This book offers a historical analysis of key classical translated works for children, such as writings by Hans Christian Andersen and Grimms’ tales. Translations dominate the earliest history of texts written for children in English, and stories translated from other languages have continued to shape its course to the present day. Lathey traces the role of the translator and the impact of translations on the history of English-language children’s literature from the ninth century onwards. Discussions of popular texts in each era reveal fluctuations in the reception of translated children’s texts, as well as instances of cultural mediation by translators and editors. Abridgement, adaptation, and alteration by translators have often been viewed in a negative light, yet a closer examination of historical translators’ prefaces reveals a far more varied picture than that of faceless conduits or wilful censors. From William Caxton’s dedication of his translated History of Jason to young Prince Edward in 1477 (‘to thentent/he may begynne to lerne read Englissh’), to Edgar Taylor’s justification of the first translation into English of Grimms’ tales as a means of promoting children’s imaginations in an age of reason, translators have recorded in prefaces and other writings their didactic, religious, aesthetic, financial, and even political purposes for translating children’s texts.

This invaluable Guide surveys the key critical works and debates in the vibrant field of children's literature since its inception. Leading expert Pat Pinsent combines a chronological overview of developments in the genre with analysis of key theorists and theories, and subject-specific methodologies.

Children's classics from Alice in Wonderland to the works of Astrid Lindgren, Roald Dahl, J.K. Rowling and Philip Pullman are now generally recognized as literary achievements that from a translator's point of view are no less demanding than 'serious' (adult) literature. This volume attempts to explore the various challenges posed by the translation of children's literature and at the same time highlight some of the strategies that translators can and do follow when facing these challenges. A variety of translation theories and concepts are put to critical use, including Even-Zohar's polysystem theory, Toury's concept of norms, Venuti's views on foreignizing and domesticating translations and on the translator's (in)visibility, and Chesterman's prototypical approach. Topics include the ethics of translating for children, the importance of child(hood) images, the 'revelation' of the translator in prefaces, the role of translated children's books in the establishment of literary canons, the status of translations in the former East Germany; questions of taboo and censorship in the translation of adolescent novels, the collision of norms in different translations of a Swedish children's classic, the handling of 'cultural intertextuality' in the Spanish translations of contemporary British fantasy books, strategies for translating cultural markers such as juvenile expressions, functional shifts caused by different translation strategies dealing with character names, and complex translation strategies used in dealing with the dual audience in Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales and in Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

Translating Children’s Literature is an exploration of the many developmental and linguistic issues related to writing and translating for children, an audience that spans a period of enormous intellectual progress and affective change from birth to adolescence. Lathey looks at a broad range of children’s literature, from prose fiction to poetry and picture books. Each of the seven chapters addresses a different aspect of translation for children, covering: · Narrative style and the challenges of translating the child’s voice; · The translation of cultural markers for young readers; · Translation of the modern picture book; · Dialogue, dialect and street language in modern children’s literature; · Read-aloud qualities, wordplay, onomatopoeia and the translation of children’s poetry; · Retranslation, retelling and reworking; · The role of translation for children within the global publishing and translation industries. This is the first practical guide to address all aspects of translating children’s literature, featuring extracts from commentaries and interviews with published translators of children’s literature, as well as examples and case studies across a range of languages and texts. Each chapter includes a set of questions and exercises for students. Translating Children’s Literature is essential reading for professional translators, researchers and students on courses in translation studies or children’s literature.

This book offers fresh critical insights to the field of children’s literature translation studies by applying the concept of transcreation, established in the creative industries of the globalized world, to bring to the fore the transformative, transgressional and creative aspects of rewriting for children and young audiences. This socially situated and culturally dependent practice involves ongoing complex negotiations between creativity and normativity, balancing text-related problems and genre conventions with readers’ expectations, constraints imposed by established, canonical translations and publishers’ demands. Focussing on the translator’s strategies and decision-making process, the book investigates phenomena where transcreation is especially at play in children’s literature, such as dual address, ambiguity, nonsense, humour, play on words and other creative language use; these also involve genre-specific requirements, for example, rhyme and rhythm in poetry. The book draws on a wide range of mostly Anglophone texts for children and their translations into languages of limited diffusion to demonstrate the numerous ways in which information, meaning and emotions are transferred to new linguistic and cultural contexts. While focussing mostly on interlingual transfer, the volume analyses a variety of translation types from established, canonical renditions by celebrity translators to non-professional translations and intralingual rewritings. It also examines iconotextual dynamics of text and image. The book employs a number of innovative methodologies, from cognitive linguistics and ethnolinguistics to semiotics and autoethnographic approaches, going beyond text analysis to include empirical research on children’s reactions to translation strategies. Highlighting the complex dynamics at work in the process of transcreating for children, this volume is essential reading for students and researchers in translation studies, children’s fiction and adaptation studies.

This book explores the topic of ideological manipulation in the translation of children’s literature by addressing several crucial questions, including how target language norms and conventions affect the quality of a translation, how translations are selected on the basis of what is culturally accepted, who is involved in the selection of what should be translated for children in the target culture, and how this process takes place. The author presents different ways of looking at the translation of children’s books, focusing particularly on the practices of intralingual and interlingual translations as a form of rewriting across a selection of European languages. This book will be of interest to Translation Studies and children's literature scholars, as well as those with a wider interest in the impact of ideology on culture.

From Struwwelpeter to Peter Rabbit, from Alice to Bilbo—this collection of essays shows how the classics of children’s literature have been transformed across languages, genres, and diverse media forms. This book argues that translation regularly involves transmediation—the telling of a story across media and vice versa—and that transmediation is a specific form of translation. Beyond the classic examples, the book also takes the reader on a worldwide tour, and examines, among other things, the role of Soviet science fiction in North Korea, the ethical uses of Lego Star Wars in a Brazilian context, and the history of Latin translation in children’s literature. Bringing together scholars from more than a dozen countries and language backgrounds, these cross-disciplinary essays focus on regularly overlooked transmediation practices and terminology, such as book cover art, trans-sensory storytelling, écart, enfreakment, foreignizing domestication, and intra-cultural transformation.

Focusing on transculturality, this edited volume explores how the role of translation and the idea of (un)translatability in the transformative complementation of different civilizations facilitates the transcultural connection between Chinese and other cultures in the modern era. Bringing together established international scholars and emerging new voices, this collection explores the linguistic, social, and cultural implications of translation and transculturality. The 13 chapters not only discuss the translation of literature, but also break new ground by addressing the translation of cinema, performance, and the visual arts, which are active bearer of modern and contemporary culture that are often neglected by academics. Our volume is ground-breaking in its trans-disciplinary attention to the study of translation related to China and such a trans-disciplinality should serve as a ground-breaking leverage for other areas of humanities as well. Through an engagement with these diverse fields, the title aims not only to reflect on how translation has reproduced values, concepts, and cultural forms, but also to stimulate the emergence of new possibilities in the dynamic transcultural interplay between China and the diverse national, cultural-linguistic, and contexts of Europe, the Americas, and Asia. It shows how cultures have been appropriated, misunderstood, transformed, and reconstructed through processes of linguistic mediation, as well as how knowledge, understanding, and connections have been generated through transculturality. The book will be a must read for scholars and students of translation studies, transcultural studies, and Chinese studies.

Focusing on significant and cutting-edge preoccupations within children’s literature scholarship, The Routledge Companion to Children’s Literature and Culture presents a comprehensive overview of print, digital, and electronic texts for children aged zero to thirteen as forms of world literature participating in a panoply of identity formations. Offering five distinct sections, this volume: Familiarizes students and beginning scholars with key concepts and methodological resources guiding contemporary inquiry into children’s literature Describes the major media formats and genres for texts expressly addressing children Considers the production, distribution, and valuing of children’s books from an assortment of historical and contemporary perspectives, highlighting context as a driver of content Maps how children’s texts have historically presumed and prescribed certain identities on the part of their readers, sometimes addressing readers who share some part of the author’s identity, sometimes seeking to educate the reader about a presumed “other,” and in recent decades increasingly foregrounding identities once lacking visibility and voice Explores the historical evolutions and trans-regional contacts and (inter)connections in the long process of the formation of global children’s literature, highlighting issues such as retranslation, transnationalism, transculturality, and new digital formats for considering cultural crossings and renegotiations in the production of children’s literature Methodically presented and contextualized, this volume is an engaging introduction to this expanding and multifaceted field.

Children's book awards have mushroomed since the early twentieth-century and especially since the 1960s, when literary prizing became a favored strategy for both commercial promotion and canon-making. There are over 300 awards for English-language titles alone, but despite the profound impact of children’s book awards, scholars have paid relatively little attention to them. This book is the first scholarly volume devoted to the analysis of Anglophone children's book awards in historical and cultural context. With attention to both political and aesthetic concerns, the book offers original and diverse scholarship on prizing practices and their consequences in Australia, Canada, and especially the United States. Contributors offer both case studies of particular awards and analysis of broader trends in literary evaluation and elevation, drawing on theoretical work on canonization and cultural capital. Sections interrogate the complex and often unconscious ideological work of prizing, the ongoing tension between formalist awards and so-called identity-based awards — all the more urgent in light of the "We Need Diverse Books" campaign — the ever-morphing forms and parameters of prizing, and scholarly practices of prizing. Among the many awards discussed are the Pura Belpré Medal, the Inky Awards, the Canada Governor General Literary Award, the Printz Award, the Best Animated Feature Oscar, the Phoenix Award, and the John Newbery Medal, giving due attention to prizes for fiction as well as for non-fiction, poetry, and film. This volume will interest scholars in literary and cultural studies, social history, book history, sociology, education, library and information science, and anyone concerned with children's literature.