ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of translation theory and its application to the specificity of children's literature. It discusses the strategies of normalization and explicitation adopted by translators in responding to the requirement for comprehensibility and readability. Translated children's literature in the literary polysystem is considered by Z. Shavit to be an ideal methodological tool for examining norms of writing for children, because the constraints imposed on a text are made clearer through analysis of translation norms. T. Puurtinen refers to the capacity of translated children's literature to perform a possible innovatory role in initiating linguistic change via new norms. The chapter analyzes the implications of practices of deletion and addition within the context of the didactic aims of children's literature and the constraints of the stylistic norm for high literary style or 'literariness'. M. J. Norst identifies the social context of translation as the key factor in differentiating between translating for adults and for children.
