SLOWENISCHE KINDER- UND JUGENDLITERATUR IN DEUTSCHER ÜBERSETZUNG VON 1921 BIS 2020
SLOVENIAN CHILDREN’S AND YOUTH LITERATURE IN GERMAN TRANSLATION FROM 1921 TO 2020

Summary/Abstract: The article examines translation flows from Slovenian into German in the last hundred years (1921–2020), focusing on children’s and youth literature, especially prose as the most frequently translated literary genre. There are several reasons for choosing this research topic. First, although translated children’s and youth literature in general accounts for a large share of world publishing (Prodanović Stankić and Begonja 2021, 332), a detailed analysis of translated Slovenian children’s and youth literature has not yet been conducted. Second, German was chosen as the target language because Slovenian-speaking territory is most closely connected to German-speaking territory due to its active cultural, historical, political, and economic contacts. Third, over the centuries of translation into Slovenian, German language and literature had a great influence on the development of standard Slovenian, specialized terminology, and the emergence of new literary forms and genres (Kocijančič Pokorn 2008; Žigon, Almasy, and Lovšin 2017; Maček 2018; Žigon 2020). German as a foreign language continues to play an important role in Slovenia today. It is taught in schools as a second foreign language, right after English, and it is the second most common source or target language for the translation of literary works into or from Slovenian (Zlatnar Moe, Strsoglavec, and Žigon 2017, 172; JAK 2019, 24). Given Slovenia’s upcoming appearances as Guest of Honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2023 and the Bologna Children’s Book Fair in 2024, the number of translations from Slovenian into German has increased significantly in recent years. Among them, translations of children’s and youth literature account for a considerable part of the translated works. The main research questions of this study are therefore: a) How many Slovenian books for children and youth were translated into German in different periods of history? b) In which periods within the last hundred years (1921–2020) did translation activity particularly increase or decrease? c) What were the main factors that influenced translation activity? According to Sapiro (2008, 158), the international dissemination and distribution of literature mainly depend on translations, which is why they are central to any intercultural relationship (Ožbot 2012, 14). In a sociological sense, translations represent“ a function of the social relations between language groups” (Heilbron 2000, 10), with power relations between different language groups reflecting political, economic, and cultural power associations (Sapiro 2008, 159; Hertwig 2020, 6) and, in addition to the geographical proximity of source and target cultures, help determine the extent and nature of translation flows between different languages. This study draws on the theory developed by Johan Heilbron (1999, 2000, 2008, 2010) about the world system of translation and translation flows between different language groups. Depending on the number of literary works translated from a given language, languages occupy different positions in the global translation system. Thus, one can distinguish between a hyper-central language (English), central languages (French and German), semi-peripheral languages (Spanish, Italian, Danish, Swedish, Polish, and Czech), and peripheral languages (all other languages, including Slovenian). Due to their own high cultural production, (hyper-) central literary systems tend to be more closed and homogeneous, which means that the proportion of literary translations is lower than in peripheral systems (Heilbron 2010, 3), which have much higher translation activity (Ožbot 2012, 37). For this reason, most of the research conducted so far at the international level has focused on translation activity from the (hyper-)center to the periphery, whereas studies of translation flows from the periphery to the (hyper-)center are rare (see, e.g., Sapiro 2002; Van Es and Heilbron 2015; individual contributions in Branchadell and West 2005). Research on translation flows from Slovenian into other languages has also been rather sparse—most contributions have dealt with selected aspects from the history of translation in Slovenia (Kocijančič Pokorn 2012; Ožbot 2012; Maček and Žigon 2017) or have discussed individual literary translations into Slovenian or vice versa (Klinar 2008; Ožbot 2011, 2012; Biggins 2012; Köstler and Leben 2014; Kocijančič Pokorn 2016; Schödel and Smodiš 2016; Maček and Žigon 2017; Mezeg 2020; Zlatnar Moe, Žigon, and Mikolič Južnič 2021). In addition, various translation bibliographies have been compiled, focusing either on translators and authors of original Slovenian works or on various literary genres. The only bibliography of literary translations from Slovenian into German, from 2006 (Vavti), is now outdated and in need of supplementation as well as reinterpretation. For this study, published book translations from Slovenian into German from 1921 to 2020 were collected primarily from Slovenia’s COBISS (Cooperative Online Bibliographic System and Services) database. In addition, other Slovenian as well as German and Austrian online databases were also considered. Because the topic is very extensive, the study is limited to translations of children’s and youth literature with a focus on prose, and information on translated literary works for adults is presented only in the analytical part for comparison. The collected bibliographic data provide a comprehensive chronological overview of the literature translated from Slovenian into German in the period observed. In a second step, the data were sorted, analyzed, evaluated, and interpreted. For pragmatic reasons, the study focuses on a complete period of one hundred years, from 1921 to 2020, and so the first two years after World War I (1919 and 1920)—when only one book for young people with religious content was translated—were omitted. The analysis revealed that a total of 234 Slovenian works for children and youth were published in German translation in the period observed. Most of the translated books are prose works (223, or 95%), and poetry and drama are represented by four books each. In the same period, 635 literary works for adults were translated, including 298 prose works (47%), and other literary genres had the following shares: poetry 34%, drama 4%, and miscellaneous, consisting mainly of anthologies, 15%. Thus, translations of children’s and youth literature accounted for almost a third (27%) of the total literary translation production. Among translated prose for children and youth, picture books (58%) and short prose (18%) are the most popular subgenres, followed by folk tales and literary tales (17%), novels (4%), anthologies (2%), and selected works by specific authors (1%). Looking only at prose, a total of 521 books were translated, of which 289 titles were for adults (57%) and 223 titles were for children and youth (43%), showing that prose for children and youth is strongly represented in the total amount of prose translated. Reprinted works make up a small portion of the translations: 13% for children and youth, and almost 13% for adults. Looking at the number of translations of children’s and youth literature by decade from 1921 to 2020, one can see significant differences in translation activity between decades. From the end of World War I to the end of World War II, there was virtually no translation activity (only one translation was published in the 1940s). The complete absence of translation production into German is related to the political power constellations. On the one hand, the Carinthian plebiscite of 1920 led to the integration of the Carinthian Slovenians into the Austrian state. On the other hand, national unitarism became established in the newly founded Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes after the two constitutions of 1921 and 1929, which consolidated the centralized Yugoslav state. The German population in the new state was immediately declared a minority; civil servants, teachers, and professors of German descent were dismissed; German schools were closed; and an “immense pressure to assimilate” was felt in all areas of life (Hösler 2006, 154). It was not until the late 1950s and the 1960s that canonical Slovenian writers such as Fran Levstik (1831–1887), Fran Milčinski (1867–1932), France Bevk (1890–1970), and Ela Peroci (1922–2001) were gradually translated into German. At the beginning of the 1960s, there was an important turning point in the perception of Yugoslav literature, which, mediated by West German publishers, was understood as a “contribution to contemporary European art” (Vavti 2006, 7). This influenced the presence of Slovenian literature in Germanspeaking countries. Although there was a generation of bilingual translators among Slovenian intellectuals in the postwar period, they hardly translated into German because politics affected culture. German was banned as the “language of occupation” (Maček and Žigon 2017, 34), which can also explain the small number of translations into German. Nevertheless, Ela Peroci’s works published mainly in Germany (Berlin, Munich, Herrsching), such as Mein Schirm kann fliegen (Slovenian: Moj dežnik je lahko balon) and Pantoffelmieze (Slovenian: Muca Copatarica), were reprinted. The first major translation peak came in the 1980s, when the focus of publishing Slovenian literature in German translation shifted from German publishers to smaller publishers with a regional focus, especially bilingual publishers in Carinthia—a process that continued and became fully established in the 1990s (Vavti 2006, 8; Köstler and Leben 2014, 213). The authors most frequently published by Carinthian publishers were Marica Kulnik (4), Peter Svetina (3), and Lojze Wieser (3). The German publishers, on the other hand, continued to publish texts mainly by Ela Peroci, Leopold Suhodolčan (1928– 1980), Gregor Strniša (1930–1987), and France Bevk (1890–1970), a socialist realist author. The sharp increase in the number of translations in the 1990s is related to the fact that Slovenia experienced a “reorientation from southeast to northwest” (Hafner 2008, 277) after the collapse of Yugoslavia. After Slovenia’s independence in 1991, the number of works of children’s and youth literature translated into German initially declined, partly due to the new political and cultural conditions in the newly established Republic of Slovenia. However, by the end of the 1990s and after accession to the European Union in 2004, the number of translations increased again. The Slovenian Book Agency (JAK) played an important role in this process. Since its establishment in 2008, translations into German have received special support—many texts have been subsidized by the agency or the TRADUKI network. Among the most frequently translated authors were Desa Muck, Janja Vidmar, and Peter Svetina (three works by each author were published). After the Slovenian section of IBBY (the International Board on Books for Young People) was restructured in 2009 as the Slovenian umbrella organization for children’s and youth literature, another forum dedicated to Slovenian children’s and youth literature emerged. In the last decade (2011–2020), translation production has greatly increased in view of the two major book fairs in Frankfurt and Bologna. This focus on the German-language book market is also clearly expressed in the national strategy as part of Slovenia’s cultural policy since 2014 (Republika Slovenija 2013). Contemporary authors are being translated, including a rising star who was first discovered abroad through translations into Chinese: Manica Musil with her creative children’s books. Finally, the analysis of publishers revealed that most translations were published by foreign publishers (56%), mainly in Germany and Austria, and more recently in Switzerland. The Drava Publishing House and the Hermagoras Society from Carinthia, where a Slovenian minority lives, have always played an extremely important role in the publication of translated Slovenian books. The two publishing houses were the center of German–Slovenian cultural and literary exchange after World War II until the late 1990s. Forty-four percent of translations were published by Slovenian publishers, mostly small publishers that often publish books in translation out of their own interest. Most translations in Slovenia have been published by the largest publisher, Mladinska Knjiga, but more recently also by smaller publishers such as Sanje, which has been very successful in marketing translations into German. Publication by foreign publishers may facilitate the promotion of translations and ensure better chances of a positive reception by the target audience, which should be further explored in the future.

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