Translation of Children's Literature as a Function of Its Position in the Literary Polysystem

Abstract

In this paper I intend to suggest some preliminary ideas concerning patterns of behavior of translated children's literature. My description will mainly be based on research I did on translations of children's literature into Hebrew. However, I do not intend to present in this article a full and detailed description of the subject, but rather to deal with the main patterns of behavior of translation of children's literature, which I believe are common to other national systems of children's literature as well. My point of departure will be the notion of literature as a polysystem (cf. Even-Zohar, 1978a). Assuming that children's literature is an integral part of the literary polysystem, I will try to show how the behavior of translations of children's literature is determined by the position of the children's literature system in the literary polysystem. Although research of children's literature is still in its formative stages, I have decided to deal with translated and not with original texts, because I believe it is more fruitful to do so when the question of norms of children's literature is at stake. Translational norms expose most clearly the constraints imposed on a text which enters the children's literature system, especially when dealing either with texts which were transformed from adult to children's literature or with texts