إشكالية ترجمة شعر الأطفال

Abstract

This research is a study of the poetry written for children. It is based on the translation of La Fontaine fables realized by Ahmed Chawki. When I read the poems of La Fontaine and those of Chawki I recognized that there is a big difference between the texts and their translation. La Fontaine extracted his poems from a French atmosphere while Chawki adapted them according to his Arabic culture. From this observation a lot of questions invaded my mind: how did Chawki deal with the original text? Did he really maintain the original meaning of the poem? Did he transmit this meaning succesfully? Can one truly translate a poem? What is the best way to translate a poem? During our translation, are we obliged to keep the form or the meaning of the source text? -218- I focused my research on the translation of Ahmed Chawki in order to see to what extent he succeded in his translation and to what extent he revealed the cultural problems hidden through the original poem. In this research work the following hypothesis was put forward: it is better to translate a poem by keeping its original meaning, because neglecting the source meaning will certainly lead to the use of adaptation. Like any other research work, mine passes by two phases. First, I collected the books that I needed in my work. Second, I started writing after I had read carfully the necessary literary survey I used in this research. From the title ‘The Problem of Translating Children Poetry: La Fontine and Chawki as a Model’ emerged the difficulties that I faced. The title contains three key words which are the axes of all my dissertation. Those key words are: translation, poetry, and children. This variety of words needs a variety of books, and this was a very demanding task because it requires reading many ressources. -219- I devided the research into four chapters in which I discussed the three notions mentionned in the title. I started with ‘translation’. This concept has existed for many centuries ago. In the middle ages, the litteral translation was dominant. But at the fifteenth century, European writers returned back to imitation which had an influence on translation studies and practices. It is worth mentioning that the church at that age encouraged the litteral translation of the sacred book. This explained the cause of the terrible end of Etienne Dolet who was burnt because of his new way of translation in which he revolted against the litteral translation. Translation prospered in the sixteenth century, while in the seventeenth century dominated the classicism which produced a big prosperity to translation thanks to the contact between the European litterature which were written in different languages. In the eighteenth century translators started to write down the difficulties they faced while translating as an introduction to their wrintings. But the twentieth century was the date -220- of birth of the ‘science of translation’ thanks to the emergence of several theorists in this field. Translation may be twofold: litteral and free. Both of them is devided into other parts which I surveyed in the first chapter. Whereas, the second chapter was devoted to poetry, children litterature, and translation theories. Poetry is something vast and obscure. No one can give a clear definition to a poem. It is on the wing, and it is like electricity. A poet is like a draughtsman, he uses the details of the whole universe to draw his own universe. However, children poetry is a kind of litterature specially written for children. This special text needs a special writer, because it is not easy to create a good poem for a child. The third point of this chapter was the translation theories. I tried at that level to extract some opinions of some theorists and apply them on poetry translation. I gave an overview of interpretative, sociolinguistic, and litteral theories of translation. In the third chapter, I chose eight poems of La Fontaine and compared them with Chawki’s translations. I noticed that there -221- are big differences between the source and the target texts. This is why I suggested my own translations trying to prove that the trnslator can keep the original poem as it is, and that he can save both meaning and form. Finally, in the last chapter, I discussed Chawki’s translation as well as my own one. At the end I suggested some recommendations and conclusions as running below: - The translator must translate the meaning and the form of a poem. - The translator of poetry must be himself a poet. - The translator adapts the poem when the target culture does not accept some notions of the source culture. - Translators have to save the original text if it is possible. - The rythm is an important tool that a translator can use to attract the child to his creative translation.