"Le Petit Nicolas"estudio fraseológico y análisis de su traducción al español. Propuestas y consideraciones didácticas

Abstract

This work is the result of an extensive research process that began after reading children's books in their original French version. At the beginning of our university studies, we noticed that, when reading certain purely children's books in order to increase vocabulary, there were many expressions that were not understood by the sum of the meanings of their words. The aims of our research were, on the one hand, linguistic: - To create a corpus to serve as a reference for our study and further research on the same subject, since there are not enough studies that support phraseology in children's language. For this reason, we believe it is necessary, on the one hand, to contribute, through the analysis of the pentalogy of Le Petit Nicolas, to the search for collocations, locutions and routine expressions in the original version and, on the other hand, to study its translations into Spanish. - To work on literature from a linguistic point of view, and not only from a didactic one, in order to analyse the use of phraseological units within it. - To demonstrate that the study of children's/young people's language is necessary for the successful advancement of both linguistics and didactics. On the other hand, we have followed the didactic objectives: - To create a useful and motivating didactic unit in French, through the pentalogy of Le Petit Nicolas, for Secondary School pupils with the necessary adaptations to include phraseological units. - To check that pupils are capable of learning different phraseological units from the first years of French and to include them in their communicative competence. As for the methodology used, this research is divided into three main parts: Firstly, we present the theoretical foundations: we have carried out a critical review of the literary and phraseological aspects that have been necessary to carry out this research. Within this section we find: the literary block, focused on studying the characteristics of children's literature and literature in the classroom. And the linguistic block where we carry out an in-depth study of phraseology, also introducing textual functions and the classification of UFs. This closes with a chapter on translation and contrastive linguistics. Secondly, the analysis of the selected corpus, Le Petit Nicolas. From the five volumes, we have extracted the routine expressions, collocations and locutions most frequently repeated during the pentalogy in order to serve as a basis for our students and researchers to search for the analysed expressions they need. Finally, the practical foundations: this block is dedicated to didactics, to aspects of teaching and learning French as a foreign language, specifically to the work on routine expressions and locutions. It is about the elaboration of a didactic unit (UD) centred on the book Le Petit Nicolas, which we have implemented in a school in Molina de Segura, Murcia. Our didactic design was conceived to be developed in nine sessions of about one hour's duration, in a class of 24 students aged 12 and 13, which corresponds to the first year of Compulsory Secondary Education (ESO) in Spain. With regard to the conclusions of the translatological results obtained, we find that, of the 156 collocations, only 2 have a null equivalence, compared to 132 UFs with total equivalences and 21 partial equivalences. Verbal locutions were more numerous than collocations, with a total of 382 expressions. Of these, we can divide between the 175 UFs that have been partially translated and quite similar total and null equivalences, with 104 and 105 respectively. Routine formulae are divided into expressive, thank you, acceptance, good and bad luck, disbelief, astonishment or surprise, reproach, anger, commissive, directive and assertive. These are the most numerous of the three types analysed (171 in total), 145 are total, 161 are partial and 294 are of null equivalence. Therefore, with a total of 401 expressions translated with a null equivalence, we could say that the translator maintains the cultural nuances and adapts the work to the Spanish children's language. But we must take into account the 381 total equivalences, that is, those expressions that Azaola has translated word for word and the 357 UFs with partial equivalence. We can therefore say that the translator relies on the context to adapt or not the different cultural nuances of the two countries, France and Spain. Our corpus of French-Spanish phraseological utterances contains a total of 1009 UFs intended for children. And, with our linguistic analysis, we have found that most of these selected UFs have been said in the context of play, anger or jokes, and not in the normality of everyday life. The didactic part of this research has been a breakthrough for the teaching-learning of French and Spanish in the school context (formal education). We are convinced that secondary school pupils are capable of learning Phraseology without reaching B2 level. We therefore consider that our Unit is applicable to any grade, provided that some criteria and standards are modified (as everything depends on the level of our students). This didactic unit has a considerable number of exercises which our students have enjoyed very much. The creation has been based on several methodologies: On the one hand, on the inverted classroom method, where we have turned the students into teachers for a few moments. The consequences have been very favourable as we found a much more relaxed and playful atmosphere in the classroom. The students have been able to demonstrate their validity when explaining a concept they know and this has favoured cooperative work. We have also used game-based learning (ABJ), where through mime, cards, hangman and other playful activities, our students have managed to learn while having fun at the same time. They all explain how easy it is to learn thanks to games, while at the same time explaining the difficulty they would encounter if it were applied to other subjects. Focusing only on the area of French, we can say that the inclusion of this methodology in our UD has been very positive. All these methodologies bring a fresh air into the classroom, making the teaching-learning process in PE much more playful, motivating and effective. Literature as a tool for FLE classes is something new, since our students are used to textbooks or, in the best cases, to materials created by teachers. And the book chosen has been a great success: it is the one used in France to learn to read, and it has been very well received by our students.