• 1 Paul Faucher, “La poésie du réel et le merveilleux de la nature”, Transcript of interview with Marc (...)
• 2 Penny Brown, A Critical History of French Children’s Literature, New York, Routledge, 2008, p. 156.
• 3 Paul Faucher, Correspondence, October 1971, APC.

2The driving forces behind the source texts of Roman des Bêtes were French publisher Paul Faucher and his Czech wife Lida Durdiková, both fervent advocates of the new progressive ideas for the education of young children that were burgeoning all over Europe at the time. Their strong pedagogical backgrounds fuelled the ideas and ambitions behind the series which they hoped would bring children “a poetry which reflects reality and the wonder of nature.”1 After suffering greatly during the first World War, the French children’s publishing industry was finally flourishing again, and books were no longer considered to be the prerogative of the privileged few. By the eve of World War II, there were approximately 40 children’s publishers in France, releasing around 500 titles per year2; including the innovative series Roman des Bêtes (see fig. 1). Everyone working on the production of the source texts insisted on a high degree of precision: Faucher had a vision of what these books should look like and how they should feel in the hands of the reader; their weight and size were especially tailored to be handled by children and their format à l’italienne was designed to suit a child’s field of vision.3

• 4 Cécile Boulaire, Les petits livres d’or : des albums pour enfants dans la France de la guerre froid (...)
• 5 Elizabeth West, The Women who invented Twentieth-Century Children’s Literature, Taylor Francis, 202 (...)
• 6 Phil Baines, Puffin by Design: 70 years of Imagination 1940-2010, Penguin, 2010.

3Although often denigrated as being a fallow period for children’s literature, the years between 1930 and 1960 should be regarded as posing vital building blocks in preparation for the next Golden Age of children’s literature. During this period the content and the physical appearance of children’s books were noticeably changing, and lighter, more colourful and engaging books were gradually emerging: books that appealed in style and content to both the child reader and adult gate-keeper. The carefully constructed format and style of the Père Castor books found a perfect home in this market and would prove to have a lasting influence on children’s books both in France and abroad. In the USA, George Duplaix drew heavily on the Père Castor publications whilst establishing the emblematic Little Golden Books collection.4 Over twenty picture books were selected from the Père Castor catalogue to be translated into English and published under the Golden Books label, with Duplaix actively recruiting illustrators and artists, such as Rojankovsky who had worked with Faucher on the early Père Castor picture books. In the UK, women publishers, editors, and authors were gradually gaining more influence, introducing new ideas and experimenting with fresh formats. Collectively these “bookwomen” were beginning to change the direction of the UK children’s publishing industry5 and translators like Rose Feldman played an integral part by introducing new material, such as Roman des Bêtes, to the UK market. British editor Noel Carrington was also seduced by the translations of the Père Castor animal series and the influence is immediately felt in his first series of Puffin picture books, which closely resemble the Roman des Bêtes series in size, shape, and content. Indeed, the Animals of the Countryside series, published in the 1940s, was conceived to provide a more affordable alternative to the Roman des Bêtes translations published by Allen & Unwin.6 Despite many ill-voiced misgivings, this period can in fact be labelled an important period of growth for children’s literature, not only was there a quest to produce informative books with stimulating content, but publishers were becoming increasingly sensitive to the importance of the size and shape of the book as a material object in their readers hands.

• 7 “Les images […] doublent le pouvoir magique de la lecture, qui fait entrer l’enfant dans un monde é (...)

4In terms of physical appearance, the UK editions of Roman des Bêtes closely resembled the French source product: they were small, light malleable books; whilst the first US editions were clad in hard covers, larger and more unwieldy (23.5 cm x 26.5 cm, compared to 23 cm x 21 cm European editions). Rather than adjust the size of the books, the US editions attempted to be more child-friendly through the use of a larger font size, mirroring the typeface used in the early-readers found in American classrooms. Unfortunately, this created further problems as the illustrations on a given page no longer always corresponded to the actions mentioned in the text. In an attempt to counter this issue, some images were removed, and others reordered, but the result was less than satisfactory: in Spiky (see fig. 1), the illustration of the character consuming a snake is situated a full five pages after the scene is mentioned in accompanying text, and in Scuff, the poor seals were clubbed to death long before the associated illustrations appeared! The artwork was a fundamental part of the original series, and all illustrations were carefully researched to provide an accurate portrayal of each animal and its abode. In Faucher’s belief, “Illustrations [...] double the magical power of reading, transporting the child into a world quite different from their usual environment.”7 Indeed, dissociating the image from the text radically diminishes the magic of the picture book: image and text should work hand-in-hand to stimulate the young reader’s creative mind.

• 8 A.-C. Faucher, Paul Faucher ou l’aventure du Père Castor, op. cit., p. 28.
• 9 Private correspondence between the author of this paper and APC (2022).

5It is important to remember that, although the Roman des Bêtes series is widely considered to be a quintessential part of twentieth century French children’s literature, we are in fact dealing with a set of indirect translations. Documents from the archives at the Maison du Père Castor show us that Lida penned the original tales in her native Czech. Her manuscripts were subsequently translated, edited, and developed into the French source texts familiar to us today. Who exactly translated the texts remains a little unclear: Anne-Catherine Faucher refers to Lida’s early work in French as having been translated by her good friend Zuza8, yet Lida’s grandson, Vincent Faucher,9 maintains that his grandmother performed the translations herself, with the texts then being corrected and edited by his grandfather Paul Faucher and their friend Madame Desnoye. It is plausible that Lida did indeed provide a first set of French translations, which were subsequently polished and corrected by her collaborators. Nevertheless, the issue remains slightly ambiguous: an exercise book in the Père Castor archives contains a French translation of Panache, clearly marked “Traduction de Madame DESNOYERS”; a Plouf translation there is also attributed to “Mme. DesNoyes” (sic.), and a typed manuscript of Froux displays a similar attribution. What is clear is that each text passed through several hands, and underwent a multitude of revisions and corrections, before being finally considered suitable for publication: modifications and amendments were pencilled in Czech onto the typed Czech manuscripts, and corrections handwritten in French were added to each successive version of the French translations. Each manuscript was carefully adapted in pedagogical terms, not only to provide an accurate portrayal of the animals’ lives, but also to create a valuable literary experience for the young reader.

• 10 Handwritten list of translation rights per country, Nov 19, 1965, APC.

6Following the success of the first books in their home market, English language translation rights for publication were quickly sought by several publishers in both the United States and Great Britain. In February 1935, rights were granted to the Whitman Publishing Company for the United States, who were later to work with Harper & Brothers, and then, in 1937, to Allen & Unwin for the British Empire10: two very different sets of translations ensued, provoking mixed reactions from literary critics.

• 11 Little Golden Books have been providing affordable picture books to the mass market since 1942.
• 12 Rose Fyleman to Allen & Unwin, 11 Jan, 1937, University of Reading: Special Collections (URSC).
• 13 Rose Fyleman to Allen & Unwin, 20 June, 1937, URSC.
• 14 Lida, Quipic, London, Allen & Unwin, 1937.
• 15 Allen & Unwin to Fyleman, 2 Jan, 1939, URSC.

7The first three American books, Pompom, Plouf and Fluff were translated by Franco-American Georges Duplaix, the head of the Artists and Writers’ Guild at the time, and now better remembered as the leading figure behind the celebrated Little Golden Books11. The remaining five books were translated by his American wife Lily. Although the principal motive behind this change remains unclear, it is worth noting that the first USTT (US text translation) received harsh critical reviews. As for the British translations which followed, they were very much translator-led. Rose Fyleman, who had been working as a translator for Allen & Unwin for several years, drew the publisher’s attention to the Père Castor books in early January 1937: “I do so want the books to be published here – they are delightful and I should love to have a hand in it.”12 She was delighted when a contract was formally signed, congratulating the publishers for their foresight in “conferring a real benefit on the children of this country.”13 Her translations were lauded for their light touch and widely advertised as being translated “with that delicate gaiety which shows they come from the French.”14 Allen & Unwin drew particular attention to the “excellence” of her work when sending the first two books out for reviewing, and her translations instantly received “warm praise” from the British press and literary critics.15

• 16 Faucher to Flammarion, 4 Aug 1937, APC.
• 17 “Froux le lièvre devient Fluff le lapin de garenne (wild rabbit) ce qui est vraiment inacceptable” (...)

8As early as 1937, Paul Faucher began to receive negative feedback from numerous sources concerning the American editions of the Père Castor picture books, concerns which only fuelled his own personal unease. He reacted quickly, issuing a series of guidelines for future translations, including a request that all translations be submitted for approval by himself, or by someone nominated by him; his feeling was that certain translations, already published in America, did not display the spirit and tone of the French text as well as could, and should, be wished for.16 A detailed report was also requested to record all discrepancies present in the early US editions. This revealed the heavy use of black and red in Pompom and Fluff, which was said to erase the lightness of the original French illustrations; tampering with the layout was blamed for threatening the integral design of the books, and perhaps most damningly the translations were declared to be so approximate in places that “Froux the hare becomes Fluff the wild rabbit, which is really unacceptable.”17

• 18 “lourd, sans grâce, et sans charme... il est verbose (sic) et condescendant” Alice Storms to Paul F (...)
• 19 “un travail si peu à la hauteur.” Ibid.
• 20 Ibid.
• 21 F. W. Woolworth was a pioneer five-and-dime store, renown for selling large quantities of goods at (...)
• 22 Internal memo, Allen & Unwin, 18 Dec, 1936, URSC.
• 23 Paul Faucher to Alice Storms, 24 Nov, 1937, APC.

9Alice Storms, an American foreign correspondent residing in Paris at the time, was asked to provide additional feedback. In her opinion the US text betrayed the source text from beginning to end. She declared it to be “heavy, graceless and charmless... verbose and condescending,” executed as a chore, or, at the very least, an uninspiring piece of work.18 She points out some flagrant errors in translation, as well as changes presumably made to suit the more chaste ideals of the target audience, and comments on the absurdity of renaming a squirrel “Pompom”, given its long bushy tail. For the word “panache” conjures up the image of a suave, sleek creature, whilst also alluding to its tail proudly floating in the air like a plume of feathers on a cap, whereas “pompom” evokes something far less reverent: the round woolly bobble atop a winter knitted hat, or the garish paper streamers brandished by high-kicking pompom girls. In conclusion, Storms could not understand how a publisher such as Harper’s could accept “a piece of work so below par.”19 A mere three days later, she wrote again to Faucher, informing him of J. W. Harper’s imminent arrival in Paris. Her letter suggested that they should address Harper directly concerning the poor quality of the US translations, advancing her own belief that translators should only translate into their own mother tongue:20 a somewhat lightly veiled attack on George Duplaix’s translations of Panache, Plouf, and Froux. Allen & Unwin had already affirmed that they found the US translations to be “rather crude”, but admitted, albeit rather condescendingly, that the books had proved “sufficiently successful – probably due to Woolworths21 – to proceed with the series.”22 It should be noted that despite such severe criticism, the Père Castor albums were already achieving considerable success in the United States; as early as 1937 certain print runs were already standing at 80,000 copies.23

• 24 Flammarion to Allen Unwin, 1 April, 1947, URSC.
• 25 Cécile Boulaire, “The Little Golden Books in the Shadow of the CIA, or the Americanization of Chil (...)
• 26 Lida, La ferme du Père Castor, Paris, Flammarion, 1937.
• 27 Lida, The Little French Farm (translated by Louise Raymond), NY, Harper & Brothers, 1939.

10However, the publishing industry was soon to be severely disrupted once again by war. The inevitable rationing of paper, coupled with its rising prices, seriously hampered the production of children’s literature all across Europe. Allen & Unwin managed to produce small print runs of the series throughout the war but, by 1947, both Allen & Unwin and Flammarion were struggling to find essential supplies.24 On the other side of the Atlantic sales remained steady, but editorial discussions were tense: the series now had to compete with the sunnier Little Golden Books on both sides of the Atlantic, and publications that had been appreciated before the war, now seemed rather dull and frankly disappointing.25 Finally in 1954, Flammarion took the decision to withdraw all American rights for the Père Castor Albums from Harper & Brothers, with just one exception, La ferme du Père Castor,26 still sold in the United States as The Little French Farm27. For the next eleven years the Roman des Bêtes series would go unpublished in the USA. Meanwhile, across the pond, British publishers Allen & Unwin continued to exercise their right to sell their English version of Roman des Bêtes worldwide... with the noted exception of the USA and Canada.

• 28 Golden Books Ltd. to Flammarion, undated, APC.
• 29 Notes from a letter, undated, APC.
• 30 “l’ensemble (ou presque) de cette collection”. Handwritten list of translation rights per country, (...)

11Nevertheless, business prevailed, and at the end of 1964 discussions were opened with Golden Press publications with a view to republishing the Père Castor collection in the United States. Sixteen books were chosen as candidates for this first stage of production, including four from the Roman des Bêtes series: Bruin, Scuff, Spiky and Plouf. However, the publisher felt that the exacting conditions now imposed by Faucher made it “almost impossible to do anything with the books in the United States”.28 Golden Press agreed to print “A Père Castor Book” on the cover, and not to change the essence of the text, but the proposed size of the books was a potential deal breaker: if the books were to be profitable, they needed to be adjusted to standard American sizes, whereby large quantities could be efficiently produced on current printing presses. Albert Leventhal, the editor of Golden Press, issued an ultimatum, “If you don’t think M. Faucher would agree to this, I’m afraid we’ll have to forget the whole thing. It’s a shame, too, for many of these books should really be made available to American children.”29 After much negotiating, on May 7, 1965, a new contract was drawn up with Golden Press, New York for “all (or nearly) of this collection”30, with an additional clause recalling that Allen & Unwin still retained worldwide rights for the series Roman des Bêtes outside the USA and Canada. The Golden Book policy of keeping prices low, to enable a maximum of children to buy their books, was very much in line with Faucher’s own philosophy and, although the books still sported a rigid cover, the new Golden Book format was a similar size and shape to the original source texts.

• 31 Faucher to Rishshoffer, 19 Nov, 1965, APC.
• 32 “Les traductions anglaises de chez Allen […] sont excellentes, alors que la traduction de la premiè (...)
• 33 “Traduire un album demande une sensibilité que tous n’eurent pas”, C. Boulaire, Les petits livres d (...)
• 34 Leventhal to Flammarion, 9 April, 1965, APC.
• 35 Allen & Unwin to Golden Press, 6 July, 1965, URSC.
• 36 Packard to Unwin, 9 July, 1965, URSC.
• 37 Packard to Unwin, 15 Sept, 1965, URSC. The correspondence seems to establish that Lida and Lily Dup (...)

12Nonetheless, the quality of the US translation was still a point of contention. Faucher once more reiterated the importance of providing a good translation, loyal to the spirit of the text,31 and concerns were again raised over the earlier Harper & Brothers editions: “the English translations produced by Allen [...] are excellent, whereas the translation of the first American edition was very mediocre”;32 indeed, as Boulaire reminds us, “Translating an album requires a degree of sensitivity that not everyone has.”33 Ironically, Leventhal sought to reassure Flammarion by declaring “our translations of the text will be much better than the British translations, which really aren’t very good.”34 Oblivious of these comments, Allen & Unwin approached Golden Press with the idea of fostering some sort of collaboration.35 Hazel Packard, the vice-president of Golden Press, requested copies of the UKTT (UK text translation), with the suggestion that they might “use the text as translated by you on the titles we have not already translated.”36 Nothing further was agreed and later that year Packard replied, somewhat confusingly, that they would be using the translations of “Lily Duplaix (Lida)” to which they already owned the copyright.37 Ultimately, just a tiny handful of modifications were made to the new editions: the French exclamation “zut”, which had been rather inexplicably left in the earlier US edition of Bourru, was removed; pictures were now attributed to “Feodor Rojankovsky,” as opposed to simply “Rojan”, and Ploof, which had been translated by Georges Duplaix, underwent a change of spelling. Despite the original promises, no fresh translations were created for these new US editions: the texts printed by Golden Press were essentially replicas of those found in the earlier Harper & Brothers editions.

• 38 “quatre points cardinaux”, Scaf Le Phoque, Paris, Flammarion, 1936,
• 39 Lida, Scaf, Paris, Flammarion, 1936. Scuff, NY, Harpers, 1939. Scaf, London, Allen & Unwin, 1939.
• 40 Lida, Bourru, Paris, Flammarion, 1936. Bruin, NY, Harpers, 1937. Bourru, London, Allen & Unwin, 193 (...)
• 41 Rose Fyleman to Allen & Unwin, 23 Jan, 1939, URSC.
• 42 Lida, Bruin the Brown Bear, NY, Golden Press, 1966.

15A comparative study of the three sets of texts shows that the UK translations remain largely faithful to the French source texts, whilst the US translations have been frequently adapted and shortened or simplified. In certain places, the lexical choice has been simplified: the UKTT consistently advertises the artwork as “Lithographs by Rojan”, whereas the first USTT refers to “Pictures by Rojan”; in Scaf, the four cardinal points38 mentioned in the original French, became “four points of the compass” in the UKTT, but simply “four corners of the sky” in the USTT,39 and in the USTT Bruin’s (Bourru) identification of fungi is pared down into simple terms: “he would never mistake a poisonous toadstool for a mushroom which was good to eat,” compared to the more precise language used in the UKTT: “never would he have mistaken the wholesome orange agaric from the poisonous fly-agaric.”40 Names of fauna and flora are also frequently adapted to correspond to items more familiar to young North American readers: the “blackberries” in Panache become “mulberries”; the “chervil” in Quipic becomes “celery”, and the “whitethroat” in Coucou is a “yellow warbler” in the USTT. The detailed labels attached to the illustrations of bird species in Coucou and Plouf and those of fish species in Martin-Pêcheur are also removed from the USTT. Whilst the original illustrations may refer to some non-native species, suppressing these labels effectively abridges the US editions, although it should be noted that the USTT The Kingfisher contains added mentions of two fish species native to American shores. Rose Fyleman’s British translations were not immune to cultural adaptation: in Quipic, the bell tolling for the Angelus prayer in French simply becomes a clock striking six; the humble British gooseberry is substituted for the more generic term groseilliers used in the source text; “François” in Coucou is anglicised to “Frankie”, and in a letter to Allen & Unwin, Feldman strongly objects to an illustration of a cow being killed in Bourru, “it would be a good thing to omit […]. The account of it is alright, but the actual portrayal seems to me very horrifying.”41 The offensive illustration was accordingly removed from the UKTT; although initially retained in the USTT, it was omitted later when Bruin the Brown Bear42 was reprinted under the Golden Books label.

• 43 Lida, Bourru, Paris, Flammarion, 1936, p. 29.
• 44 Ibid.

16In the 1930s, some elements could be considered perfectly acceptable for inclusion in children’s literature in one country and highly inappropriate in another, and indeed some parts of the French books have been carefully omitted from the USTT. Both illustrations and texts were affected by these suppressions: a drawing in Coucou showing François with a knife, perched high in tree, is absent from the USTT, possibly because it was seen as inciting risky behaviour, and in Bourru, the “recipe” which calls for stunning the fish and burying it in the ground until sufficiently rotten to be eaten is also missing:43 possibly there was concern that young readers would follow these instructions to the letter, resulting in multiple cases of food-poisoning, or worse! Similarly, all mentions of Froux’s marriage proposal, and the consequential wedding-day, disappear from the US translation. In its place, the “rabbits” declare that they will stay together in the orchard and, rather than having birds singing to celebrate their wedding, the USTT finds “the whole forest celebrating the [platonic] reunion of Fluff and Capucine.”44 Obviously the sacrament of marriage was thought too important to be trifled with by a young buck rabbit going by the name of Fluff. Employing a similar stance, the USTT Scuff no longer weds eight of his own cousins: instead, moral censorship dictates that he marries “eight of the young seals.” Iniquitous behaviour and hazardous conduct obviously had no place in books which were to be placed in the hands of impressionable young American readers.

• 45 Lida, Scaf, London, Harper & Bros., 1939, p. 17.

18In the US editions, death and danger were also themes to be avoided, or at least euphemised or minimised: Froux’s father, who is eaten up by a fox in both the source text and the UKTT, is simply “carried off” in the USTT and the death of Martin the Kingfisher is simplified and described with far less detail: the UKTT describes this episode in 479 words, compared to just 294 words used in the USTT. Somewhat surprisingly, the descriptions and illustrations of clubbing seals in Scaf are retained in both sets of translations, although it should be noted that the US version fails to mention the hunters “throwing themselves on their prey [and drinking] the blood that came spurting from its wounds.”45

• 46 Gillian Lathey, Translating Children’s Literature, Oxford, Routledge, 2016, p. 44.
• 47 Paul Faucher, Letter to a friend, APC, undated.
• 48 “Red, Quick, Square and Claw”, Lida, early Czech manuscript of Panache, APC, undated.
• 49 Lida, handwritten translation of Panache by Mme. DesNoyers, APC, undated.

19Considerable thought and deliberation were involved when choosing names for the protagonists of the source texts. Names are frequently seen as a “powerful signal of social and cultural context”46 and are especially important when, as is the case of the Roman des Bêtes series, the name of the main protagonist also constitutes the title of the book, or part of it. The names needed to appeal to target readers, yet also reflect certain characteristics of the species. As the manuscripts evolved, names were constantly adjusted and fine-tuned: Bourru (meaning gruff, or bear-like) started life with one “r”; Plouf’s mother’s name changed from Ainette to Plumette,47 and the baby squirrels in Panache, who started their lives as “Zrzka, Kvik, Čtverák and Drápek”,48 were re-christened “Lutin, Grigriffe, Panache and Roquette”49 when the manuscript was translated into French, and finally evolved into “Panache, Follet, Lutin and Flamme” by the time the book was eventually published in 1934.

• 50 Jan Van Coillie & Walter. P. Verschueren (eds.), Children’s Literature in Translation: Challenges a (...)

20Although there is currently a strong initiative to retain the original characters’ names in translations of children’s books, this is a somewhat recent concern. Throughout most of the twentieth century, names in children’s literature were not considered to be especially sacred50 and translators often deliberately moved the text towards their intended audience. Frequently names and everyday items were transformed in order to be more easily recognised by the target reader, and “foreign” or “unfamiliar” names were regularly eradicated. It is therefore pleasantly surprising to find so few of the protagonists re-named in the British translations (see fig. 1).

• 51 Rose Fyleman to Allen & Unwin, 5 July, 1937, URSC.
• 52 Allen & Unwin to Rose Fyleman, 12 Nov, 1937, URSC.
• 53 Rose Fyleman to Allen & Unwin, 23 Jan, 1939, URSC.

21One exception is Mischief the Squirrel, the first of the series to be published in the UK. Panache had already been re-christened “Pompom” two years earlier in the USTT and, in her original translation, Fyleman changed his name to “Plume” (feather), which was perhaps more suited to a bird. Allen & Unwin disagreed with her decision, pronouncing that the original “Panache” would make a far better title than “Plume” for they did “not intend to conceal the French origin of these books.”51 Fyleman in turn voiced her objections to the name “Panache”, upon which Unwin’s younger son suggested the name Mischief, the squirrel, which all agreed to be “quite a good title.”52 The titles of UK translations which followed remained remarkably close to those of the source text. Names which were phonetically close to their English equivalences were gently anglicised: Plouf became Ploof, Froux became Frou, and Coucou, converted to Cuckoo. Two of the UKTT retain the original French names: the hedgehog kept his name Quipic (one who prickles), despite the strong possibility that their young target readers might not grasp the underlying semantic wordplay at work, and, although Fyleman suggested the name of “Bruff” as “a good name for a bear”,53 the publishers decided to preserve the original name: Bourru.

• 54 Evynurul Laily Zen, “Corpus-driven Analysis on the Language of Children’s Literature”, ICRI, 2018, (...)
• 55 Ed Thomas, “Word frequency and collocation: Using children’s literature in adult learning”, ICAME J (...)
• 56 Michael Stubbs, “Collations and cultural connotations of common words”, Linguistics and Education, (...)

23Although it may seem to be synonymous with “small”, the word “little” holds a special place in Anglophone children’s literature54. Corpus-based studies of children’s literature have shown that “little” is often present in the highest frequency range of words: it ranked eighth in Thomas’s corpus of children’s literature (a collection of 5.5 million words), and the only 2-syllable word in the top twenty.55 More than simply referring to the size of an object, “little” also conveys an ideological message communicating a sense of cuteness, or what Stubbs has described as the “cuddle factor”.56 Therefore, adding “little” to squirrel/duck/rabbit was a deliberate ploy to provoke a sensation of cosy cuteness, conjuring up an extra level of appeal to potential readers, but did such an approach also extend across the body of the texts?

• 57 AntConc (version 4.0.3), AntLab Solutions, 2022.
• 58 Amanda Potts & Paul Baker, “Does semantic tagging identify cultural change in British and American (...)
• 59 Paul Baker, “The BE06 Corpus of British English and recent language change”, International Journal (...)

24In order to quantify what is happening within the texts, methods drawn from corpus linguistics were employed to analyse and compare the use of “little/petit” across all twenty-four books. The books were all scanned; the text extracted using OCR software; the results cleaned up into a readable format and finally the data separated into three distinct corpora: source text, UK’TT and USTT. Software from Lawrence’s AntConc programme57 was then engaged to generate vocabulary frequency lists, looking specifically at the use of “petit”, “small” and “little” in all the three sets of data. The results revealed petit(s)/ petite(s) to be the 23^rd most frequently used words in the source text, whilst in the USTT “little” was in 15^th position (14^th when combined with small) and in the UKTT “little” was in 18^th position (17^th when combined with small); as a comparison the word “little” figures in 55^th position in a corpus of US general fiction;58 75^th in a sample of UK general fiction.59 The results were tabulated, and the translations performed by Georges Duplaix and Lilly separated, to see if translator style had also had an impact on usage (see fig. 4).

• 60 Carolyn Baker & Peter Freebody, Children’s First Schoolbooks, Oxford, Blackwell, 1989.
• 61 M. Stubbs, “Collations and cultural connotations of common words”, op. cit.
• 62 E. Thomas, “Does semantic tagging identify cultural change in British and American English?”, op. c (...)
• 63 E. Laily Zen, “Corpus-driven Analysis on the Language of Children’s Literature,” op. cit.

26A final analysis of the data revealed that the word “little” was employed as an extra adjective in 45 instances across the UKTT and used an additional 86 times in the USTT, with no significant difference in procedure between the two American translators, who averaged an extra 10.6 and 10.4 uses per book (see fig. 5). Both sets of Anglophone translations thus appear to subtly, perhaps even subconsciously, echo a format seen across the wider spectrum of Anglophone children’s literature, the results reflecting the liberal use of “little” noted in corpus analyses of children's literature originally written in English: Baker and Freebody,60 Stubbs,61 Thomas,62 and Laily Zen.63