What choices do kindergarten teacher-students take when judging a translation by its cover? – A quantitative analysis

The topic of book covers of translated novels has previously been addressed by, among others, Mossop (2019), Rüegg (2018), and Carlström (2020). Also Batchelor (2018), in her book about translation and paratexts, has touched upon this theme. In the present study, we are inspired by the title of Mossop's article, "Judging a Translation by its Cover”, and we combine Translation Studies with the Didactics of Literature, as we investigate what book covers kindergarten student-teachers prefer when given the option to choose among several covers. The data analysis builds on the results from a questionnaire, where some 90 students were asked to rank what book covers they preferred among nine covers of translated novels. The novels in question were Norwegian children's book author Maria Parr's three novels Vaffelhjarte [Waffle Heart] (2005), Tonje Glimmerdal (2009) and Keeperen og havet [The Goalie and the Sea] (2016) translated into German, French and English. The study is, to some extent, inspired by Rostvåg (2010), who investigated what book covers children preferred when they were asked to choose from a selection offered by the researcher. Her results showed that the children most of all preferred books that they already knew. She also noted that they were attracted to colorful covers as well as covers with animals seeking the children's eyes. In addition to Rostvåg!s results, the present study also builds on a previous study (Axelsson & Næsje 2021), where the cover images of Parr's first two novels, Vaffelhjarte and Tonje Glimmerdal translated into German, French and English, were analyzed using Kress & van Leeuwen's (2006) grammar of visual design. Some of the most prominent results from this analysis are turned into variables which are checked against the questionnaire results in order to study correlations. In the 2021 study, it turned out that the German covers were quite stripped of details and artistically had a "naïvistic” impression. The French covers foregrounded the Scandinavian landscape, whereas the British covers showed a richness in details and colors. Preliminary results suggest that the kindergarten student-teachers tended to give the German covers the highest grades and we raise the hypothesis that their choice may partly be explained by the fact that the students were already thinking as kindergarten teachers and chose covers that were most likely to appeal to the kindergarten children.