Swift's use of satire and irony in Gulliver's travels

IRONY/SARCASM
UNPLEASANT/ADULT
DIFFICULT CONCEPTS
ENGLISH CULTURAL REFERENCES
CONFUSING ELEMENTS OF GULLIVER’S PERSONA
“Of so little weight are the greatest services to princes, when put into the balance with a refusal to gratify their passions” (Swift, 58)
Before arriving at Lilliput, Gulliver describes how “twelve of our crew were dead by immoderate labour and ill food” (Swift, 13). This image could be quite ghastly for children.
Lilliputians intend to put Gulliver to use as a weapon of mass destruction so they can target their bitter rivals, the country of Blefuscu.
The discord between Lilliput and Blefuscu 
Is a satire between the seemingly never-ending conflicts that have occurred between England and France.
Gulliver enjoys observing people, but is often quick to judge and to criticize, and sometimes he will later completely contradict his initial judgment. For example, he proposes that he show the
Brobdingnagian King the method by which gunpowder is made. Such an offer causes the King to recoil in horror. Gulliver takes this refusal as evidence of the crippling naiveté present within the Brobdingnagian King and collective. Though at the novel’s end, Gulliver concludes that the Brobdingnagian people are some of the wisest: “whose wise maxims in morality and government it would be our happiness to observe." This is one of many instances of Gulliver’s own inherent contradictions and indecisiveness
In Book three, when Gulliver visits Balnibarbi; this trip offers a comparative look at the realistic lifestyle of Lord Munodi with the illogical ideas engaged at the Grand Academy (hairless sheep, etc). This part of the book is a clear satire of fashion of the overall speculative science at the time (along with England’s Royal Academy, as well as England’s colonial chokehold over Ireland.
Later in Book one, Gulliver describes a shower of arrows he has to deal with when arriving in Lilliput.
The egg-breaking question signifies the distinctions in values and ideas connected to communion with Protestants (in England represented by Lilliput) vs. Catholics (in France, represented by Blefuscu).
In Book one, Gulliver has an apprenticeship to a person known as “Master bates”- (sexual punnings)
In book two, Gulliver arrives in Brobdingnag, a nation where the people are exponentially larger than Gulliver's size. While Gulliver had been a giant in Lilliput, he is a tiny person in Brobdingnag. The marked reversals in stature represent moral and ethical inversions as well; Mainly, Brobdingnagians are moral, logical people when juxtaposed to the narcissistic and vindictive Lilliputians.
In Book three, Gulliver also visits
Luggnagg, where he makes contact with a race of people who have achieved immortality. However, by not dying they continue to age,
Where they live largely in agony and their own senility.
This can be viewed as Swift attacking theological
Ideas connected to immortality, mortality and the afterlife.
Gulliver extinguishes a fire in the Royal Palace through releasing a long stream of urine, thus upsetting the Royal court and the Lilliputian Queen and engaging in illegal activity.
In Book three, Gulliver visits
Glubbdubdrib, a country full of sorcerers and this is where Gulliver is able to converse with spirits of the dead.
Such a concept, which requires an understanding of the afterlife, might be too advanced for children.
In Book four, Gulliver meets the Houyhnhnms, who are learned and ethical horses. Gulliver first thinks the horses are owned by the humans, but then comes to realize that the horses have their own autonomy and independence. The humanoid creatures, who are vile and deformed, are known as the yahoos, and they live like beasts. This chapter succeeds in satirizes the inherent sense of moral and behavioral superiority of people over animals.
Gulliver suffers the accusations of engaging in an extramarital affair with the wife of Flimnap, the royal treasurer—something that would have been difficult and which stimulates a visually provocative image, seeing as how there is a marked size difference between them.
In Book three, when Gulliver travels to Japan, he is asked to trample on a Crucifix: this was real test imposed by the Japanese at the time, when they suspected someone was European. Such sacrilegious notions could be deemed inappropriate for children.
In Book Four, the Houyhnhnms have no base desires, no need to lie or manipulate: these animals are presented as a superior version of the human and more morally upright.
The Lilliputian King refuses to grant Gulliver a trial and bestows him with the death penalty, albeit slowly via abolishment of his eyesight and starvation.
In Book Four, Houyhnhnm moral superiority and the simplicity inherent within it, creates a type of myopia, a lack of understanding and experience.
In Book one, Gulliver sees how the rule of Lilliput selects his staff members and cabinet members, not based on their ability to lead, but on their ability to walk across a tightrope. This is a satirical commentary on how George I, the King of England, selected his ministers not based on how well they could lead, but on their network within the court, and whether they would make decisions based on what the King wanted rather than on what was best for citizens.
Book two shows the environment as intimidating to Gulliver: it presents insects, rats, animals of all sorts, as a deadly danger to him. This could potentially create phobias in children.
Gulliver is considered to be a freak of nature: he is kept in a cage, and shown to the masses, something that makes him famous and causes him to end up at the Royal Palace. There he becomes some
where he becomes a curious royal pet of sorts, which ends up stimulating the rage of the King’s dwarf, who captures him, imprisoning him within the confines of a marrow bone.
In Book Four, Gulliver starts to idealize the Houyhnhnms so much that he begins to lose hold of his own identity and views himself as a Houyhnhnm rather than a human being, creating great misanthropy within himself. While Swift is ultimately satirizing people who select philosophy over reality, this would be hard for a child to understand how a man could consider himself a horse.
In Book One, Swift expresses sarcasm for the idiocy inherent within certain religious controversies through his exposition about the animosity between Lilliputians who open their eggs from the narrow end versus the wider end—demonstrating how absurd so many controversies are.
During Book two, there Gulliver’s custodian is a twelve-year-old girl who goes by the name of Glumdalclitch and she appears to be fetishized by Swift, for her purity, something, which really isn’t appropriate for children. Furthermore she gives Gulliver the pet name Grildrig one can translate as mannequin or doll, which only suggests she’s fetishizing him as well.
Notions of honor in the book are presented in a nebulous manner: “This made me reflect how vain an attempt it is for a man to endeavor doing himself honor among those who are out of all degree of equality or comparison with him” (Swift, 149).
Swift satirizes “projectors” in English society, those who most speculatively think about the best way to solve a problem, such as unrealistic ideas like building a house from the top down.
“The highest tax was upon men who are the greatest favorites of the other sex, an the assessments according to the number and natures of the favors they have received; for which they are allowed to be their own vouchers…” (Swift, 233).
“... a wife should be always a reasonable and agreeable companion, because she cannot always be young” (Swift, 70).
Book two is riddled with more adult themes:
The women of the
Brobdingnagian court; make Gulliver their sex toy. However, given his perception of their bodies and smells, they are truly repulsive to him.
When Gulliver returns to England at the end of Book two, there is more fetishization: he has brought with him a
corn from the foot of one of the ladies of the court, as Gulliver intends to have it laid in silver in order to drink out of it.
Book three introduces us to Laputa: a flying island where the leaders are science-philosophers that are completely consumed with impractical theories, and their wives are infamous for their promiscuity and lack of loyalty.
“…take a strict view of their excrements, and, from the colour, the odour, the taste, the consistence, the crudeness or maturity of digestion” (Swift, 234).
““...I hid myself between two leaves of sorrel, and there discharged the necessities of nature” (Swift, 110). 
Background
Censorship
There has been much discussion about the act of removing inappropriate content when translating a work meant for consumption by children. Many refer to the removal of unsuitable content as censorship, but this is not the most apt definition. Censorship through this form of translation is still a powerful means of influencing children and manipulating their mindsets, however, in this case when it comes to a work that is already so politically charged, removing all the political content wouldn’t be an act of attempting to influence children, but really just encapsulate a removal of all the age inappropriate content. As one expert in translation explains, “Therefore, all a translator (or any other text producer) can do is provide their texts with the corresponding intention markers and hope for the receiver to join the game. To be able to do that, the translator needs as much knowledge as possible about the communicative purposes the target text is supposed to achieve for the addressees in their communicative situation” (Nord, 46). In the case of Gulliver’s Travels one can be certain that there is an intense intentionality to make severe political statements and to embed the works with an extreme satire of the English political system and the overall state of the world. None of this content is appropriate for children: it is above their level of concern and their educational level. Hence, as Nord suggests, when the translator consider what the communicative objectives of the translator were in fact, many of these answers will have to be discarded in the case of Gulliver, as they are too political, or adult-themed to be included. However, one of Swift’s major intentions was to tell a fantasy story about a man’s travels and his adventure’s while travelling. There’s no reason why a translator should have any difficulty preserving the heart of this story: adventure, meeting strange people, finding solutions, and learning new things. In fact the fantastical setting and steady flow of adventures explains why children adopts Gulliver’s Travels so readily. “To target a book at a particular audience, however, does not guarantee that this audience will adopt it. Books initially targeted at adults eventually became classics of children’s literature later, as is the case of Robinson Crusoeby Daniel Defoe and Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift” (Queiroga).
Characteristics of Children’s Literature to Apply
Many have argued that one common thread connects all of children’s literature, and that is a movement of darkness to light of the protagonist (Hunt, 15). In the case of Gulliver, one could argue that our hero makes the opposite movement, but one of light to darkness, as he becomes more misanthropic and resentful of human beings. Thus, the translator needs to take a decisive stance on how to best handle this particular movement, given the young minds and hearts that he or she is translating for. According to the author of Children’s Literature and Translation Studies, there are five main issues that are connected to the effective translation of children’s literature: domestication/ foreignization, the image of the child or the image of childhood (as viewed via the translator and society at large), the imbalanced relationship between the adults in this universe and the children, the overall readability of the story (along with relevant imagery), and appropriate amounts of wordplay, rhymes, and other freedoms with language which will depend on the translator’s skill and overall originality (O’Sullivan, 460). In the case of Guliiver’s Travels, the translator need not pay attention to things like register or dialectical variations of speech, and needs to mitigate cultural references sparingly. However, one does need to consider if this is a translation where the text is intended to be read aloud: in this case the translation must be “more than an accurate representation of meaning in the target language; it must also consider aspects of orality and performance: sound, musicality, rhythm, and onomatopoeia” (Lathey, 25). There should be an equal focus on the playful use of language and simplification of some of the more complex topics so that child readers can absorb elements of the story.
Children’s literature can encompass a truly massive range of developmental stages from toddlers to elementary school readers. There needs to be a clear determination what age level this book is intended for, and if the translation will be made with a particular age group in mind, such as grade-school aged children, but will be simple enough for even younger children to understand. It’s also important for the translator to bear in mind that the text is not simply intended to address children, but can also be there to deliver messages to the adults who might be reading it to the children—known as dual address (Lathey, 16). The translator needs to decide if this level of complexity is desired. Moreover, in the case of this book, the translator needs to determine how much of it is going to be didactic, and how much will be simply entertainment. This is a decision that will shape much of the voice of the story.
Data for Fragment Choices