Introduction

Abstract

This chapter introduces the topic and aims of this work, that is exploring the cultural and ideological shifts that take place when translating children’s literature (ChL). When ChL is translated, the text is inevitably rewritten and recreated by translators from a target-oriented perspective and their mediation may reflect a certain degree of ideological manipulation. Translation, therefore, becomes a form of rewriting and adaptation and this is particularly true in the case of ChL whose stories and fairy tales are known and enjoyed worldwide. This work attempts to present different ways of looking at the translation of ChL from both an intralingual and an interlingual perspective as both types of translation may provide interesting insights into the ideological manipulation of source texts. The term ‘intralingual translation’ is used in this work not only in the strict sense of rewording as proposed by Jakobson in 1959 in his tripartite typology of translation but also as a form of rewriting within the same language in line with Lefevere’s claim that all translations are a form of rewriting. The texts chosen for the case studies were selected on the basis of their relevance to the issue of ideological manipulation and were classified into different types of ideologies, such as political, feminist, cultural and national ideologies as well as naming practices and censorship. This work does not deal with illustrations as it focuses on translation manipulation from a textual perspective rather than from a visual language perspective. The languages used in the illustrative case studies are English, Italian, French, Spanish and German. Yet the case studies are written in such a way as to allow comprehension even to readers who are not familiar with these particular languages through explanations.