Australian Children’s Literature in German Translation: Historical Overview, Key Themes and Trends

Abstract

By its very nature, literary production acts in response to the needs of its readers, in line with the social, cultural and political changes that occur within any society over time. As part of Gideon Toury’s ‘descriptive translation studies’ (DTS) model (1995–2012), translation scholars are invited to delve more deeply into the sociocultural conditions which shape translations into certain languages and cultures. In line with these models of analysis, many of the points made in this chapter illustrate the importance of social and cultural contexts (such as the operating mechanisms of different book markets and polysystems, including dominant politics and ideology) to translation exchange. As a first step, I explore the history of children’s literary translation from Australia to Germany, looking at the selection of fictional works (children’s and young adult novels) for translation during different periods, the development of the source market, the post-1945 period of division and change in the German target culture and the state of their literary interchange today. The focus then moves to the development of transnational exchanges since the start of the new millennium: what has been translated, and what pattern of cultural flow does it follow? (Much of the historical overview has been detailed in an earlier study. See Gerber, Leah. Tracing a Tradition: The Translation of Australian Children’s Fiction from 1945. St.Ingbert: Rohrig Universitatsverlag, 2014.).