Adaptation and Adaptive Strategies in Translation for Children: Cases from Poland (1850–1960)

Adaptation and translation are closely connected, though their relationship is not an easy one: translation is frequently seen as an ‘ideal image’ of the source text, while adaptation is seen as its potential subversion, the opposite of ‘translation proper’ or even an ‘abuse’, ‘betrayal’, ‘infidelity’ to the source. In children's literature, adaptation is of particular importance – both as the practice of adapting general literature for the young within the same language and as a translation strategy, characteristic (though not reserved) of translating children's texts. Adaptation is frequently dominant there, valued and exercised in many different ways; it serves different purposes and various projects of the child reader. The adaptive approach is also the subject of reflection by translators, who, in their paratexts – prefaces, afterwords, commentaries, footnotes – feel a need to explain their adaptive decisions. This article explores both the explicative approach to adaptation (in the translators’ paratexts) and how adaptation implicitly works in texts translated for children in Poland. Based on selected examples from the late nineteenth century to the 1960s, the article shows how translators defined their approach to adaptation and how it was shaped by external factors such as their habitus, the historical moment, and the demands placed on children's literature at the time.