Translation, manipulation, and the rise of an ideological meme : intention and the model translator in rewritings of Charles Perrault’s Le petit chaperon rouge

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to develop a theoretical framework to analyse and discuss manipulation in translation. Developed from Umberto Eco’s concept of the Model Author and Model Reader, this framework—termed the Model Translator—serves to shed light on a number of current debates in translation studies, namely the status of the translator and the translated text, translating children’s literature, the translation of ideology, changing audiences in translation, the effect of translation on the cultural system, manipulation, and how translation is determined by the skopos. Taking Charles Perrault’s Le petit chaperon rouge and its translations into different media as a case study, I apply the Model Translator framework, along with skopos theory, to this fairy tale to show how translation choices affect a target text’s ideology and intended audience. I show how translators hide under the guise of translation to modify, subvert, remove or reduce the importance of Perrault’s ideology of female subservience, sexual chastity, and proper behaviour. They do so with different intentions: from promoting women’s self-reliance, to highlighting rape, to mocking masculine stereotypes. In this way, the fairy tale has become an ideological meme, i.e. a universally recognisable story with recurring motifs which nevertheless changes from one translation to another while retaining related ideological meanings. The translations analysed are all from the Anglo-American tradition and range from versions claiming to be translations in the first part of the analysis to literary adaptations with a close link to the source text, picture books, film translations, and still-image advertisements in the second part. This range of media allows me to examine the impact on culture of a fairy tale which, thanks to translation, has become omnipresent and is a universal shorthand for ideologies on gender politics, sexuality, and behaving well.