Translating Picturebooks

This insightful academic work explores the complex relationship between text and illustration in translated picturebooks, examining how visual elements fundamentally shape translation choices and reading experiences. Drawing from multilingual examples, the book demonstrates how meaning travels across cultures through the interplay of words and images, revealing translation as far more than linguistic substitution. Oittinen guides readers through the intricate dance between verbal and visual storytelling, showing how translators navigate cultural references, artistic styles, and narrative gaps that exist between languages and audiences.

What makes this study particularly valuable is its focus on the practical challenges translators face when working with multimodal materials that resist straightforward linguistic conversion. The analysis will resonate strongly with translation students, children's literature scholars, and publishing professionals who regularly work with illustrated texts across language barriers. By illuminating how picturebooks function as complete aesthetic packages rather than separable text and images, this book transforms our understanding of what translation actually accomplishes when words and pictures must travel together.