Boost Your Brain. Om lexikal kreativitet i faktaböcker för barn i ett svensk-engelskt perspektiv

Abstract

This study investigates the expression of lexical creativity in Swedish and English nonfiction books for children aged 3–12. The first part examines the pattern of lexical creativity in 14 nonfiction books, originally written in Swedish. In these books, simile, metaphor, anthropomor- phism, neologism and wordplay are the most common categories of lexical creativity, whereas alliteration, allusion and other creative expressions are much less frequent. These findings are compared with the expressions of lexical creativity in two English nonfiction children’s books of similar contents. Analysis reveals that one of the books, Moira Butterfield’s How Animals Build, has a pattern of lexical creativity much like that of the Swedish books. In the Swedish translation of this book, most of the lexical creativity is preserved. The other English book, General Knowledge Genius! by Chrisp et al., exhibits a non-target-like pattern of lexical creativity, resulting in a considerable loss of lexical creativity, in particular alliteration, in the Swedish translation. The article ends by discussing the main factors related to the neutralisation of lexical creativity in these books, namely divergent genre norms in the source and target cultures, target group adap- tation as well as the translator’s effort to maintain the stylistic level and coherence.