Fluidity in Translating Recurrent Culture-Specific Items in Children's Literature

This chapter explores the fluidity in translating recurrent culture-specific items (CSIs) in Bronze and Sunflower. Drawing on Newmark's taxonomy of CSIs and translation procedures, Hervey and Higgins' loss-gain-equivalence three-valued system, and Nida's functional equivalence, the study analyses a bilingual corpus across six cultural categories. The findings reveal a dynamic use of translation procedures, with descriptive equivalent, cultural equivalent, synonymy, literal translation, and transference applied flexibly. Meaning outcomes show equivalence for universal referents, frequent loss in institutional and spiritual items, and occasional gain in ecological or material culture descriptions. Variation in recurrent CSIs, where the same item is explained, simplified, or re-enriched across occurrences, exemplifies fluidity as a strategy rather than inconsistency. The chapter argues that such fluidity secures functional equivalence, ensuring cultural mediation while maintaining accessibility and engagement for young readers of translated children's literature.