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  • Translation and Transmedia in Children's Literature
  • Anna Kerchy (bio)

When Susan Bassnett and André Lefevere announced "the translation turn in cultural studies" in 1998, they prognosticated a major paradigm shift of the postmillennial era throughout which translation would provide a potent metaphor and efficient analytical framework to deal with socio-political transformations and upheavals like globalization, the post-9/11 crisis of multiculturalism, or migration—all concomitant with discursive conflicts necessitating cross-cultural negotiations. Preoccupied with the protection of the most endangered, vulnerable subjects of the populace, the interdisciplinary research of children's literatures and cultures has gained a considerable impetus from translation studies' strategies designed to balance the hegemonic power play involved in textual and social exchanges. Seminal works—like Riitta Oittinen's Translating for Children (2000), Emer O'Sullivan's Kinderliterarische Komparastik (2001), Jan Van Coillie and Walter P. Verschueren's Children's Literature in Translation (2006), or Gillian Lathey's The Role of Translators in Children's Literature: Invisible Storytellers (2010)—revealed how the formerly underestimated art of children's literature in translation may eventually open doors for future generations towards adventurous, empathic explorations of cultural differences and shared communal delight in finding consensual meanings grounded in transnational understanding, solidarity, trust, and imagination.

In fact, the translation turn ties in with "the digital turn," the ultimate epistemological and onto-logical challenge of the twenty-first century: as an ever-growing flood of digital information technologies radically transforms our understanding of the human world, building bridges between old and new media, material and virtual reality, computer and human intelligence, digital immigrants and digital natives holds unprecedented stakes (see Westera). Conjoining the methodological apparatuses of new media/adaptation studies and translation studies with those of children's and young adult literature criticism seems inevitable in a technologically enhanced epoch when young "prosumers" (Manovich 3) of cultural products grow up as native speakers of the digital language of computers, smart phone applications, online social media platforms, video games, and downloadable e-books.

Adaptations' media transition and translations' language change can be easily put in parallel: with Venuti's term, both are "creative derivative methods" ("Adaptation, Translation, Critique" 29) reenacting the meaning of a de/recontextualized source text that is inevitably modified in its content and form while remaining a dialogic reference point. Mediation—whether in the form of adaptation, translation, or remediation—allows for the reevaluation of a variety of notions ranging from authenticity, textuality, authorship, audience agency, age appropriateness, storytelling, or imaginativeness, while foregrounding the ideological interests, the educational and ethical responsibilities, and the semiological complexities involved in the trans(pos)ition process.

Henry Jenkins' 2007 definition of "transmedia storytelling"—a systematic dispersal of integral elements of a storyworld across multiple delivery channels which each make a unique, original contribution to a coordinated entertainment experience—in particular, encapsulates the worldbuilding strategies of most of today's popular children's literary/cultural products. The lure of Alice in Wonderland, the Little Prince, Harry Potter, or the Moomins is considerably enhanced by the plethora of interconnected media platforms—novel, film, animation, computer game, fanfiction, cosplay, collectibles, etc.—all of which maximize audience engagement by unfolding [End Page 4] an increasingly elaborate fictional reality. The way in which each media "adds a new cultural layer, supporting more diverse ways of communicating, thinking, feeling, and creating than existed before" (Clinton, Jenkins, McWilliams 11) resonates with how translation as an inventive "act of both inter-cultural and inter-temporal communication" (Bassnett, Translation Studies 9) allows us to see in different ways the original text that always already "bears in itself all possible translations and gets richer with each additional reading-rewriting," as Walter Benjamin put it (17).

Just how much the intricate interconnection of translation and transmediation preoccupies scholars of children's literatures and cultures today is illustrated by the impressive amount of submissions the call for papers of this special issue of Bookbird: A Journal of International Children's Literature has generated. The nearly fifty contributions we received dealt with an exciting variety of topics. Conforming to our call, some studied issues of globalization/localization/glocalization, ideological shifts and ethical agendas involved in "domesticating and foreignizing" translation strategies (Venuti, The Translator's...

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