Wilde’s The Canterville Ghost (Inga Moore 2018). According to the infor-mation provided by the British National Bibliography, The Secret Garden with Moore’s illus-tration was initially published as Frances Hodgson Burnett’s The Secret Garden in London by Walker in 2007 and it is marked as a new edition. In addition, the English book also has Moore’s name on the cover.
Numminen’s (2008) and Karhulahti’s (2006) translations could be regarded in Pym’s (1998) terms as rivaling translations as they share the same cultural location and time.
Karhulahti’s translation was published in 2006 and Numminen’s translation in 2008. In addi-tion, the 13th edition of Toini Swan’s translation was, according to Fennica published in 2007, which means that a Finnish retranslation or a re-edition of the book has been published in three consecutive years.
In addition to the (re)translations by Swan, Karhulahti and Numminen, Janet Brown’s (2001) retold version of the story has been translated in Finnish by Pirjo Mäkinen (2004) and published by Gummerus. According to the information provided by Fennica, Meri Starck has also translated an abridged version of the book into Finnish, and it was published in 1983 by Mestarikustanus. The version is short as it contains only 30 pages.
The copyrights of The Secret Garden expired 70 years after the death of the author Frances Hodgson Burnett. The bibliographic information in Project Gutenberg shows that the book was been released in 1994 (The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett 2018).
55 4.5 The (re)translators
In this study, translations are viewed as products of their time, and the purpose is not to criticize the translators or their choices. The translators are next introduced very briefly in order to acknowledge their work.
Toini Vellamo Swan (September 24, 1870–November 29, 1949) was a language teacher, writer, and a translator. She worked occasionally as a teacher in the Lappeenranta re-gion, and since 1894 had miscellaneous jobs, for instance in in a law office. Toini Swan became qualified as an English teacher and taught English in Helsinki from 1905 to 1932 and travelled several times to England, for instance, to study (Arjava 2007: 258). Toini Swan wrote texts to magazine Sirkka, initially called Nuorten Toveri (Manninen 1995:30). Among Toini Swan’s Finnish translations are Kadonnut prinssi in 1918 (The Lost Prince by Frances Hodgson Burnett originally published in 1915)2, Keltaisen talon lapset in 1921 (Mother Carey by Kate Douglas Wiggin)3, Marcella4 in 1910 (Marcella by Mrs. Humphrey Ward in 1895), Pikku prinsessa in 1912 (A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett 19055), and, of course, Salainen puutarha in 1920 (Swan Toini March 27, 2018).
Swan had eight sisters, and the correspondence between them has been published in books Yhdeksän mustaa joutsenta (Manninen 1993) and Mustat joutsenet ja heidän jälkipol-vensa (Manninen 1995). Among the sisters is Anni Swan, an author and translator, who trans-lated Lewis Carroll’s 1865 book Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Finnish as Liisan seik-kailut ihmemaassa in 1906 (Oittinen 2007:579).
Emilia Numminen is a Finnish translator whose extensive work include the trans-lations of children’s books such as Höristä korviasi, Eino in 2007 (English source text Little elephant’s listening ears by Susan Hood and illustrated by Nascimbeni, Barbara)6. In addition,
2 Information regarding the name of the ST and the year of publication from the British National Bibliography (2018 March 27)
3 Information regarding the name of the ST from Mother Carey's Chickens by Kate Douglas Smith Wiggin (2018 March 27). Retrieved from https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/10540.
4 Information regarding the year of publication of the ST from Marchella. (2018 March 27) Retrieved from https://archive.org/stream/marcella01wardh#page/n7/mode/2up
5 Information regarding the name and the year of publishing of the ST from Frances Hodgson Burnett (2018 March 27) retrieved from https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/frances-hodgson-burnett/28501/
6 Information regarding the name and years of publication of the translation and the name of the ST from Höristä korviasi, Eino. (2018 March 28). Retrieved from
http://www.kir-56
Numminen has translated fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood to a collection Satujen taikamaailma (Emilia Numminen, March 28, 2018).
Sari Karhulahti (b. 1963) has translated both children’s and adults’ literature (Kääntäjä Sari Karhulahdelle 2017). In 2017 she was awarded with the Finnish State Prize for Literature (Kääntäjä Sari Karhulahdelle 2017). Karhulahti has translated works such as Peter Pan in 2002 (Originally Peter Pan and Wendy by J.M Barrie in 1911)7 as well as Bridget Jones:
elämäni sinkkuna in 1998 and Bridget Jones: elämä jatkuu in 2000 (Bridget Jones’s Diary in 1996 and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason in 1999 by Helen Fielding)8.
jasampo.fi/fi/kulsa/http%253A%252F%252Fdata.kirjasampo.fi%252FphysicalWork_9789512845262. Infor-mation regarding the name and the year of publication of the ST from Little elephant’s ears. (2018 March 28).
Retrieved from https://www.amazon.com/Little-Elephants-Listening-Ears-Susan/dp/0794412300
7 Information regarding the year of publication as well as the ST from Peter Pan and Wendy (2018 March 28) Retrieved from http://www.kirjasampo.fi/fi/kulsa/saha3%253Au71eea7a0-8f44-4ebb-b000-8a1e9ecc6b84
8 Information regarding the publishing year of the ST and TT as well as the translator from Helen Fielding. (2018 March 28). Retrieved from https://otava.fi/kirjailijat/helen-fielding/
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5 Material and method
As mentioned in the introductory chapter, the research questions of this thesis are:
• How are features of racism, violence, and disability translated it the (re)transla-tions of Secret Garden?
• Are there differences between the translation strategies of the different elements among the (re)translations and if so, what are the differences? What do these changes imply?
In this chapter, I will describe the methods used in the collection and analysis of the research material. Firstly, I will discuss the methodological background of my study. Secondly, I will explain how the material was collected and then I briefly discuss how the analysis was con-ducted. It needs to be stressed that the collection of the material as well as the structure of analysis were closely connected as the collection of material determined the way it was later analyzed.
5.1 The general aim of the study
Narrowing down the topic and selecting the material was a process. The initial, broad topic of my study was translation of elements considered inappropriate in retranslated children’s litera-ture. I chose to focus on F. H.Burnett’s The Secret Garden, as it is a book that has been trans-lated in Finnish more than once. The idea behind studying retranslations was to compare pos-sible differences in translation strategies and then make suggestions about how they have been influenced by possible changes in norms or views about what is appropriate in children’s liter-ature.
After an initial skimming of the English source text I intended to focus on the translation of racist elements. However, a closer and more rigorous reading of the book drew my attention to the way violence and disability were presented in the story. I then decided to include those themes to my research. The aim, therefore, was to study how features of racism, violence and disability are translated and whether there are differences between the translation strategies of the themes in each translation and whether there are differences in the strategies
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between the translations. As the closer reading of the book affected the research question, this study is partly material driven.
In this study, I compare the source-text expressions and their translations with one another. As Kujamäki (2013:357) argues, comparing textual features is a typical method among Translation Studies, much because the central purpose of translations is to reproduce the mean-ings of the source text. Therefore, possible differences and similarities can be indicative of something.
Considering the scope of a master’s thesis, I decided to focus on three themes and thus the aim is to compare how features of racism, violence and disability are translated. These themes were selected because I found them interesting and topical. In addition, Salomaa (2013) has studied the Finnish (re)translation of The Secret Garden in her master’s thesis. The central theoretical approach of Salomaa’s (2013) study is skopos, and she focuses on dialect, appear-ance as well as gender in her analysis. Therefore, these themes are not discussed in detail in this study. Salomaa (2013) analyzes her material on a syntactic, grammatical and semantic level whereas I mostly focus on the semantic aspects. There are, however, some similarities between Salomaa’s (2013) and my material and analysis, as Salomaa (2013) also discusses racism and racist parts briefly. In addition, Salomaa (2013) discusses some of the racist elements in con-nection with religion, whereas I do not discuss religion.
Since studying the entire textual material of several books would be impractical if not impossible, parts that are relevant for the research topic were selected. The selection of the passages that were later analyzed was based on a rigorous reading of the source text accom-panied by my initial understanding of the topic and the theoretical background. Therefore, the study is partly material-driven and partly theory-driven. As the passages were ultimately chosen by me, the process is to some extent subjective. It should also be noted that especially in such a qualitative study, the process of narrowing down the topic partly defines and creates the phe-nomenon. This means that choosing to study expressions of racism, violence and disability in The Secret Garden, and by selecting parts of the text for a detailed analysis, I take part in con-structing and naming the phenomenon. The selection of the passages formed the basis for or-ganizing the material into themes that are discussed in detail in the chapter 6, in which I present the result of my study.
As the focus of this study is on the elements of children’s literature that are or may be inappropriate, the discussion is linked to norms. However, since the material consists
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only of one book and its (re)translations, it is difficult to make claims about the direct impacts of norms, or to identify the norms that possibly have affected the translations. Similarly, as the study focuses on one source text as well as the initial translation and two retranslations of one novel, it is also difficult to make broad assumptions or generalizations related to the retransla-tion hypothesis.
Choosing (re)translations as the material allows a discussion of the possible im-pacts that context and time have on the translations: has the idea of appropriateness changed and affected how certain parts are translated? The initial translation Salainen puutarha by Toini Swan was published in 1920, and the edition used in this study is from 1994. The two retrans-lations are from 2006 by Sari Karhulahti and from 2008 by Emilia Numminen. The second edition of Sari Karhulahti’s translation was published in 2012. This second edition has also been read for the purposes of this study, but it has not been included as a separate version as its content did not differ from the first edition. The retranslations are almost the same age whereas the initial translation is considerably older. This gives an opportunity to study whether some parts in the younger texts differ from the older initial translation, and possibly indicates to changes in what is regarded as inappropriate. On the other hand, it is possible to study whether either retranslation has similarities with the initial translation, which then could imply that there has not been a major change in what is appropriate. It needs to be stressed that the material of the study is not sufficient for making very broad generalizations. However, the results can be discussed in relation to other research and theories concerning children’s literature, and there-fore the study in its part broadens the understanding of translating inappropriate elements in children’s literature.
5.2 Selecting the passages and conducting the analysis
The broad idea of this thesis was to study how inappropriate elements have been translated in (re)translations of a children’s book. Prior to choosing the focus of this study as well as the specific literary text, I had a rudimentary understanding of theories concerning the translation of children’s literature. Thus, the choice of the elements that are studied i.e. racism, violence, and disability, are based on the contents of the book and the theoretical background as well as a general cultural idea or understanding of what might be considered inappropriate. As the ap-proach partly relies on a general understanding of controversial themes, it is difficult for the researcher to claim to be free from the constraints of her cultural and social context.
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I read the English source text meticulously and wrote down the passages that con-tained expressions of racism, violence, and disability. After this, I read each Finnish (re)trans-lation and picked the trans(re)trans-lations of the selected source-text passages. During this process, I read all the Finnish (re)translations entirely, not just the selected source-text passages of each translation. This was done in order to find out if the (re)translations contained elements or parts that are not in the source text, for instance, intensifying of racism or violence or additions of violence. Possible additions of racism, violence or negative representations of disability else-where in the translations would not have be detected if I had only read the translations of the selected source-text passages. However, I did not find addition of racism, violence or negative representations of disability in the (re)translations elsewhere in the text.
Material-driven or partly material-driven approach is justified because it allows researchers to study elements or phenomena that they may not have thought of beforehand while planning the research and forming the research question. Since this research focuses on one novel it is justified to focus on elements that turn out to be relevant in that novel.
The material consists of cultural products, published books, and is thus not created for the purposes of this study, in a similar manner than for instance an interview or a survey would be. Therefore, acquiring the research material has an element of unobtrusiveness. How-ever, I have chosen which passages are analyzed, and which parts are left out, and in this sense the material is produced by me. In addition, while selecting the passages, I made the choice of how much textual material is incorporated to a passage. In cases such as this, a researcher needs to be critical in order to avoid biased selection. In addition, a researcher needs to be careful that they are not selecting just those parts that would support a certain interpretation or their initial assumption, such as passages in which there are or are not clear omissions.
The method of this study is qualitative, and despite the fact that in some cases the number of uses of a specific expression is presented, the purpose of such information is illus-trative. The analysis thus is not quantitative. This means that phenomena are not explained, and conclusions are not drawn, for instance, based on frequency.
The results of this study are presented according the chosen themes, racism, vio-lence and disability. The choice to approach the analysis thematically rather than for instance according to translation strategies was done because it better allows the comparison between the translation strategies of the different themes.
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The concepts used in the analysis are central concepts of translation studies, such as omission, as the object of this thesis is to study on a rather general level how expressions of racism, violence and disability are translated. The focus is on the semantic level and, for in-stance, the occasional grammatical analysis is superficial. The analysis does not focus on easily defined units such as words or clauses or sentences, as the idea was to study how semantically coherent entities expressing racism, violence or disability manifested themselves in the trans-lation.
Expressions and words that were defined racist were selected on the basis that they demean people because of on their background, position and appearance, and associate negative features to them. Racism in the form of colonialism occurs in this specific novel on a broader level than individual expressions and this will be discussed further in chapter 5 in which I present the results of my analysis. When I selected the passages, the focus was not placed on the internal context of the story, such as who utters the expression, and what function the utter-ance serves in the story. The passages were selected based on of how they are viewed in the
Expressions and words that were defined racist were selected on the basis that they demean people because of on their background, position and appearance, and associate negative features to them. Racism in the form of colonialism occurs in this specific novel on a broader level than individual expressions and this will be discussed further in chapter 5 in which I present the results of my analysis. When I selected the passages, the focus was not placed on the internal context of the story, such as who utters the expression, and what function the utter-ance serves in the story. The passages were selected based on of how they are viewed in the