Translating from and into Basque: The Case of Children’s Literature

Abstract

This article aims to provide an overview of the implications of translating children’s literature from and into Basque, a minority language with no more than a million speakers. Translation has always been a key activity for the Basque language. However, due to its coexistence with other hegemonic languages, that is Spanish and French, this translation activity exhibits some interesting characteristics worthy of closer analysis. The article focuses on the translation of children’s literature, which is a genre of special importance to Basque literature due to the fact that nearly one third of publications in Basque annually are classified as books for younger readers. The paper initially provides an overview of the work done in this field to date, along with an outline of the primary sociolinguistic implications to be taken into account with regard to analysis. Following this, the article presents the main results derived from Zubillaga’s PhD concerning the translation of German children’s literature into Basque. In addition, some of the features of children’s literature translation from Basque into other languages will also be explained. Finally, it is argued that when considering translation either from or into Basque it is vital to take into account indirect translations, i.e. the translations made using a mediating version as the source text. Indirect translation seems to have wide reaching implications for both the content and reception of translated books.