13 Playing with Language, Food,
and Pictures
Ideology and Cultural Adaptations in
the Spanish Translation of the Captain
Underpants Series
Teresa Asiain
Captain Underpants (CU), in Spanish translation, is an extremely popular series that has sold almost a million copies in Spain. Enjoyed by
children, teachers, librarians, and the general public, the books are considered neither rude nor offensive, nor are they perceived as advocating
disrespectful behavior. In fact, the Spanish CU series has not been subject
to any of the criticism faced in the United States where, for the past 15
years, the CU series has appeared in numerous occasions on the American Library Association’s annual Banned Books lists, topping the list as
most challenged in 2013 (American Library Assoc.). It could be argued
that the two countries possess different attitudes toward the books. Spain,
at first glance, might seem more welcoming and less judgmental when it
comes to subversive texts. However, as the following analysis will show,
the history of the translations of these books highlights significant linguistic and cultural differences between the English and Spanish versions,
including an almost complete deletion of the dual adult and child readership common in most children’s books, mistranslations of humor, misrepresentations of foods, and irregularities between the Spanish text and
American illustrations. The CU books have met with a very different reception in Spain because, in many ways, they are very different books.
The Adventures of Captain Underpants, the first book of the CU series,
was published in Spain as Las Aventuras del Capitán Calzoncillos in
February 2000, three years after Dav Pilkey’s text was first published in the
United States. The Spanish translations belong to the collection El Barco de
Vapor and are owned by the publishing house Grupo SM, a highly respected
company that is proud to promote the habit of reading among children.
The CU (in Spanish) books are part of the ‘Serie Azul’ intended for readers between seven and nine years old. ‘Serie Azul’ is described as including “books for children who read quite well and yet have some difficulty
from time to time. The books include full color illustrations to make reading
entertaining” (“Catálogos SM”). Miguel Azaola is the translator of the first
ten CU books so far translated for a Spanish audience.
The success of the CU series is not surprising, given the popularity of translated English language titles for Spanish children over the past decade. The
186 Teresa Asiain
Horrid Henry, Diary of a Wimpy Kid, and CU series have all sold millions of
copies, relegating books originally published in Spanish to a secondary position. When the Spanish child reader grows older, the tendency is even more
pronounced; blockbusters such as the Twilight Saga, Divergent, and The
Hunger Games series dominate the bestseller lists in Spain. In fact, forty-three
percent of all children’s books in Spain are translations; of these, the vast
majority are translated from English (Ministerio de Cultura). This number is
large compared to the percentage of translated texts published in the United
States and the United Kingdom, which is about three percent in both nations
(Venuti 12).
In Spain, children’s literature is by far the most translated sector of the
market. Unlike other European countries such as France, Germany, or the
United Kingdom, Spain does not have a longstanding tradition of producing
children’s literature. As Carmen Bravo-Villasante explains in her sociohistorical study, it is not possible to talk about a Spanish children’s literature
before the eighteenth century other than isolated works such as Christmas
carols, lullabies, legends, and pedagogical treatises (47). Spain has historically relied on translations to fill the need for children’s literature in the
publishing market.
Translation, though, is a fraught process. As it is with any translated text,
a focus on the translator brings issues of ideology to the surface and puts
studies of translator behavior and intentions center stage. Translators are
interpreters of culture whose discursive presence is always apparent. Therefore, in the same way that David Rudd advocates for a Bakhtin-inflected
approach to analyzing children’s literature in which child readers are viewed
as actively involved in negotiating meaning rather than as passively taught
(294), translators must be considered as active agents in the process of creating meaning. Translating a book is never a one-person project; it is an
ongoing compromise by the agents, author, translator, publishing house, and
the readers. Children’s literature in translation calls attention to the translators’ attitudes about childhood and children’s literature, especially when the
devices normally available to facilitate the dialogue between one language
and another, between cultures, and between readers, such as footnotes, epilogues, and prefaces, are omitted. The ways in which ranges of meaning are
narrowed, expanded, or refracted in the process of translation and the ways
in which translation affects the young readers’ understanding of the text
must be considered as part of a dialogical and dynamic system. When a children’s text is subversive, challenges authority, or mocks social norms, very
often from a humorous point of view, it is even more vulnerable to change.
This is certainly the case with the CU series.
One of the biggest challenges a translator faces is the translation of humor
because of the close links between humor, identity, and culture (Maher 141).
Humor is found in all societies and cultures, but there is nothing that is
universally humorous. The concept of what people find funny is created by
linguistic, geographical, sociocultural, and personal boundaries (Chiaro 5).
Playing with Language, Food, and Pictures
187
One common feature of humor in all societies, though, is that it is considered to be a liberating element. Freud, for instance, saw in jokes and humor
an act similar to dreams in the sense that both are controlled by and give
voice to unconscious desires, repressed feelings, and anxieties. Humor is
often revealed to encourage criticism and reflection about the prevailing systems of power, and it can be a discursive tool used by both sides in a struggle
between dominant and resistive forces. Humor in the American CU series is
certainly related to power and authority: in a carnivalesque way, the adults
who represent authority (the principal, the police, and teachers) become the
butt of the joke when they are portrayed as sadistic, cruel, evil, stupid, and
silly. However, this power struggle, and thus the subversive humor, has been
diminished in the Spanish translation.
We see the decline of subversion in several aspects of the books, most
notably in the way characters are renamed. By creatively employing names,
authors can easily hint at a character’s personality, habits, or physical features that lead readers to make necessary judgments about them (Lefevere
39). In the case of the CU series, Pilkey uses puns and word-play in creating
the names of the teachers and school staff, making rude and offensive homonyms for each one of them: Mr Krupp sounds like Mr. Crap; Mr. Recter,
the guidance counselor, sounds like “misdirected”; and names such as Mrs.
DePoint and Mr. Morty Fyed allude to “misses the point” and “mortified.”
But descriptive names are dependent on language and context. In this case,
translator Miguel Azaola could not translate the names literally as the play
on words would not have made sense in Spanish. He has in some cases
kept language playful and created new names for adults related to their
position at school: for instance, Miss Creant and Mrs. DePoint, the lunch
ladies, become Sra. Masmaizena (“Mrs. More-cornstarch”) and Sra. Aldente
(“Mrs. Al-Dente”). These names, despite creating different wordplay, do not
imply a negative connotation or a rude remark as the original ones do and
therefore lose part of the subversive potential. They might not be as obvious
to the child reader either. In a casual survey I conducted at a Spanish school,
only a few children were able to anticipate what profession Sra. Masmaizena and Sra. Aldente might have, and neither name was perceived as very
funny.1 Furthermore, the majority of the playful names in the CU series
are replaced with old-fashioned comedic names, such as Señor Carrasquilla,
Señora Pichote, and Señora Depresidio, losing their dual meanings and an
important source of humor.
The problem of translating expressive language resides in the idiomatic
differences between the two languages. As Emer O’Sullivan states when discussing whether it was even possible for Charles Dodgson (Lewis Carroll) to
have Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland translated into German: “Word play
on the highest level, linguistic jokes which can’t be translated easily, poems,
parodies; the English language not only provides the context for much of
his (Dodgson’s) humor, it itself is frequently its very object” (48–49). The
Spanish language is not nearly as rich in homophones as English, most of
188 Teresa Asiain
them restricted to our voiceless “h” and the homophones “b” and “v.” For
instance, in the ninth book, the main characters of the series George and
Harold create “The Adventures of Dog Man,” featuring a superhero dog
who fights crime. Pilkey plays with the dog’s onomatopoeic expressions and
their homophones and homonyms that help him communicate with humans:
“Roof Roof” means that the thief is on the roof; “Pant Pant Pant” implies
that he is wearing pants; “Bark Bark” suggests that the police need to climb
the bark of a tree to catch him; and “Whine Whine” indicates that he wants
to celebrate his victory with wine (Tinkletrousers 119–34). However, the
chances of maintaining a homophone that conveys the same meaning as the
target language are pretty slim, so the translator has to resort to other linguistic devices in order to maintain the original meaning. Here the Spanish dog
keeps repeating the onomatopoeia “Aúuuu,” and Azaola has tried to keep
language playful by using the words Aún (“still”), Raúl (a name), and Azul
(“blue”) to help catch the thief, indicating that the thief’s name is Raúl, that
he is still in the area, and that he is wearing something blue. The Spanish text
has a lower degree of success than the original text because it does not have a
clear connection to the pictures in the comic book: the thief may be described
as being dressed in blue, but the illustrations are still only in black and white.
Wordplay is one of the most difficult aspects of cultural intertextuality;
the translatability of allusive wordplay, which can imply lexical, grammatical, or situational modification, depends on the extent to which the allusion
is dependent upon its own specific culture (González 106). The choice of an
appropriate translation strategy is therefore crucial for the comic dimension
to be effective in a new language context. Literal translation leads, in most
cases, to an obvious loss in the target text. For instance, when George and
Harold confuse the words “placenta” and “placebo,” it has a comic effect.
The main characters explain the “placebo effect” as, “if [Captain Underpants] believes that fabric softener will save him, then it probably will. I think
it’s called ‘the Placenta Effect’” (Wicked 121, emphasis in original). In this
case, “placenta” and “placebo” are also Spanish words with exactly the same
meanings. In fact, the expression “el efecto placebo” is well known in the
Spanish language and has the same meaning as in English. However, Azaola
omitted the word “placenta” and translated the whole episode using a new
play-on-words with sudigestión (“his/her digestion”) instead of sugestión
(“suggestion”). There are other examples, too, where new plays-on-words
are created during the translation process. In the same book, Pilkey plays
with the idea of “reverse psychology.” Azaola did not technically translate the term properly (as psicología inversa), opting instead for psicología
reversible (“reversible psychology”), which adds a humorous connotation
that was not present in the original text. Thus, it is not an aversion to wordplay that has caused the change from “placenta” to “sudigestion.” Instead,
the most probable explanation is that the publishing house or translator
felt uncomfortable using the word “placenta” for its biological connotations
related to giving birth, a prudish decision rather than a linguistic one.
Playing with Language, Food, and Pictures
189
Another major challenge when translating humor is the presence of irony,
satire, and sarcasm. Dav Pilkey uses satire to ridicule, to prick pretensions,
to expose hypocrisy, and to show that appearances can often be deceiving
(Blake 16). In her article, “The Feast of Misrule,” Jackie Stallcup states that
the CU books are an example of satire, a genre that can function in both
conservative and subversive modes (177). Satire has been only partly maintained in the Spanish versions of these books, mostly due to the lack of
accessible cultural allusions. For instance, Jerome Horwitz, the name of the
school in Pilkey’s version, is a name with two different meanings in American
culture: it could refer to a renowned American scientist who helped develop
a drug to treat AIDS or, more likely, to The Three Stooges’ Curly Howard
(born Jerome Horwitz). Knowledge of either public figure adds layers of
meaning—and if the latter, humor—to the name of the elementary school in
the books. Jerónimo Chumillas is used in the Spanish versions, a silly name
not related to a Spanish public figure at all. It would have been extremely
easy to choose a famous Spanish scientist or performer that would have
conveyed the same satirical effect, or even to create a new funny name using
Spanish wordplay. Instead, the translator has again domesticated the name
of the school employing an old-fashioned name, a preference that seems to
take the double meanings and the humor away. Perhaps, it could be said
that those involved in the Spanish translations lack trust in their anticipated
child readership.
In the eighth book of Pilkey’s series there is an illustration that depicts a
sign saying, “‘Schools is educationy’: A message from our president” (Potty
75). This might be a direct way of criticizing or parodying the former American president George W. Bush and his frequent grammatical mistakes. However, this joke is contextually bound to the American president and would
not much make sense to a young Spanish reader. In both the American and
Spanish versions, though, the adult reader might in fact get the joke quite
easily. But humor designed to make the adult reader chuckle is one of the
most remarkable losses in the Spanish translation of CU. Azaola may literally translate the references, but he does not translate the winks that Pilkey
gives to his adult readers in such a way that Spanish adults will find similar
pleasure recognizing familiar texts. Translators may not be completely bicultural, which means that they may miss cultural references that are deeply
entrenched in the source culture (Epstein 138). Thus, references to popular
American books older readers will recognize—“Are You There, God? It is
Us, Fluffy and Cheeseball” (Poopypants 101), for example, is an obvious
nod to Judy Blume’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Margaret—are not available for readers in the Spanish translation. The chances of a Spanish translator knowing about this 1970s American book are slim. And because the
adult humor is almost entirely lost, Azaola did not attempt to substitute
a title that might have been equally iconic and thus recognizable to Spanish adults. Instead he chose the literal translation, as he did with “When
Kipper Gets Angry—Really, Really Angry” (Tinkletrousers 215), “Furious
190 Teresa Asiain
George” (92), and “Harold and the Purple Ballpoint Pen” (Talking 105), all
references to American canonical texts not typically recognizable to Spanish
readers (of any age).
Pilkey states that CU books are for a very wide age group—“ The reading
level is ‘officially’ ages 7 to 10, but I’d like to think the interest level would
be more like ages 4 to 140” (“Book Fair”)—acknowledging that the adult
reader may be interested in his literary work as much as the child reader. But
the CU translation team rejects the idea of a dual addressee for this series
and thus eliminates most of the jokes directed at adults. In an email interview, Azaola, to his credit, acknowledges the importance of dual audiences
in children’s literature:
I am afraid that [the Spanish translations] do not have a ‘dual
addressee’ … and therefore, move away from my ideal of books for
children. I am convinced that the best books for children, even the
books for the youngest, also bring great pleasure to the adult reader …
I have serious doubts that this is the case in this collection. (Azaola)
The pleasure adult readers might take from these particular texts has been
ignored, and the translations have lost much of the complexity of the
originals.
Humor in Pilkey’s series is also intrinsically related to depictions and
descriptions of food. As Roland Barthes explains, “food is a system of communication, a body of images, a protocol of usages, situations, and behavior”
(21), binding it culturally to the country in which it originates. By breaking
the social conventions of behavior and attitudes toward food, Pilkey creates humorous situations that provoke delight in younger readers. Annette
Wannamaker states that “food in the Captain Underpants books serves as a
site for fantasies of power and control” (“The Attack of the Inedible Hunk”
244). When language becomes more playful and irreverent, food is used as
a weapon (to be thrown at some kind of monster), as a magical potion that
provokes physical changes, and as a tool to “gross out” and humiliate adult
characters (243). The Spanish version, however, is not as excessive, playful,
or subversive as the original. Part of the problem resides in the idiomatic
differences between the two languages: “the fatty fried fish fritters flipped
onto the first graders” (Pilkey, Wrath of the Wicked Wedgie Woman 64) is
an alliterative sentence that is difficult to pronounce. However, if you translate it into Spanish (los aceitosos buñuelos de pescado frito granizaron sobre
los de primero) the result is just a long sentence that lacks the repetition of
the “f” sound. Though a similar sentiment could have easily been created in
Spanish, the translator decided to literally translate the sentence, losing the
alliteration and reducing the humorous effect.
The quality of the food served—and its implied meaning—is also different. In the American series, fruit and vegetables rarely make an appearance,
and when they do, humans never eat them. In the Spanish text, however,
Playing with Language, Food, and Pictures
191
menus are not only more appealing in the first place, but they are also considerably more substantial, comprised of a first and a second course, a dessert, and a drink. In short, the Spanish version of CU offers a proper meal
according to Spanish standards. The menus are also much healthier, always
including a piece or two of fresh fruit. Food is thus more ordinary and
less funny, and thus the characters’ reactions toward cafeteria food seem
rather incongruous to Spanish readers. For instance, “cheese and lentil pot
pies” (Cafeteria Ladies from Outer Space 13) becomes in Spanish “[g]arlic
soup, homemade meatballs, tropical pineapple, and tea” (my translation), a
quite appetizing menu and definitively nothing to frown upon. School meals
in Spain are healthier and more substantial than U.S. school lunches (and
more expensive). Therefore, differing cultural attitudes towards food are
portrayed in the books in a way that significantly affects their translation
and makes this attempt at humor much less funny.
Carolyn Daniel states, “food narratives in children’s stories are often
‘grounded in playfulness’ and transgressive of adult food rules, not just
in terms of ‘foodbungling tricks’ but also timing, sequence, quantity, and
quality” (12). The playfulness of the food is intrinsically related to linguistic play, rendering them both as a means through which authority can be
challenged. While the boys in the Spanish versions of CU also transform
the menus posted in the school cafeteria by switching around letters, the
resulting sentences on the notice board are less rude after being manipulated
by Jorge and Berto. For instance, “Please don’t fart in a diaper” (Poopypants
29) becomes in Spanish, “a big shouting, fighting, and hitting competition”
(Pipicaca 27, my translation) losing the scatological content and becoming
less funny while increasing in violent content.
To be fair, though, scatological content is not missing from the Spanish
CU. Digestion (and indigestion) of food is widely represented by descriptions of vomit, farts, and excrement in the CU series, serving the double
function of emphasizing the physicality of readers’ bodies and of breaking
a taboo, creating a comical and playful effect. Children everywhere are frequently scolded or punished for using bathroom words such as pee-pee, poo,
boogers, or butthead; therefore, their use in a book can cause an adult’s
disgust but a child reader’s thrill. In most cases, scatology in the CU series
has been translated literally, which means that the words named above are
in the Spanish text as well. After all, as Bakhtin explains, “the bodily element
is deeply positive. It is presented … as something universal, representing all
the people” (19). In this category, no scenes have been deleted or changed.
The word “wedgie” is the only one that has been omitted, not as a form of
censorship, but for lack of a cultural equivalent. In Spain, giving somebody a
“wedgie” is not a common prank or a practical joke. Contextually bound as
food is, the way food is portrayed in the Spanish CU series (as less excessive
and less disgusting) inevitably affects the perception of the texts as less funny.
Language choice is a very important aspect of translation, but it is
not the only one. Illustrated books like Early Readers are texts in which
192 Teresa Asiain
pictures convey content and meaning. Thus, the translation—or lack of
translation—of the visual content can likewise be very influential and can
change the overall perception of the text.2 In a series where almost everything related to language has been domesticated in the Spanish version, the
reader can still see American flags, white-picket fences, American police cars,
etc. In other words, the CU series in Spain is visually American but linguistically and culturally Spanish. Picture book translations and illustrated texts
are often co-printed to save cost, but the translators’ choices are somewhat
restricted due to the imposition of pictures. This seems especially awkward
in the case of Early Readers that function to teach the newly literate to
develop both verbal and visual literacy, to understand the text not only by
itself, but also in its relation to its pictures and paratext. Oittinen states that
“the visual appearance of a book always includes not only the illustration,
but also the actual print, the shape and style of letters and headings, and
the book’s entire layout; all these features influence the reader emotionally”
(“The Verbal and the Visual” 102). Of course, this gets marred when culturally bound semiotic systems are at odds with one another.
Take for example religious imagery in the CU series. In the fifth book, a
wedding is going to be celebrated between Mr. Krupp and Ms. Ribble. In
the original text, the pictures clearly convey that Mr. Krupp is Jewish, with
a rabbi wearing a kippah and a tallit officiating at the wedding. Mr. Krupp
is drawn wearing a kippah as well. Pilkey chooses very clearly to describe
this wedding as Jewish. In the Spanish version the word “rabino” (the
literal translation for “rabbi”) is not mentioned at all; instead, Azaola has
chosen the word celebrante (“celebrant” in English), deleting from the text
all mention of a Jewish ceremony, despite the obvious Jewish imagery.
Here the urge to domesticate the text overwhelms the need for textual
parity.
Of course, illustrations can provide translators some room for personal
interpretation. For example, where the American version has a boy opening presents on December 25, following the American custom of opening presents on Christmas Day, in the Spanish version the calendar reads
January 6, Epiphany, or Twelfth Night (El Día de los Reyes Magos), the
date on which Catholics open their presents in Spain. Beyond domesticating the text, though, the illustrations can be reinterpreted by a translator.
Take for example the ninth book of the series, Captain Underpants and the
Terrifying Return of Tippy Tinkletrousers, which was published in Spanish
in the United States by Scholastic Español months before it was published
in Spanish in Spain. The translator of the American Spanish version, Nuria
Molinero, translates the name of the character Judge Fudgie McGrudge,
whose gender is unclear in Pilkey’s version, as “Jueza Alicia Malicias”
(Judge Alicia Perfidious), a female (Terrorífico Retorno 30). Incidentally,
Azaola, using the same picture, assumes the judge is a man named “Sisebuto Sañudo” (the first name a reference to a Spanish King and the word
“vicious”). Molinero’s change is welcome, given the criticism the CU series
Playing with Language, Food, and Pictures
193
has received for its portrayal of traditional gender roles and its depiction of
girls and women.3
Molinero takes it a step further in toning down the negative portrayal of
women in how she describes the cheerleaders. Pilkey describes them as “gossipy” (Tinkletrousers 176), but Molinero omits the adjective. The offensive
statement, “the wide-eyed group of gossipy girls had been rendered uncharacteristically speechless” (176), becomes, simply, “the girls were strangely
speechless” (my translation). Later, when the cheerleaders find out about the
ghost, Pilkey states, “The girls huddled together in a tight, shivering group
as they tiptoed into the school” (206); however, Molinero chooses to not
translate the fact that they were a tight, shivering group, and tones down
their hysteria by saying, “The girls hugged, shaken, as they tiptoed into the
school” (206, my translation). Also, on the next page, when the original text
reads, “The cheerleaders screamed again” (207), the translator has deleted
the whole sentence from the text, avoiding the repetition of screams and the
depiction of the cheerleaders as hysterical and uncontrollable girls. Azaola,
on the other hand, has literally translated these sentences, creating the same
effect that Pilkey desired in the first place: to show a group of girls who are
scared, gossipy, far from brave, and unable to control their screams of terror.
In short, pictures may be insurmountable obstacles for translators because
they are unable to change them, but they sometimes offer some opportunity
for reinterpretation, which can maintain or challenge the ideologies of the
source text.
Another such reinterpretation is in the translation of the comic books created in the series by George and Harold. In the original CU books, George
and Harold create their own comics within the text, and they do it like
children: with mistakes. They are, after all, newly literate themselves. Karen
Coats argues that when children are learning to read, they find pleasure in
interpreting and decoding the texts by themselves (59–76). Children find
these mistakes amusing, as they are able to interpret the joke that the author
is creating through misspellings. By contrast, the level of agency that the
Spanish version concedes to children is much lower. When Jorge and Berto
first write their comics, their grammar is perfect. In the second book of the
series, however, the comic book includes the grammatical mistakes and misspellings. Without explanation, the main characters have become less accomplished and write more like “real” children would. From the third to the
tenth book—and this constantly changes within the different editions—the
books adopt several methods of dealing with these mistakes: by correcting
them, by leaving them in the translation, or by trying to teach the children
how to spell by misspelling a word, crossing it out, and then writing it again
correctly. This last option is in stark opposition to Pilkey’s intentions, as
children are not only not amused but are also being taught how to spell, a
change that portrays a didacticism not intended in the original.
The differences in the series’ covers set the tone for these narratives’ distinct intentions. The first books, for example, both feature the same cover
194 Teresa Asiain
pictures, but the American cover’s title is lettered in a comic book style in
big, capital, bold letters, whose shade is projected, making them gain some
relief and appear two-dimensional. The big, white, bold letters hold the
visual priority of the cover as much as the picture of the superhero standing on top of a building, with George and Harold hanging off the rooftop.
The Spanish cover page’s layout has a more formal look: the pictures are
smaller and more information about the book’s publisher and its suitability
for readers is offered. For example, the reader knows that the book belongs
to the Blue Series and that it has been published by El Barco de Vapor whose
logo is also pictured in the bottom left corner. Each cover also prints its edition number in order to prove its sales success. The large letters are typed,
lower-case, and not bolded, deleting any reference to comics from the cover.
They are also significantly smaller, making the pictures have visual priority
over the written text. In other words, the Spanish version is altogether much
less visually playful, even less so than the Spanish text itself. It seems that
even though the text has been translated, the publishers did not paratranslate the visual elements on the cover, choosing a more didactic approach to
it. To be sure, Azaola and the publishing house may make Spanish children
laugh softly, but they do not create the guffaw intended by Pilkey.
Translators are just one cog in the translation machine, and their decisions are not always respected; their views about what children’s literature
is and how it should be translated do not always tally with those of the
publishing house they work for. The highly educational publishing house
in charge of the CU series is more concerned about the didactic side of the
books, even at the expense of their humorous content. As Azaola explains,
a book goes through different persons responsible for its publication, and
the different criteria applied are not always in accordance with those of the
author and/or the translator:
Editors did not want to take the risk of schools not recommending
these books, based on what teachers could consider grammatical
mistakes. Therefore, in the new editions, they correct the mistakes
(many of them quite funny, in my opinion), that were there in the first
books … In a short time, all the books will be reprinted and no nonsense will be left, adhering to only one criterion: the one that I do not
like. [emphasis in original, my translation]
El Barco de Vapor is a very didactic collection favored by teachers when
recommending books for their students; and the educational reading business is a too large commercial niche to be lost due to some spelling mistakes.
The editorial manipulation of a text may not, therefore, be the result of the
translator’s skill or opinions at all. Translators must negotiate various pressures and constraints imposed on them by ideology, commissioning editors,
and the publishing industry, and so it is important to raise awareness of the
advantages of sharing the process of decision making with the editor, the
Playing with Language, Food, and Pictures
195
publisher, the translator, and ideally the author in all the different stages of
a book’s production and translation. Educational norms and preconceived
ideas of what young readers should enjoy also affect translations. The linguistic challenges posed by CU’s humor, the culturally charged depictions of
food, and the American images inherent in the illustrations may cause disappointing changes in the translation, but the translated text should not be
seen only as a failure or in terms of its differences from the source text, but as
a new text that is in a complex, multifaceted dialogue with the original one.
Notes
1. The survey was conducted among 26 Spanish children (9 years old) who had
not read the books before at the mixed primary school Escuelas Pías de Tafalla
(Spain).
2. Texts do not exist by themselves. If a text is to become real in the publishing
world, it depends on paratexts. Gerard Genette has defined a paratext as “ . . .
the means by which a text makes a book of itself and proposes itself as such to
its readers” (261). The faculty of the University of Vigo (Spain) has widely studied the translation of paratexts, because as far as “there can be no text without
text, neither can there be a translation without corresponding paratranslation”
(Yuste Frias 118).
3. For a more in depth analysis, see Annette Wannamaker’s chapter “The Battle of
the Bionic Booger Boy, Bodily Borders and B.A.D. Boys: Pleasure and Abjection
in the Captain Underpants Series” in Boys in Children’s Literature and Popular
Culture: Masculinity, Abjection, and the Fictional Child.
Works Cited
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