Translated children’s literature as a peripheral system

89

the translator as an active mediator between original author and the public in the receiving culture (Hermans, 1996; O’Sullivan, 2005; Lathey, 2010).

90

When translated literature operates on a secondary level, its main function is to preserve the dominating characteristics of a specific genre and is also moulded on the basis of the pre-existing rules of the genre in the core system. Even-Zohar (1990) identified a paradox here: translation can be used to introduce innovative elements in the receptive literary system, but at the same time it helps to maintain the standard characteristics of a genre. The relationship with the original works is negative in the sense that the translator adheres to the rules of the receptive culture to preserve the balance inside the system, and the translation will therefore point to acceptability rather than adequacy¹⁰⁴ to the source text¹⁰⁵.

Acceptability seems to be the case of translated literature inside the English-speaking literary polysystem, even more so in the case of translated children’s literature.

The overview presented in Chapter 1 of the present research outlined the marginal position of translated literature for children within an established English local literature for children that allowed for the introduction of foreign authors in translation, provided they complied with the rules of the receptive system.

The polysystem theory was applied by Zohar Shavit (1986) in her analysis of the status of children’s literature as a self-standing genre, shedding light on the dominant poetics of this literature. Shavit argued that the turning point between the image of the child as a ‘miniature adult’ and the moment in history when children became independent figures detached from adults was when the ‘need’ and ‘demand’ for children’s books appeared. These books had a specific target audience and purpose in mind: the spiritual well-being of young readers who – according to the adult society that surrounded them – needed an organised educational system to support their development. Shavit suggested that children’s literature developed in the same way as

104 This dichotomy was introduced by Gideon Toury (1980) in terms of translational norms. For a fuller discussion see further on in this section.

105 Toury (1980) resorted to the polysystem theory to define the decision making process guiding translators in the field of children’s literature when it plays a secondary role in the target polysystem.

91

its young readers did: it had to first separate itself from adult literature before being recognised as a self-standing genre with its purposes and target readers.

The establishment of a literary typology starts from the institution of prizes, according to Shavit “[A]warding prizes is one of the major means by which “people in culture” attribute high status to writers” (Shavit, 1986: 35) pointing out that the awards dedicated to high literature were never attributed to writers for children, and only with the introduction of the IBBY Prize (the Hans Christian Andersen Prize) did those who wrote for the young finally achieve the recognition they deserved¹⁰⁶. So far, the presence of children is passive in a system where the mediation of adult readers is pervasive¹⁰⁷. Shavit argued that prizes are given by adults, reviews are written by adults, and adults are those who sell books for children, where “the criteria for a positive evaluation of a children’s book [...] is its success in appealing to adults.”¹⁰⁸ (Shavit, 1986: 38)

According to Shavit, this dual readership made up of adults and children stands at the basis of the translational choices of translators when they rewrite books for children by foreign authors. The higher the level of adaptation and rewriting, the younger the public: this equation is accepted by the target system (Shavit, 1986: 113) because

106 The importance of prizes in the field of children’s literature (on an international and local level) has been described in 1.1.1. The institution of prizes and awards also allowed for the translation and dissemination of works from foreign authors into the English-speaking context, providing these authors the status needed to be accepted as ‘canonical’.

107 This aspect has been defined as a “deeply seated […] continuing foundational investment of adult readers in their childhood reading” (Maybin & Watson, 2009:1), implied in ‘children’s literature’ which defies any standard definition: “What does it mean to write a book ‘for children’? If it is a book written

‘for children’, is it then still a children’s book if it is (only) read by adults?” (Lesnik-Oberstein, 1996: 15) Adults also gravitate around the business of children’s literature as “bibliographers and historians, librarians and teachers, theorists and publishers, reviewers and prizegivers, writers, designers, illustrators […]” (Hunt, 1996: x) all influencing the social, economic and literary system produced for children in any given period and country.

108 The dual children/adults appeal is what characterises children’s literature even today. Barbara Wall (1991) discussed the writer/reader interrelation in children’s literature starting from the question: “Is it really a children’s book?” in order to reveal the difficulty of writing exclusively for children, without taking adults into consideration. Riitta Oittinen (2000) based her critical view on translating literature for children (discussed in section 2.3 of the present research) on the reading public as being the only key issue in defining whether a book can be categorised as ‘children’s book’ or ‘adults’ book’.

92

children’s literature occupies a peripheral position in the literary polysystem. The educational purpose of children’s literature seems to justify any changes in translation, as long as they contribute to making the text

[...] more appropriate and useful to the child, in accordance with what society regards (at a certain point in time) as educationally “good for the child”; and an adjustment of plot, characterization, and language to prevailing society’s perceptions of the child’s ability to read and comprehend. (Shavit, 1986: 113)

This is “the systemic affiliation of the text” (Shavit, 1986: 113) which calls for any rewriting deemed necessary on the basis of two criteria: “first, the norms of morality accepted and demanded by the children’s system; second, the assumed level of the child’s comprehension”¹⁰⁹ (1986: 122), assumed by adults, of course, who are always the initiators of the production process targeted at children. Once again, adults mediate content and monitor production in children’s literature, a peripheral system where the socio-cultural and literary rules of the dominant centre shape the translation of foreign authors to adapt to the demands of the receptive culture and (young) public¹¹⁰.

In a similar vein, the status of translated texts and the norms they are subject to in translation had already been discussed by Toury (1980), with specific reference to the

109 These criteria are close to the issue of parental ‘control’ of what children read discussed by Torben Weinreich (2000): in the 20^th century society, the child is still seen as an individual who “1) needs to learn something, for example, in order to develop into a full member of society and mature and independent individual, and equally 2) needs protection.” (2000: 15) This may justify the censorship criteria adopted by mediators (e.g. publishers, translators, reviewers) in translated literature, for example by eliminating problematic chapters in translation, or omitting references to death and murder in jacket blurbs.

110 Also Veronica Smith (2000) commented on the general assumption that children’s literature is seen to

“fulfil an important role in the acquisition of reading maturity” (2000: 252), therefore the translator operating in this field should take into consideration three aspects: the young reader is supposed to acquire a large vocabulary through reading, to be able to decode complex syntactic structures to cope with everyday life, and to understand “moral and didactic principles”. In order to address these issues, the translator adopts naturalisation, “[A]n extreme form of domestication” that responds to the norms dominating translation in the receiving culture.

93

case of Max und Moritz by Wilhelm Busch translated from German into Hebrew¹¹¹. The two poles that define the initial norm for a text to be translated are either the need to produce a text that fulfils the demands of the target system, or a text that adheres to the characteristics of a pre-existing text in some other language that occupies a specific position in another system. These two possibilities are identified with translational acceptability in the first case, and translational adequacy in the second. Toury suggested that when children’s literature occupies a secondary position in the target polysystem¹¹² the choice of translators falls on acceptability rather than adequacy as they subject their

“decisions and solutions to the norms which draw on what has already become institutionalized in the target pole, with an almost automatically lessened extent of heed to the source’s textual relationships.” (Toury, 1980: 142)

So far, the theoretical standpoints in the field of translation studies and in translated children’s literature have shown that translations can influence the development of a literary system according to the position they occupy (primary or secondary), but also that the target audience of a translation becomes a fundamental component in the choice of strategies adopted by translators producing literature for children¹¹³.