(Ri)Creare l’Esperienza Emotiva nel Picturebook: Yuluma di Cao Wenxuan e Suzy Lee in Traduzione Italiana

Abstract

In line with its distinctive pedagogical vocation, one of the fundamental functions of children’s literature is to offer an early sentimental education, allowing young readers to 'learn to feel' through the emotional experiences triggered by reading the protagonists’ stories. Naturally, the emotional and ethical dimension – which is the subject of particular attention in the recent affective turn in children's literature studies – can also be found in the multimodal form of the picturebook, where the emotional load conveyed by the linguistic code is interlaced with that of the visual component. Therefore, when translating picturebooks, the treatment of this complex and layered emotional dimension does not only entail interlinguistic transfer (style, register, marks of orality, the child's voice, culture-specific references, etc.), but also affects the way in which images, colors, and typographic features are semiotically transferred from the prototext to the metatext. This delicate operation represents a multifaceted challenge, which prompts the question as to what strategies are available to the translator that can help minimize the residual cross-cultural transfer of the emotional experience. Focusing on the Italian translation of the picturebook Yuluma (La tela magica di Yulu, trans. by Paolo Magagnin, Corraini 2023), written by Cao Wenxuan and illustrated by Suzy Lee, this article aims to highlight some of the factors at play in the treatment of the emotional dimension of the picturebook in its Italian translation. Particular attention is placed on the crucial combination of interlinguistic and intersemiotic transfer strategies that characterizes the translation of this specific form of children's literature.