Entry | Children's and young people's literature

SPA Literatura infantil y juvenil

Introduction

The field of research into the translation of children's and young adults' literature (CYL) is relatively young because for a long time it was not considered true literature (Fischer 2003: 165). However, the sheer volume of CYL translations published annually justifies dedicating its own space in the academic field.

The first question to be addressed when discussing translation of CYL from a research point of view is to delimit what this type of literature is and what it encompasses as there seems to be a lack of consensus among specialists. We must remember that CYL has undergone a notable evolution from its origins to the present day, which we will divide into three stages. Obviously, these changes have also significantly conditioned its translation.

The first stage is characterized by the lack of texts written specifically for children, who "borrowed" texts from the adult literary system. In the second stage, we see the emergence of writing specifically for the child audience, but it had a strong pedagogical component. And in the third stage, when attention began to be paid to the real characteristics and needs of children, without losing its pedagogical component, texts were adapted to the new times and the new problems of modern societies.

When engaging with CYL it is necessary to take into account the idiosyncrasies of the official addressees: we must bear in mind that it was not until the 18th century that the concept of the child and childhood was developed by Rousseau, who proclaimed that youngsters have their own special nature and inhabit a world of their own, which results in distinctive needs such as requiring their own literature. The next step, however, was to generate texts for children, defined by considerations of what the child needs. Beliefs about the characteristics and requirements of children's literature have evolved over time and, consequently, so did the approach to its translation. Indeed, from an academic point of view, many aspects affect its translation, such as: the limited receptive capacity of children when reading; the systems of norms and conventions that have surrounded this type of literature since its origins and which emanate directly from the concept of childhood and youth in each era; the image-text interaction in the case of picture books; the presence of taboo subjects in texts aimed at children and young people; the particular communicative structure of children, which refers to adult mediation between the original author and the target child addressee (O'Sullivan 1991: 5); the increasingly frequent duality of the addressees, which envisages the adult as a target rather than as a mediator; the cultural asymmetry between the original and target cultures, materialized in the texts by cultural references unknown to the target audience, etc.

All these aspects undoubtedly reflect the difficulties associated with the translation of literary texts.

Problems of delimiting children’s and young people’s literature

The lack of a definition of CYL (Fernández 1996: 19) is due to the wide range of proposed criteria that this form of literature must meet, and this has made its delimitation difficult. For a long time, the sheer existence of CYL has been questioned (Townsend 1980: 196) and if it constitutes a literary system, or whether CYL is instead a minor system within literature itself, which has led to the idea that CYL is in turn somewhat minor (Kenfel, Vázquez, García et al.1995: 35). Others considered it a Durchgangsliteratur (Doderer 1990: 18), that is, a "transitional literature" towards "real literature". The insistent effort to define and characterize it, the presence of a different addressee with its own characteristics and needs, and the numerous works on the history of CYL support the thesis that it constitutes a literature with its own space. Nikolajeva (1996: 7) defines it as that which is "written, published, marketed and treated by specialists with children as primary target".

Oneiric world of CYL. Source.

We should keep in mind that the first texts read by or to children were folktales, in the absence of other texts written specifically for them. Thus, when writing for children began, many of the characteristics of these folktales, such as their narrative simplicity, were seen as the narrative model most suited to children’s limited literary abilities (Colomer 1998: 58). These early texts evolved to adapt to the reality of each era and reflected the social changes that were taking place: "Children's literature changes as the social situation changes just as it is influenced by predominant pedagogical notions of a given era" (Dahrendorf 1974: 67). In short, CYL has evolved from a strong moralizing character to indoctrinate children in ethical and pedagogical values towards a need to fulfil their desire to read and to subsequently become an instrument of socialization, entertainment, and amusement.

Another reason that explains the difficulty in delimiting CYL is the characteristics of its main target audience. Children are at a rapidly evolving stage in their development, yet possess relatively limited linguistic and world knowledge. At the same time they are in continuous expectation of novelty in a point in life which is filled with new experiences in significant areas such as the family, school, etc. For Kenfel, Vázquez, García et al. (1995: 11) their spiritual and intellectual life must evolve gradually, children should form their life experiences at their own pace and allow their personalities to develop. Since these target audiences are in a process of development, texts written for them present different degrees of readability and complexity, to which the translator must adapt.

One issue that has posed a problem for its delimitation is the different functions that have been assigned to the CYL from different spheres and at different times, summarized by Marcelo (2007) as follows:

Pedagogical function: CYL teaches values and contents.
Artistic, aesthetic or literary function that introduces children to the world of art, teaches them to play with imagination and fantasy, to be creative and to see beyond the purely everyday (Marcelo 2007: 27-28).
Linguistic function: promotes the learning of a language.
Socializing function: it integrates children or young readers into the society which they form part of (Bortolussi 1985: 42).
Psychological function, which emerged at the end of the 20th century: it helps them to understand problems and difficult situations in their daily lives (sexuality, drugs, family problems, etc.)
Informative function: they open them up to new worlds of science, history, art, etc.
Cultural function: it shows the culture in which the book was created.
Playful function: it entertains children, young readers, and adults.

Adult presence in children’s and young people’s literature

Throughout history, adults have always been instrumental in this type of literature and in its translation, and this can be substantiated in different ways.

Asymmetry

The relationship between authors and translators –adults– and the official addressees –children and young people– has often been defined as one of asymmetry (Reiß 1982; Shavit 1986; Hollindale 1997; Fischer 2003). CYL authors write for an audience with different characteristics and needs, as do translators. O'Sullivan (2003) explains that the process of publishing translated texts for children and young people involves the implied OT author, who creates a text for the implied OT addressee, and the translator, who creates a text in the target culture immersed in the conventions of that culture, but without creating an entirely new message. This means that the voice of the original author and that of the translator are always present in the target texts. The translator's involvement can be seen at a paratextual level, through prefaces or metalinguistic explanations, and at a discursive level, through what O'Sullivan calls the "voice of the translator's narrator", which manifests itself through modifications in the translations with respect to the OT (descriptions, condensations or amplifications of information, cultural adaptations present in the translation that were not present in the OT, etc.) (O’Sullivan 2003). These changes respond to the view that the target child does not understand all the information contained in the OT, usually because of the cultural asymmetry between the two sets of customs as well as his or her lack of life experience.

Reiss (1982) understands that the translation problems in texts for children are the same as in texts for adults, but as a result of the asymmetry between the translator and the child, these problems should be dealt with differently.

Mediation

Adults have always mediated between the author and the child or young reader of an original text or a translation of CYL, be they educators, librarians, parents, editors, or translators (Townsend 1980: 194). This mediation translates into the fact that, directly or indirectly, the adult imposes a system of norms and conventions on how he or she believes texts for children and young people should be in the literary system. In other words, it has constituted a filter between author and addressee that has conditioned their creation, publication and translation. The adult, the implicit addressee, acts on behalf of the children, the official addressees, and in this role chooses what literature they will have access to.

Thus, the CYL is not only addressed to the children and young readers, but also to the adult intermediary who decides whether the book –original or translation– should reach the children and young readers. Pascua (2011: 34) raises this presence of the adult in CYL as one of the difficulties in translating for children and young people because we have to take into account the parents who buy the books, teachers who recommend them, booksellers who choose to put them on their shelves, etc. These intermediaries therefore come between the author and the child and, consequently, translating for children is the result of a combination of different systems within a culture: social, educational, literary and commercial (Pascua 2011).

Dual addressee

Although still in a minority, there are more and more examples of CYL – and other audiovisual content – in which the adult no longer plays solely the role of mediator, but also that of addressee, or dual addressee (O'Sullivan 1993, Martínez 2014, Marcelo and Morales 2015). This duality is manifested through winks and messages, which children do not understand due to their limited life experience, and which the authors address to adults through puns, intertextual references, irony, sarcasm, humor, criticism, etc. (Marcelo and Morales 2015). Works such as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll 1865) or Manolito Gafotas (Lindo 1994) are good examples of how certain messages present in CYL texts are only understood by adults. This mechanism is used by some authors to convey messages that go beyond the boundaries of the children's audience and aspire to reach an adult reading public too (Martínez 2014: 26). This new reality of the CYL alters the conditions of the translation of these texts, as a hitherto unknown function is added: to entertain the adult audience.

When translating these texts, the translator must try to preserve the author's intention to send messages to the adult in a text for children and young people and in a culturally different context.

"Adaptation" versus "translation”

In the translation of literary fiction, a distinction has often been made between adaptation and translation. While both are ways of translating a text, the distinction comes from the degree of manipulation to which it is subjected, which in the case of adaptation is considerably high, shows a clear departure from the original, and does not always take place between different languages, i.e. when an adult text is adapted for children in the same language.

Arising from the idea that adaptation is disloyal to the original text, Göte Klingberg (1978), one of the forerunners of the debate, considers that the author has already adapted his work for a child audience, which he calls the degree of adaptation, and therefore does not envisage a new adaptation in the target language. For this reason, he only accepts translation. However, he does accept the manipulations he calls purification, which he defines as modifications and abridgements to adapt texts to the values of the target culture, and modernisation, a local or temporary approximation of the text to the target context (1978: 86-87) to protect the child reader.

As regards the level of manipulation, Shavit (1981, 1986) applies the polysystem theory to children's literature and its translation to mitigate this distinction. She places this type of literature on the periphery of the literary system since it is canonised literature, which gives authors and translators more freedom to manipulate or adapt the texts to fit the norms and conventions of the target system:

Unlike contemporary translators of adult books, the translator of children's literature can permit himself great liberties regarding the text, due to the peripheral position of children's literature within the literary polysystem. [...] One of the most interesting manifestations of text adjustment are those elements that the translator finds necessary to add to the original. These added elements are the best indicators of the force of constraints on the model, since adding new elements to an already shortened text implies that the translator regards them as indispensable to the model. Additions are thus needed to reinforce the model, and their inclusion reveals even more than deletions do which elements are considered obligatory for the target model.

(Shavit 1986: 112-121)

Shavit herself explains this manipulation in terms of two principles: adapting the text (language, plot and structure) to the reading abilities of children and adapting it to the ideology of a society based on what it considers is good for the children (1986: 30); i.e., adapting it to the norms and conventions of the target language to ensure its acceptability. For Nord (1993a), this degree of manipulation, which determines whether it is adaptation or translation, oscillates between formal fidelity or formal freedom. Fischer (2003) believes that the choice between one or the other category depends on the textual type, the function of the target text and the intended audience. This author (2003: 154), drawing on the functional approach of Reiß and Vermeer (1984) and Nord (1993a), argues that the translation/adaptation dichotomy is related to the function of the CYL, which largely sets the norms and conventions for literary translation. For Fischer, these norms are more rigid in CYL than in adult’s literature (2003: 157) and, in choosing between translation or adaptation, the translator makes decisions under the influence of textual conventions, preconditions, economic pressures, etc. He also believes that the difference between translation and adaptation is determined by the decisions made by the translator, conditioned by the principles of functionality and loyalty, and we cannot speak of translation, but of adaptation, when the original author's intention is not respected (2003: 159).

Ilustración de John Tenniel para Alicia en el País de las Maravillas

Illustration by John Tenniel in Alice in Wonderland.

In the same line of thought, Oittinen (2000: 77) specifies that "translation is often found faithful to the original, while an adaptation is not" because it implies change or alteration of the original, which is still seen as the authority that cannot be modified. However, she argues that "all translators, if they want to be successful, need to adapt their texts according to the presumptive readers. And yet translators can never be quite sure of how the readers are actually going to read the translation" (Oittinen 2000: 78-79). The author (Oittinen 2000: 103) tries to settle the controversy by arguing that "when translating, we are always adapting our texts for certain purposes and certain readers, both children and adults".

The reason that triggers this debate lies in the term adaptation itself. After what might be considered an excessively "invasive" beginning with the source texts, which were hardly recognizable compared to their adaptations for children and young readers, the term took on too many negative connotations that still generate rejection within the translation field. Some experts have tried to reverse these negative connotations of the term, such as Bloom (1980, in Oittinen 2000: 79): "Every time a story is told, in translation, in illustration or by reading aloud, it takes on new meanings, new life. Thus, the difference between original and adaptation does not necessarily lie in the 'originality' of the original". In short, texts that were once considered translations at another historical moment can now be regarded as versions or adaptations (Pascua 2011: 29).

Censorship in the translation of children’s and young people’s literature

When dealing with CYL and its translation, the issue of censorship always arises, both of original works and their translations. As noted above, since its inception, CYL has been conditioned by prevailing ideologies in a certain context about how it should or should not be. This censorship can begin simply with 'non-translation' by editorial or governmental policy, such as forbidding the translation of Robinson Crusoe (Defoe 1719) in Spain in 1756 by the Tribunal de la Fe (Pascua 2011: 20).

The reasons why some kind of censorship is carried out are usually based on the fear of what is different, of what is strange, or the rejection of those ideological, political or religious elements that clash with or delegitimize the values of the prevailing systems in place in a given geographical and historical context. CYL is a clear example of this censorship, in which translations of stories from other countries have often been considered a danger to national values, as Emilia Pardo Bazán (1893, in Bravo-Villasante 1985: 127) stated:

In Spain there is no collection of stories for children that has a national character [...]; we live on borrowed time, depending on France and Germany, who send us things that are very strange and contrary to the nature of our country, and instead of our classic witches, giants, and enchanters, they make us learn about ogres, elves and other beings. [Our translation].

In the specific case of the translation of CYL, censorship responds to the prevailing ideologies and beliefs of the target culture, especially in relation to the needs of the child reader at the time. For example, due to the indoctrinating messages inherent in CYL since its birth in the 17th century, Pascua focuses on the censorship of CYL in Spain and affirms that since it was considered a minor literature, any kind of manipulation was justified (2011: 56). Spain offers other clear examples of censorship. In the sixties, the boom of translations of CYL began in this country, especially from English. This resulted in foreign literature for children being censored with even more impetus, if possible, with subjective and arbitrary rejections (Pascua 2011: 115) that affected all kinds of elements that were not considered "appropriate" within the system at the time. There are many examples of censorship in CYL, such as the "expulsion" of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Mark Twain 1885) in the 19th century from a Public Library in the United States for considering the book "immoral and offensive", with "vulgar and ignorant" language; more recently the prohibition in some countries of works by Roald Dahl, such as James and the Giant Peach (1961) or Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964) for encouraging violence and drug use; the accusations against Harry Potter (J. K. Rowling 1997-2007) in countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United States or Canada of inciting witchcraft or alluding to the Devil (Corona Aguilar, 2012).

In the field of translation, this censorship can affect specific elements, images, messages, etc. and can be carried out in different ways:

By not translating a work.
By eliminating elements, paragraphs, or entire chapters of the OT in the TT.
By changing certain elements of the original culture for others that are "more suitable" in the target culture.
Or by changing entire messages adapted to the norms and conventions of the target culture.

As we can see, censorship is not something that only happened in the past or is exclusive to totalitarian regimes. Even today, both the creation and translation of children's books continue to show a clear ideological weight and suffer some form of censorship by institutions; self-censorship by the author due to social changes or the desire to reach a wider audience; censorship by the translator himself or by publishers, parents, teachers, booksellers and librarians who, for ideological reasons, allow or veto a series of readings that they consider inappropriate for children and young people (Pascua 2011: 117); the censorship of political correctness that forces us to avoid content that may offend certain groups, as happened with the translations of Manolito Gafotas into English, (Travalia 2019), etc.

Visibility and invisibility of the translator

Venuti (1995) introduced the notion of translator’s invisibility to refer to the illusionistic effect of the translator's discourse and the practice of editors, proofreaders, etc. in Anglo-American culture to judge a translation "acceptable" if it read fluently. But this point of view is not unique to the Anglo-Saxon world.

In the field of CYL, perhaps to an even greater extent than in adult’s literature, the invisibility of the translator has also prevailed, so much so that for a long time it was advocated that the translator of children's stories should go unnoticed. The demand to make the translation appear like an original, to make the translator invisible, has had many advocates in the field of children's literature, such as Klingberg (1978), who believes that translators should ‘mute’ their voices and limit themselves to repeating the intentions of the original author, although, contradictorily, he does accept visibility when it comes to adaptations.

Oittinen was the first to break with this invisibility in CYL and defends the authorship of translation and the right of translators to be visible:

In my view, the best way to show respect to the readers of translation, and to raise the value of translation, is to stress the importance of the translator's role as a reader and writer and, especially, as an interpreter of the text. As Barbara Godard points out, a translation should be fiction in its own right: ‘Translation is production... not reproduction’.

(Oittinen 2000: 97)

O'Sullivan (2003), Marcelo (2007) and Pascua (2010, 2011) also claim the right of translators of CYL to be visible, to stop hiding and thus recognize authorship over their own texts. For Pascua (2011: 34) the TT acquires a life of its own and begins to function in the target culture. She considers that the translator not only transfers words but also creates a new text from the words of the original to function in another culture and should therefore be considered a socio-cultural mediator and author of his or her own translation (ibid.: 34-35).

This visibility must manifest itself on three different levels. Firstly, at the "social" level in the sense that it is important to convey to the public that the text is a translation in order to revalue the role of the translator as a necessary intermediary and author of his or her own text. Secondly, visibility can be manifested at the textual level using mechanisms that make it clear that a text is a translation: "This 'call to action' to translators has been for visibility by the use of non-fluent, non-standard and heterogenous language, by producing foreignized rather than domesticated texts" (O'Sullivan 2003: 198). And thirdly, this visibility can be materialized at the paratextual level through footnotes or forewords; mechanisms that have always been discarded in translations of CYL due to the characteristics of the target audience, or also by incorporating the translator's name both in the credits and on the cover of the translations.

The role of the translator of literary and non-fiction texts has been revalued in recent decades thanks, to a large extent, to the application of these mechanisms of visibility and, to a lesser extent perhaps, to the use of foreignizing strategies that make it clear that we are dealing with translations.

Adequacy versus acceptability

Translation of CYL has oscillated between the poles: adequacy, or adherence to the norms of the original system, and acceptability, or adherence to the norms of the target system (Toury 1995). In the evolution of translation of CYL, there has been a clear shift from the dominance of the OT over the translation process to a focus on the addressee of the translation: the child or young person. A clear example of this shift was offered by Shavit when she applied this model to the translation of CYL and established that, for the child to accept a text, it must conform to a series of principles of the target children's literary system: "[...] the affiliation of the text to existing models; the completeness of the primary and secondary models of the texts; the degree of complexity and sophistication of the text; the adjustment of the text to ideological and didactic purposes; and the style of the text" (1986: 115).

In this sense Pascua and Marcelo (2000: 32) think that a target text must be acceptable to and accepted by the child reader. Consequently, the translator needs to make all the changes he or she considers appropriate when taking into account the limited life experience of the child audience. Acceptability clearly refers to the strong, deep-rooted literary systems into which translations are incorporated, and it has usually been demanded that CYL should adhere to existing models in these literary systems, whereas in the case of weak – young – systems there will be room for innovation and foreignization. According to Shavit (1986), the translator of CYL tends to seek acceptability in the target literary and linguistic system, rather than conformity to the norms of the original system. In practice, this translates into a greater degree of manipulation, as we have seen above, to make the target text "acceptable".

Clearly, these postulations refer to the differences between the source and target cultures and, above all, to the prevailing norms in each of these systems. For example, North American culture is very protective of child readers and rejects the presence of allusions to topics such as sexuality, violence, foul language, etc. in texts for this audience (Marcelo 2016; Travalia 2019); Spanish texts, on the other hand, accept them more naturally.

While Toury's concept of acceptability refers to the affiliation to the norms of the target literary system, another approach to acceptability is that of Puurtinen, who describes it as the search for a dynamic style that is "highly readable and speakable" and points out the following as relevant dimensions of acceptability: "readability, speakability and conformity to the stylistic expectations of adult readers" (1989: 7-8). In other words, it considers acceptability from the point of view of the children and young people for whom the translation is intended, bearing in mind the characteristics, needs and interests of the different age groups. This means, for example, that for younger readers the skills of reading and telling a story aloud (readability and speakability) are more important than they would be for older children.

Dialogism

One of the most relevant approaches in the field of CYL translation is the theory of "dialogism" proposed by Oittinen (1993, 2000), an author, illustrator, and translator of picture books for children, departing from the dialogue theories of Mikhail Bakhtin (1979) and Hans Georg Gadamer (1985). She argues for a dialogue of the author –and the translator– with someone who does not exist in flesh and blood, whom she calls a "super-addressee" (2000: 24). For Oittinen, translators of CYL maintain a dialogue with "the history of childhood, the child of their time, the former and present child within themselves –the adult's childhood and how they remember it" (Oittinen 2000: 26). She considers that OT and TT coexist in a dialectical relationship and sees translation of the CYL as a dialogical process, especially in the relationship between words –the verbal–, and illustrations –the visual.

This interaction between words and pictures is a construction in the mind of the reader that forms a unit in a given context and situation, so that "translators need to have the ability to read pictures, too, in the same way as they need the ability to read and write foreign written and spoken languages" (Oittinen 2000: 100-101). Pictures influence words, how we interpret text and vice versa, and words influence how pictures and illustrations are perceived (Oittinen 2000: 108-109).

From a functionalist position, she insists on the importance of the global situation in which every translation is framed and puts the emphasis on the reader, that is, for whom it is translated: "Translations are always influenced by what is translated by whom and for whom, and when, where, and why" (Oittinen 2000: 12). She understands that the function of the translation is always different from that of the original "because the readers of the texts, the original and the translation, are different: they belong to different cultures, they speak different languages, and they read in different ways" (Oittinen 2000: 12).

Another focus of Oittinen's approach is to see a text as a dynamic object that evokes different responses at each reading. It starts from the reading experience of the translator and the translator's imagined future readers, a dialogue with readers who do not yet exist for the translator: the child who listens and the adult who reads aloud. For Oittinen, the reading experience is dialogical, and the word is born of a dialogue between texts, human beings, and the world around them. When translating for children, she includes the children who read and listen in this dialogue and the translator must anticipate the possible responses and reactions of the reader.

Pascua (2011: 34) follows Oittinen's dialogical line and states that translators must be part of this dialogue, intervene and change the text motivated by a communicative intertextuality which she defines as the lack of presuppositional-cultural knowledge, the non-coincidence of verbal and non-verbal behavioral norms and, finally, the non-coincidence of textual conventions (ibid.).

Translator paternalism

Translation practice of children's literature has been dominated by a "protective" vision of adults towards children, conditioned by the characteristic didacticism of this literature. Lorenzo describes this approach as translator paternalism:

Translators act paternalistically when producing the target text (TT). They include elements that the author had left implicit in the OT, explain (through intertextual paraphrases, footnotes, etc.) certain referents or allusions that they consider difficult for young recipients to understand, or when they go even further and intentionally eliminate references or allusions to aspects that they consider harmful to the young reader.

(Lorenzo 2014: 36). [Our translation].

This paternalism does not only concern the translator, but also the other agents in the process, such as editors and dubbing directors, who modify the target texts according to their idea of what is appropriate for the viewer, what they think he/she can understand, etc. This approach was already evident in Klingberg's (1978) "purifications", when he advocated the elimination of taboo subjects such as death, erotic elements, alcohol, bad manners, etc. For Oittinen (2000: 90) this purification – or paternalism – can be carried out by eliminating isolated elements, scenes from the text or complete stories by simply not publishing them, in short, by censoring.

Lorenzo (2004: 37) distinguishes two basic paternalistic behaviors: (a) omissive paternalisms as a consequence of preliminary rules, which may result in the non-publication of a book, or of operational rules by suppressing elements considered harmful or offensive in the translation itself; b) explanatory paternalisms to facilitate the understanding of texts for those recipients who, due to age or disability, have more limited linguistic skills and 'knowledge of the world', by means of the inclusion of paratexts, intratextual explanations, explanations of elements implicit in both the OT and the TT, substitutions of some elements by others to facilitate understanding, domestications, etc.

Translation of cultural references

The main source of comprehension problems in children's texts has been the cultural asymmetry between the culture of the OT and that of the TT. This is reflected in the presence of cultural references in the OT which are unknown to the children in the target system. This obstacle is supported not only by the postulation that child readers have limited receptive skills but with the prevailing ideology of each system on what children's books should be like, and has given rise, in translation practice, to the adaptation of many cultural references present in the OT for the sake of the acceptability of the target text.

However, the study of how cultural references are translated in children's literature deserves attention due to the lack of a consensus on how these elements should be translated into the target culture in children's literature (Marcelo 2007).

Their function in the original text is clear: they represent a specific textual world and refer to a specific culture, usually that of the author of the OT, which allows for identification between text and reader (Nord 1993b: 396-397) and reflect the culture of a particular people and a particular time (Pascua 2011: 37). The characteristics of children and young readers, as well as those of their texts, do not allow the use of the same translation strategies (explanatory notes, prefaces, clarifications inserted in the texts, etc.) that are used in texts for adults when it comes to overly complex cultural references for children and young people.

Furthermore, Marcelo (2007) notes a clear lack of application of generalized strategies to a text when it comes to transferring these references in texts for children’s and young people’s literature. In other words, some references are domesticated, others are foreignized and others are neutralized – they lose all their cultural weight – within the same text, which reflects the absence of a global strategy for the translation of these elements. The cultural function of these references in CYL is lost with this lack of a unified criterion when these elements are translated, as Fischer (2003) and Marcelo (2007) have shown.

Research potential

Translation of CYL has been studied from various fields, focusing on specific translation problems. However, there are still many areas in which little research has been done.

The translation of CYL has been conditioned by approaches that are often too pedagogical and lack an empirical basis. Therefore, more field work is needed on the reception of translated texts at different times or to analyze how translations are perceived by recipients of different ages, depending on the translation problem, the function assigned to the text, the type of text (illustrated story, audiovisual text, novel, etc.) or the translational approach.

The presence of the intermediary adult between the text and the addressee has materialized in different ways over the years in the OT and, consequently, also in the translations. On the one hand, in the beginning, writing, and translating for children sought the approval of the mediator adult, so that he or she would not reject the text and prevent it from reaching the child reader, which has often been a form of censorship and self-censorship. On the other hand, in the last few decades, we have seen an evolution of this adult, who no longer represents so much a mediator between the text and the recipient, but rather a second addressee of these texts. Authors address these adults with messages in the form of winks, intertextual references, cultural references, social criticism, wordplay, humor, etc. that children will not necessarily understand. These scenarios offer countless avenues of study from different approaches: depending on the type of message intended for adults, textual restrictions, expectations of children's texts rooted in the target cultures, among others.

Links of interest: ANILIJ, Book Trust, IBBY, IJB, OEPLI.