engleski

The status of illustrations in Croatian translations of children's classics

The paper presents a longitudinal study of the visual discourses of Croatian translations of children’s classics from the English-speaking world. It focuses on establishing possible trends in using the original illustrations from the source texts or providing new illustrations in individual publication target texts. The paper discusses various implications of publishers’ choices regarding the inclusion or replacement of the original illustrations for narrative and literary meanings of specific works. Some of the source texts, such as Lewis Carroll’s Alice books and, generally, picturebooks, strongly depend in their overall significance on the original illustrations, on the selection of visually presented scenes and on their ingrained intermediality. Translators adopt various strategies to cope with cultural and stylistic aspects of the source text and convey meanings into the target text in a way they consider appropriate for the target readerships, so that semantic shifts are almost inevitable ; these shifts are even more often perceived in translations of children’s literature. In addition, illustrations in children’s books usually carry important narrative and cultural meanings, which may become rather fragile in translation, especially when the original illustrations are changed or replaced. The results of this investigation reveal a rather low level of awareness of Croatian publishers, translators, and even illustrators, of the importance, relevance, and the meaning potential of pictures in children’s books.

children’s literature translation ; children’s classics ; illustration ; intermedality ; publishing trends

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