Child and adult readers’ processing of foreignized elements in translated Chinese picture books: An eye-tracking study

Yingying Li, Siqi Lyu and Xianyao Hu
Southwest University | Southwest University of Political Science and Law | University of Tartu

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.

Publication history

Date received: 2 February 2023

Date accepted: 29 January 2026

Published online: 10 February 2026

Table of contents

The impact of translation on readers has long been discussed theoretically (Nida 1964; Newmark 1981; Reiss and Vermeer 1984; Koller 1995), with the most prominent discussions in the field of children’s literature due to its educational and moral cultivation purposes as well as children’s limited linguistic competence and epistemic knowledge (Klingberg 1986; Shavit 1986; Alvstad 2010). On the one hand, when translating for children translators must pay special attention to the extent to which children can digest foreignized elements. If children find the translation too difficult, they may not be inclined to read it. On the other hand, if the translation eliminates all the foreign elements, children will be deprived of the opportunity to experience diverse cultural elements, which is contrary to the pedagogical goal of translating children’s literature in the first place.

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