Czech adaptations of children’s literature written in English
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| Year of publication | 2010 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Citation | |
| Description | The paper deals with selected Czech translations/adaptations of classical children’s texts written in English. It compares the various strategies their translators used, including translating via German, a practice common at the dawn of Czech translation from English. Old Czech versions of the books are compared with their modern counterparts to identify tendencies in norms and implications for the position and development of the system of literature for children within the cultural/literary polysystem. These are manifested in the texts by the choice of language means, motif selection, shifts in target groups etc. The texts discussed are among the first books transferred from English into Czech: Robinson Crusoe (Joachim Campe); Alice in Wonderland (four Czech translations), texts by Lofting, Marryat, Thomas Day, and others. The paper further looks at the concept of “classical” texts itself and its development in time, discusses the choice of texts for translation/adaptation and suggests that it may be – to a certain degree – looked upon as a large-scale adaptation of the original literature. Just as “adaptations proper”, this choice reflects didactic, ideological, artistic and other norms of the receiving culture. |