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: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2014.).
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Notes
- 1.
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: Röhrig Universitätsverlag, 2014.
- 2.
Several thousand Germans had settled in South Australia by the late 1840 s, arriving as early as 1838, only two years after its foundation, many to escape religious persecution in Germany.
- 3.
Der Auswanderer nach Südaustralien. Tangermünde: Verlag der G. Doeger’schen Buchhandlung, 1849.
- 4.
A term used by Even-Zohar in his discussion of polysystems theory: when a literature is weak, it imports types it is lacking via translation (1978/2012, p. 164).
- 5.
The consensus among children’s literary scholars and historians is that the first Australian children’s book was A Mother’s Offering to Her Children by a Lady Long Resident in New South Wales, published in 1841 (Foster et al., 3; Saxby, Offered to Children 12) and presumed to be written by a woman named Charlotte Barton.
- 6.
There may also be other external factors that influenced the selection of this text for translation: Howitt and his wife, Mary, were known friends of Danish children’s author Hans Andersen; Mary Howitt was actually the translator of Andersen’s Tales from Danish into English (Saxby, Offered to Children 70) and a children’s author in her own right. The Howitts had also lived in Germany, and William was the translator of Joseph Ennemoser’s The History of Magic (1854) as well as Peter Dietrich Holthaus’ Wanderings of a Journeyman Tailor through Europe and the East (1844) (Gerber, 2014, p.16).
- 7.
Interestingly, Seven Little Australians was first published in an English-language edition in Germany in 1915, titled “Two Tales for Beginners. Seven Little Australians. The Family at Misrule”. The volume in which this appeared was called Französische und Englische Schulbibliothek (French and English School Library). The German translation, which appeared as Villa Schlendrian oder Sieben kleine Australier by R & U Krebs was published in 1975, which most likely followed the successful television series Sieben kleine Australier, which first screened in West Germany in 1973.
- 8.
Hier, unmittelbar in diesen Räumen, tummelt sich eine Generation von Kindern, denen Hexen und Teufel, Menschenfresser und Bösewichte in vielfacher Gestalt begegnet waren. Kein Brot zum Essen, kein Bett zum Schlafen, Vater und Mutter tot, dies alles war Wirklichkeit für sie geworden (Lepman 1964, p.80).
- 9.
The developments in publishing were supported by the Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA), as one of the key organisations responsible for fostering the development of quality children’s literature in Australia. The CBYA was instrumental in promoting the international distribution and translation of Australian titles, with a significant number of CBYA winners having been translated into German.
- 10.
The 38 sovereign German states were replaced with one nation state under the leadership of Prussia and Chancellor Bismark. Germany lost the African, Asian and Pacific territories after the First World War, with the treaty of Versailles in 1919. It was one of the shortest empires of all modern colonisation, lasting only 30 years, yet by the late 1800s Germany had colonised parts of Africa in today’s Togo, Cameroon, Namibia and Tanzania, also acquiring smaller territories of East Asia and the Pacific, including Samoa and New Guinea, making it the fourth largest colonial empire after Britain, France and the Netherlands (Conrad 1-3).
- 11.
The latest instalment, After (2012), has not yet been translated into German.
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Gerber, L. (2018). Australian Children’s Literature in German Translation: Historical Overview, Key Themes and Trends. In: Nickl, B., Herrschner, I., Goździak, E. (eds) German-Australian Encounters and Cultural Transfers. Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-10-6599-6_9
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