This nostalgia expresses itself in three ways: (1) Kang’s version, as a memory trigger, connects adults to their childhood, (2) sharing digitized versions of Kang’s translation and the online sale of its hardcover version creates nostalgic online communities based on a collective memory, and (3) Kang’s version is considered a classic that should, as a kind of cultural memory, be passed on to the next generation. A qualitative analysis of reader posts on social media sites shows that a group of adult readers prefer Kang’s translation because they read it as children and feel a nostalgic attachment to it. The theoretical framework complements existing reception research with theories of nostalgia, collective memory, and cultural memory.
I concentrate on two translations – one by Xin Kang ( White 1979) and the other by Rongrong Ren ( White 2004). White’s children’s book, Charlotte’s Web ( 1952).
This article explores how childhood nostalgia influences the reception of translations, specifically in the case of the (re)translation of E. B.
