Children books readability: A comparative study of the readability of Persian storybooks and their English translation

Readability is one aspect of comprehensibility in literature in general and children literature in particular. The goal of this article was to comparatively study the relationship between the readability of originally written literary texts in Persian and their corresponding texts in English for children of age group C. To this end, Gunning’s Readability Formula (1952) was applied in 80 paragraphs extracted from 8 children’s story books written or translated by Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, for children of age group C. Having identified and compared the readability level of the paragraphs, it was concluded that the readability of these texts was higher than Gunning’s readability level for this age group. Moreover, the results showed that original Persian storybooks are less readable than their English translation storybooks. Therefore, the texts of these books are difficult and higher than the understanding level of age group C and it is necessary for the writers and translators to avoid long sentences, and use less multi-syllabus words.