Book review
Jean-Marc Gouanvic. Sociologie de l’adaptation et de la traduction. Le roman d’aventures anglo-américain dans l’espace littéraire français pour les jeunes (1826–1960)
(Collection Bibliothèque de littérature générale et comparée, 120). Paris: Honoré Champion, 2014. 272 pp.

Reviewed by Michaela Wolf

Table of contents

This book begins by stating that “literature adapted for young readers from a specific language/culture is particularly interesting to the translation scholar; few types of literature will show more manipulation, assimilation, transformation, adaptation than those works intended for the young” (9). This quote summarizes both the rationale for this book and the author’s main aim. Indeed, the volume is inscribed in two distinct yet conjunct fields: adaptation and translation. While research on the translation of children and youth literature has experienced quite a sharp increase in the last 10 or 15 years on an international scale, a sociological approach to this genre has remained a desideratum and makes the volume a highly welcome one. More specifically, the book aims to elaborate on the determinants which condition the differences between adaptation and translation in the context of youth literature, as well as to propose an ethics of adaptation (10).

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References

Milton, John
2010 “Adaptation.” In Handbook of Translation Studies, vol. 1, ed. by Yves Gambier and Luc van Doorslaer, 3–6. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar