Children’s Literature from the Balkans
How many books for children or young adults have you read that happen in any of the countries in the Western Balkans? How many of them have been written by Western Balkan authors and translated into English? I would imagine that the answer would be not many, if any. In my recent book The Translation of Violence in Children’s Literature: Images from the Western Balkans (2021, Routledge) I have tried to provide an overview of translated literature for children from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia), Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia in the period between 1991 (marking the fall of Yugoslavia) and 2017. The research identifies about 40 such translations published by various publishers in different English-speaking countries (US, the UK, and Australia) and English translations published in the source country, as well as a web platform with English translations of Bosnian fiction for children with more than 100 e-books of various genres.
Considering children’s literature as a powerful tool for the creation of national images, the study takes as the starting point one of the most persisting national images associated with this part of the world – the image of violence. Violence in this book is understood in its many forms – from physical violence as a force that is intended to hurt or kill, to structural violence which includes unequal powers built into the social structures such as gender inequalities or environmental injustice. Images are also considered in their duality as mental images created when reading the text and actual visual representations accompanying the text of the book as cover or inside illustrations. Where available, it also examines adaptations accompanying the translated book into the target society, such as documentaries, music scores and theatre performances. Finally, the discussion considers how a book is selected for translation, and how different participants (authors, editors, publishers, cultural institutions, translators, and illustrators) contribute to the whole process of translation, including their motivations and goals, as well as their location.
To do all these things, the monograph takes five case studies of English renditions of children’s literature from the Western Balkans as focus for in-depth analyses. The selected case studies cover books from five different countries including Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, and Montenegro, as well as five different types within children’s literature, including creative non-fiction, fiction, picture books, anthologies, and e-books. One of the most significant differences in the approach to translation and production of children’s literature and especially how violence is featured in the books selected for translation appeared to be greatly based on the location of the major stakeholders.
Although reaching bigger audiences due to better promotion, the books published in the UK and USA can be seen as dominated by war-related themes and imagery (Todorova 149). One of the most well-known books from the Western Balkans is Zlata Filipovic’s Zlata’s Diary (2006, Penguin Books), a diary of a young girl experiencing the Bosnian War among exploding bombs in Sarajevo, the capital of Bosnia. This book has seen several issues in English translation. We can observe that the war and violence-related representations in the English translation, over time, feature more prominently on the cover and in the text accompanying the book. Branko Ćopić’s picture book Hedgehog’s Home (2010, Istros Books) was published in English translation more than sixty years after its first publication in Serbo-Croatian in 1949. The English version preserves the original style with verses while downplaying death and war-related language. However, the translation frames the original post-war fable in environmental context giving the violence a new purpose to show the need to care for the natural habitat.
On the other hand, book production networks led by source-located stakeholders and published in English translation in the source culture can be seen as an attempt to promote a self-image of civilized, peace-loving and nature preserving peoples. Dimitar Bashevski’s Macedonian novel Anya’s Diary (2007, Slovo) which narrates the life of the Arbelski family from the perspective of their observant cat Anya presents an image of North Macedonia and Macedonians as urban, hospitable, and caring, or in other words ‘civilized,’ taking a stand against barbarism present among their neighbours (Todorova 150). Masculinity is prominent in the Croatian novel for young adults, Miro Gavran’s Teacher of My Dreams (2011, ITG). However, instead of presenting the stereotypically masculinized characteristics of the Balkans it promotes a message of an emotional, intellectual, and rational male role. This story written by a male author and told from the point of view of a male protagonist is translated by a female translator who further tones down the masculinized language. Lastly, the representation of the national image of Montenegro in an anthology of short stories for children is in the focus of the analyses of Beauty of All Times (1995, Association of Literary Translators of Montenegro) edited by Dušan Đurišić. Peace is in the core of the visual images and the texts of this translated anthology fully produced in Montenegro. However, the anthology fails to capture the diversity of the Montenegrin society.
The main reason to center this research in the area of children’s literature is to focus on a subject that is seldom the topic of multicultural analysis, while at the same time to provide insight into the mechanisms of identity development of self and others that are at play in books for children. Children’s books, especially those in translation, can either uphold the dominant discourse of stereotypical images or challenge these stereotypes and create new modern images. Therefore, translated children’s literature needs to be critically “unmasked” so as to prevent further perpetuation of just one set of images and to provide a more inclusive and comprehensive portrayal of the complexities of the source culture. This is particularly important in the case of the countries of the Western Balkans, because when we talk about images of the Balkans, we have to note that this region has continuously been (re)invented across a variety of discourses as ‘Europe’s dark side’. Despite the intensive work of raising our collective awareness about negative stereotypes, they still exist. We still accept negative assumptions about characters in books based on their cultural and geographical origin. However, because we try to provide modern children with a global picture--much needed in a world of instant communication and nearly instant transportation--“multiculturalism” has emerged as maybe one of the most commonly used words in the past decades. And reading translated books from different cultures are one way to achieve this.
Works Cited
Bashevski, Dimitar. Anya’s Diary. Trans. Will Firth. Slovo, 2007.
Ćopić, Branko. Hedgehog’s Home. Trans. Susan Curtis. Istros Books, 2011.
Djurišić, Dušan, ed. Beauty of All Times: An Anthology of Children’s Short Stories by Montenegrin Authors. Trans. Dragan Vugdelić. Association of Literary Translators of Montenegro, 1995.
Filipović, Zlata. Zlata’s Diary: A Child’s Life in Wartime Sarajevo. Trans. Christina Pribićević-Zorić. Penguin Books, 2006.
Gavran, Miro. The Teacher of My Dreams. Trans. Nina Key-Antoljak. ITG, 2011.
Todorova, Marija. The Translation of Violence in Children’s Literature: Images from the Western Balkans. Routledge, 2021.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Marija Todorova holds a PhD in Translation Studies from the Hong Kong Baptist University, Department of English Language and Literature and a PhD in Peacebuilding and Development Studies from the Ss Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, North Macedonia. Presently she is a research assistant professor at the Hong Kong Baptist University, Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies. She has authored The Translation of Violence in Children’s Literature: Images from the Western Balkans (Routledge 2022) and co-edited with Lucía Ruiz Rosendo two volumes: Interpreting Conflict: A Comparative Framework (Springer 2021) and Interpreter Training in Conflict and Post-Conflict Scenarios (Routledge, 2023). She is the editor of New Voices in Translation Studies and guest editor (with Kobus Marais) of Linguistica Antverpiensia (2022) special issue on Translation and Inclusive Development.
Twitter: @MarijaTodorova
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