Translating in a constrained environment

Translating children’s literature has been an object of interest researched from a number of vantage points, including the question of constraining factors. Scholars have highlighted mainly the question of dual readership or cultural adaptation, frequently without a global and systemic analysis of all impediments. This article examines the Polish translation of the German book for children, Katharina von der Gathen’s Klär mich auf, from a constraint-based framework. This article focuses on the reconstruction of the constraints in the translation process: the point of departure is the framework with three basic factors that constrain translation, i.e., the intention of the author/translator, text type, and the profile of the audience. The presented argumentation incorporates other formal impediments, such as the visual layer of the book and the semiotic make-up of the source text, language taboo and censorship or the literary polysystems. The analysis of the constraint framework helps to comprehend the translation in terms of the ST-TT relationship regarding their intended audiences, genre-related features, and the child-adult duality.