SLOVENIAN CHILDREN’S AND YOUTH LITERATURE IN GERMAN TRANSLATION FROM 1921 TO 2020

Abstract

The article examines translation flows from Slovenian into German in the last hundred years (1921–2020), focusing on children’s and youth literature, especially prose as the most frequently translated literary genre. There are several reasons for choosing this research topic. First, although translated children’s and youth literature in general accounts for a large share of world publishing (Prodanović Stankić and Begonja 2021, 332), a detailed analysis of translated Slovenian children’s and youth literature has not yet been conducted. Second, German was chosen as the target language because Slovenian-speaking territory is most closely connected to German-speaking territory due to its active cultural, historical, political, and economic contacts. Third, over the centuries of translation into Slovenian, German language and literature had a great influence on the development of standard Slovenian, specialized terminology, and the emergence of new literary forms and genres (Kocijančič Pokorn 2008; Žigon, Almasy, and Lovšin 2017; Maček 2018; Žigon 2020). German as a foreign language continues to play an important role in Slovenia today. It is taught in schools as a second foreign language, right after English, and it is the second most common source or target language for the translation of literary works into or from Slovenian (Zlatnar Moe, Strsoglavec, and Žigon 2017, 172; JAK 2019, 24). Given Slovenia’s upcoming appearances as Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2023 and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2024, the number of translations from Slovenian into German has increased significantly in recent years. Among them, translations of children’s and youth literature account for a considerable part of the translated works. In the last decade (2011–2020), translation production has greatly increased in view of the two major book fairs in Frankfurt and Bologna. This focus on the German-language book market is also clearly expressed in the national strategy as part of Slovenia’s cultural policy since 2014 (Republika Slovenija 2013). Contemporary authors are being translated, including a rising star who was first discovered abroad through translations into Chinese: Manica Musil with her creative children’s books.