Dr. CHAN Chi Ying, MichelleMichelleDr. CHAN Chi Ying2025-08-062025-08-062024Chan, C. Y. (22 Aug 2024). Translating neologistic expressions in children’s picture books. International Conference in Children’s Literature and Translation Studies (CLTS), Stockholm University.http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11861/24416Fundamentally, a picture book is a multimodal narrative that operates through the collaborations between pictures (iconic signs) and texts (conventional signs). The collaborative model of the two signs can be briefly categorized into the form of “symmetrical”, “complementary”, “expanding”, counterpointing” and “sylleptic” (Nikolajeva and Scott, 2004). In Peter Nodelman’s terms (1988), words and pictures are working in a “combative relationship”. Hence, the translation of picture books involves not only lexical transition but also, first, reconnecting the textual and visual narrative, which the latter is conventionally heavily embedded with cultural references and significances, and second, the transference of the multimodal collaborative model in the source text. Most picture books are targeting young readers, and like other children’s reading materials, they often include neologistic expressions to imitate the growing readability of children and to entertain them with language play. It is suggested that neological expressions should be translated faithfully into the target language. Translators should preserve the neological grammar of the source text by inventing new counterparts that share the “equivalent or similar morpheme and phonemes, or they should replicate the creativity of the author with any possible elements (Newmark 1988, Salich 2020). However, neological expressions are the key for authors to create their unique fictional world. Translating or even rewriting those expressions in the target language may considerably reconstruct the text. For the purpose of understanding the translation of neologism in picture books, this presentation will look into the English, Chinese and Japanese translations of Du Iz Tak (2016), a book that creates a language of insects that is founded on the semiotic and phonological features of English. The structural resemblance between those neologistic expressions in Du Iz Tak and English is strong enough for English speakers to understand most of the content, even when the language appears to be incomprehensible on the surface. In the Chinese version of Du Iz Tak, the texts are translated phonologically in a new fantasized manner that the target texts reform the lexical structure and entertaining intent of the story. The Japanese version of Du Iz Tak is being rewritten into two Japanese letters, Hiragana and Katakana, with the former representing native Japanese words and the latter used mostly to represent loanwords. On top of that, more pictorial clues are added to the fonts and visual signs. This presentation will examine the role of neologism in picture books, their operation models along with pictorial narrative, and more importantly, using Du Iz Tak as an example to show the creativity and linguistic obstacles in translating neologistic expressions.enConference Paper