Issues of Concern in the Study of Children’s Literature Translation

Abstract

The present paper focuses on issues of concern in the study of Children’s Literature Translation (ChLT). Attempting an overview from the years when ChLT was much ignored in the academic and non-academic world to the years that attention is paid to ChLT as a scientific field in its own right, the present paper illustrates issues that have generated intense and ongoing discussions. Issues such as the missionary role of ChLT, the theoretical framework of ChLT, the translator’s invisibility, low status, profile and royalties, translatability vs. untranslatability, ideology, censorship, manipulation, and ambivalence are visited in this paper. These issues have had a deep impact on key ChLT actors, processes, and products: the child-reader, the translator, the translated text, the translation process, the author, the publisher, etc.

The present text is a modest attempt to join efforts with the international community of scholars, translators, authors, children readers, publishers and other parties with an interest in ChLT, so as for the field to be given its merit in Translation, Comparative, Literary and Interdisciplinary Studies and for the translator –who had for long been much invisible and undervalued –to gain the place s/he deserves in history and society