Child and adult readers’ processing of foreignized elements in translated Chinese picture books

Abstract The impact of foreignized elements on child and adult readers’ comprehension of translated children’s picture books is a complex matter with numerous confounding variables. This study investigates how child and adult readers process foreignized elements in translated Chinese picture books. In an eye-tracking experiment, we found that while foreignized lexical items consistently affected the real-time processing at the initial stage, whether they induced processing difficulty during late-stage processing mainly depended on the context in which they occurred. Our results also showed that children relied more on pictures than adults in reading translated picture books, especially when the text was complicated. Finally, through an attitude test, we found that child and adult readers held different opinions toward foreignization, with children favoring foreignization when the text was relatively easy and adults preferring domestication irrespective of text difficulties.