ABSTRACT
Louis Paul Boon (1912–1979), author of De Kapellekensbaan (1953; Chapel Road), is considered a major innovator of Dutch literature. In Germany, however, most of his books only appeared decades after the originals were published. The German Boon editions demonstrate that translation is an activity constituted by various actors in the source and target context. This chapter examines how different actors impacted the transfer of Boon's work into Germany and analyses which factors determine their practices. It does this via a case study of the German translation of Boon's 1972 novella Mieke Maaike's obscene jeugd (Mieke Maaike's obscene youth). The provocative, pornographic book was a success in the Dutch-speaking world. On the occasion of the 2016 Frankfurt Book Fair, where Flanders and the Netherlands were guests of honour, Alexander Verlag had planned to introduce the novella to the German market, but then decided to stop publication at the last minute. Arguing from a sociological perspective, the chapter demonstrates that the cultural conditions of the target context ultimately outweighed cultural mediators’ efforts to bring the translation to German, as the German edition evidently did not meet expectations in German society with regard to sexualised violence against children and young people.
