ABSTRACT
There is a paradox at the heart of the translation of children’s literature: it is commonly held that books are translated in order to enrich the children’s literature of the target language and to introduce children to foreign cultures,1 yet at the same time that foreign element itself is often eradicated from translations which are heavily adapted to their target culture, allegedly on the grounds that young readers will not understand it. The translation of children’s literature is thus a balancing act between the adaptation of foreign elements to the child reader’s level of comprehension, and preservation of the differences that constitute a translated foreign text’s potential for enrichment of the target culture. The actual decisions made in this zone of conflicting aims by editors and translators depend on their assessment of child readers: how, and how far, should they convey elements from the source literature that are new and (as yet) unknown, factors that are linguistically and culturally foreign?
