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  • The Role of Translators in Children's Literature: Invisible Storytellers by Gillian Lathey
  • Darja Mazi-Leskovar
The Role of Translators in Children's Literature: Invisible Storytellers by Gillian Lathey. London: Routledge, 2010. 241241 p. ISBN 978-0-414-98952-7

The more significant the international book exchange, the greater the role of translators of literature; this may sound like a catchphase but it is definitively true for most European literatures. Today children's books in English appear to be particularly attractive for readers outside English-speaking circles, which in turn too often appear to lack the interest in books from other cultures. Nevertheless, the gap between the two cultural circles is not so wide apart, as Gillian Lathey, reveals in her fine study The Role of Translators in Children's Literature: Invisible Storytellers. Her work shows that translations have represented an essential part of children's literature in the English language and that some aspects of the struggle for recognition of this fact can be compared to the issues other national literatures have been faced with.

Lathey, Director of the National Centre for Research in Children's Literature at Roehampton University London, systematically uncovers the issue of the invisibility of translators of children's literature, familiar to researchers of children's literature in continental Europe. Lathey's study comprises two parts. The first, containing 7 chapters, focuses on the main issues related to the historical perspective of the rendering of texts into English, from the earliest didactic texts to the translation of the tales of Perrault, the Grimm Brothers and Andersen. The second part, chapters 8 to 12, covers several aspects related to literary translation and presents the most prolific and renowned contemporary English translators.

Lathey illustrates the role played by translators in the migration of books from culture to culture and stresses that the total importance of translators of texts addressing children was recognized only after the translators of mainstream literature had been recognized to some extent. The peripheral situation of the translation of texts for children, typical of the UK, used to be typical also of continental Europe and most other countries worldwide. Among other features common to children's literature globally, it appears particularly important that "historical research on texts for children in specific [End Page 95] periods reveals the significance of translations" for general culture (3). Lathey shows that the entire English culture, the popular imagination, and the English language itself together combine to mirror the impact of translations. Additionally, the creativity of several domestic authors, among them Robert Louis Stevenson and E. Nesbit, was strongly fostered by translations.

Chapters 3 and 4, dealing with translations from French and German into English, describe a more specific English literary context that resonates with Great Britain's historic and geopolitical context. Nevertheless, if the role which French and German classics of children's literature had in European culture is taken into account, parallels with the described British situations can be found in any other country's children's literature where the works of the Brothers Grimm and Charles Perrault have become so familiar that they have become part of the national children's lore. Another feature that Lathey foregrounds in several chapters is that English children's literature and its translations have been closely connected with pedagogy. She thus highlights the aspect of translations typical also of texts translated and retranslated for young readers in other European cultures.

Chapter 5 focuses on the role of women as translators and is a prelude to a more extensive elaboration of the issue in Chapter 6, "The Translating Woman: Assertive Professional or Invisible Storyteller." This chapter conveys the image of a woman translator, and places stress on her inconspicuous position, something that is referred to also in the title of Lathey's study and confirms the views of Shavit and Venuti about the transparency and invisibility of translators. However, despite such a hidden role characteristic of women translators, the author reveals the extraordinary impact of Mary Howitt, the translator of Hans Christian Andersen's stories, and the importance of Andrew Lang's translator team, in which the role of his wife leanora is especially significant because she translated from...

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