Children's Literature in Translation: Analysis of Translation of Names in Characters

The present article intends to deal with the differences between children and adult literature from translation methods perspective and then study the translation procedures applied for translating the characters proper names in children literature. Some excerpts of Persian translations of “Fairy Tales” by Hans Christian Andersen as an example of univalent children literature and some excerpts of Persian translated long stories as “David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens as well as “Alice Adventures in the Wonderland” by Lewis Carroll as examples of ambivalent children literature have been selected to be studied and compared with the widely applied translation procedures used for adult literature. Based on the results of the present study, it can be concluded that children literature is much more frequently adapted through translation while such a translation method is not favorable in adult literature. In other words, children literature is more frequently domesticated through translation compared with adult literature. In addition, ten different translation procedures can be applied for the characters proper names in children literature, including: reproduction, reproduction plus additional explanation, replacement of personal names by a common name, phonetic or morphological adaptation to the target language, replacement by a target language counterpart in the target language, replacement by a more widely know name from the source language or internationally known name with the same function, substitution, translation, replacement by a name with another or additional connotation, deletion. These translation procedures play a great role in preserving the function of the source text proper names.