Stil und Kulturspezifika in englischen Übersetzungen von Emil und die Detektive Erich Kästners

This master’s thesis focuses on the children’s novel Emil and the Detectives written by the German writer Erich Kästner and its three translations into English. Emil and the Detectives was published in 1929 and it is Kästner’s most famous work as well as the only one to survive the original Nazi book burnings in 1933. Unlike most novels for children, Emil is set in the real world of the 1920s Berlin. Since its publication, more than 50 translations have been made into many languages, and in the last 80 years, several translators have taken on the task of translating the novel into English alone. The book was first translated into English by the American translator May Massee in 1930, by the British translator Eileen Hall in 1959, and most recently by the American translator William Martin in 2007. The empirical part of the thesis compares Kästner’s famous novel with the three English translations mentioned above, focusing on the culture-specific items – of which the novel contains many, as it portrays Emil’s adventures in Berlin – and on Kästner’s humorous, ironic and satirical literary style, which is also an important feature of his novels for children in general. The thesis aims to establish how German culture of the 1920s has been presented to English-speaking readership over time, and how well each individual translation presents Kästner’s unique authorial style to English-speaking children.