ABSTRACT

This chapter presents the practical applications of the translation principles were much more complex and diverse than the theory suggested, especially in the case of children's literature. The battle against "literalism" was eventually won, and a victorious and somewhat smug feeling emerged among theorists that the Soviet school had found a golden mean, a universal standard for translation. When talking about translation in the Soviet Union, it is worth mentioning that prose and poetry were treated quite differently. By the middle of the twentieth century, prose translations were almost exclusively done by professional translators, not authors of original fiction. Children's literature was treated more like poetry, with a far greater degree of freedom than was acceptable in prose translations, and as a result works of children's literature underwent very considerable changes in translation. Self-censorship was performed reluctantly, with translators typically trying to save as much of the original text as possible.