Capturing the Ungraspable in Words: An Analysis of the Effectiveness of Postmodern Elements from Markus Zusak’s The Book Thief as Translated in the Dutch Prose Translation, the Novel’s Screen Adaptation, and the Dutch Subtitles Thereof

摘要

Set in Nazi Germany and told from the perspective of Death, The Book Thief by Markus Zusak tells the story of a young German girl named Liesel who stubbornly tries to read books despite the forces in her life trying to keep her from doing so. The Book Thief has been classified as postmodern – and, more specifically, magic realist – holocaust fiction (Adams 2011). This thesis analyses the translation of the novel's postmodern elements both in the Dutch translation of The Book Thief by Annemarie Lodewijk, released in 2009, and the film adaptation, released by Sunswept Entertainment in 2013. Rather than weighing in on whether The Book Thief is “better” as a book than as a film, this thesis instead attempts to analyse whether the film adaptation is effective in conveying postmodern elements, and whether the Dutch subtitles are effective in capturing the source material's postmodern character.