Translation of functional styles in children’s literature from English into Albanian: The case of Harry Potter
Translation of functional styles in children’s literature from English into Albanian: The case of Harry Potter

Summary/Abstract: This study investigates the translation methods of the linguistic features of various functional styles in children’s literature from English into Albanian. The analysis is based on a corpus that consists of three embedded texts extracted from two of the books of the Harry Potter series, which exemplify distinct functional styles such as (1) a formal official letter issued by official authorities, (2) a mock-formal letter imbued with sarcasm and mockery, and (3) a humorous rhyming poem. We compare source and target texts using a dual framework of analysis: a) stylistic analysis to identify linguistic features in the selected texts and b) translation analysis to examine how stylistic differences determine translation methods. From a stylistic perspective, the results reveal that the source text blends various stylistic elements, both lexical and grammatical, to reflect diverse contextual situations governed by the respective functions of the texts in question. From a translation perspective, the results confirm a relation between functional styles and translation methods: the official, informative letter aligns with a semantic translation approach, whereas the poetic and figurative texts are more suited to a communicative translation method. Moreover, the fact that the corpus belongs to children’s literature does not influence the translation methods.

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