Who came first, the lion or the bear? The translation and rendition of we’re going on a bear hunt into Spanish

Abstract

This article examines the elements that have influenced the thirty years of commercial success of the book We’re Going on a Bear Hunt (originally published in 1989; Rosen and Oxenbury) and considers it a contemporary example of a historical trend: the transformation of oral texts into publications. Focusing on the textual mode in the picturebook, this example additionally illustrates the complication of defining a text, and questions whether the source text of a translation can be identified when several versions coexist. A textual analysis of the Spanish-published translation Vamos a Cazar un Oso and a musical analysis and qualitative survey of the use of Spanish in the oral rendition “Voy en Busca de un León” illustrate four different elements entailed in the translation of a children’s rhyme: the semantic content (vocabulary and story line), the linguistic structure (verse forms and prosody), the musical or rhythmical foundation, and the element of play or movement.