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Article published In:
Babel
Vol. 67:6 (2021) ► pp.707–729

Translating in a constrained environment

Shaping genres, audiences and attitudes anew

| University of Warsaw

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.

Keywords: constraints, children’s literature, target audiences, genre, taboo
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2. Klär mich auf and its Polish translation
  • 3.Framework for the analysis: Translation constraints
    • 3.1Meta-translational constraints
    • 3.2ST-specific constraints
    • 3.3Translation problems
    • 3.4Context-specific constraints
    • 3.5Medium-specific constraints
    • 3.6System-based constraints
    • 3.7Ideology-based constraints
    • 3.8Audience-related and social constraints
  • 4.Conclusions
  • Note
  • References
Published online: 8 December 2021
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/babel.00244.red
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