TRANSLATION STRATEGIES IN CHILDREN’S LITERATURE: A CASE STUDY OF ENGLISH-UZBEK ADAPTATIONS

Аннотация

This thesis explores the unique challenges and strategies involved in translating English children's literature into Uzbek. Focusing on two popular titles — The Very Hungry Caterpillar and Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? — it examines how tone, rhythm, and cultural elements are preserved or adapted during the translation process. The study uses a qualitative, analytical approach to identify methods such as adaptation, substitution, and domestication. Findings suggest that successful translations for children require not only linguistic accuracy but also cultural sensitivity and creative flexibility to engage young readers effectively. Key Words. Children’s literature, translation strategies, English-Uzbek translation, adaptation, rhythm, cultural equivalence, bilingualism, domestication, tone. Children’s books are important in the development of language in the early years, in fostering imagination and in understanding emotions. For young minds, stories are not just entertainment — they are often the first introduction to language, culture, and values. Translating those texts into other languages is not merely a linguistic exercise; it involves cultural adaptation, and it has to be done with sensitivity, creativity, and skill. As an English teacher and the mother of a bilingual child, I have come to know the importance of supplying children with good, engaging reading materials in both languages. When in the process of searching for good Uzbek versions of popular English-language children’s books, I found that such books were either nonexistent or sorely lacking in the wise humor and the tender rhythmic flow of the original. This led me to thinking about the difficulties and techniques of translation in the field of children's literature. Translating for children is very different from translating for adults. Children’s books tend to incorporate rhyme, rhythm, wordplay, sound symbolism, and references to culture — elements that don’t translate easily 83 THEORETICAL ASPECTS IN THE FORMATION OF PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES International scientific-online conference from one language to another without the reader losing some sparkle of the story. On the other hand, young readers often struggle to understand cultural content as well as a beginner, and this puts even more pressure on the translator to create an accessible and fun text. This thesis examines the translation of English children’s literature into Uzbek by examining a few selected texts and by highlighting the translation techniques used by translators. The focus is on questions about when, how, and at what cost is meaning, style, and tone maintained or transformed in the process, and how these decisions influence the textures and the impact of a translated text. Translation has moved from a monolingual comparative methodology, where the source text was seen as superior to owned by the target culture, towards a more multilayered and multidirectional process, which involved elements of the source language, but also its culture, ideology, and function. No doubt, literal and word-for-word translation predominated in earlier models. Some late-20th-century scholars (Venuti, 2012; Nord, as cited in Oittinen, 2000; House, as cited in Oittinen, 2000) point to function, audience, and cultural equivalence as being essential considerations in children’s literature. According to Reiss and Vermeer’s Skopos Theory (as cited in Oittinen, 2000) the purpose or aim of a translation determines the translator’s method. In children’s lit, the aim is to entertain, educate, and tug at heartstrings — not just to provide information. Translation in children’s literature is considered a type of translation which has its unique issues due to: • Straightforward language that frequently holds powerful emotional or symbolic significance • Rhyming lines, rhythm, and wordplay are difficult to maintain • Onomatopoeia, phonetic terms, and letter change (incl. animal sounds, baby talk). • Culturally ingrained features—food, holidays, jokes, values As Oittinen (2000) states that translation for children is a creative act — more a form of rewriting than strict translation. The translator has to remake as much as they convey. As discussed by Klingberg, Shavit, and Lathey (as cited in Oittinen, 2000), Children’s literature strategies including: • Adaptation: Altering names, places, or cultural references to make them more accessible 84 THEORETICAL ASPECTS IN THE FORMATION OF PEDAGOGICAL SCIENCES International scientific-online conference • Omission: What is difficult and/or untranslatable is omitted. • Substitution: The words and things are changed into something that is the same a culturally specific notion or item • Explanation: Footnotes or in-text clarification The paper adopts a qualitative, descriptive, contrastive, and analytical method in studying the translation of English children’s literature into Uzbek. Instead of limiting itself to linguistic orientedness of the target langu