Translation of children’s and young adult literature and perpetuation of femininity and masculinity models

Abstract

Stereotypes have always strongly conditioned our way of perceiving and understanding the world around us. The reading of children’s and young adult literature plays a key role in the socialization process by means of which children learn to behave the way society expects them to according to their genderIf we take into account the fact that in Spain the percentage of translations in relation with total publications of children’s and young adult literature, has been around 40% in the last years, we must agree that translation of this kind of literature contributes to a great extent to shaping the masculinity and femininity models children are exposed to. This is an empirical-descriptive, comparative analysis of the translations into Spanish and Valencian of one volume of two series of children’s books originally written in German: Der Kleine Vampir by Angela Sommer-Bodenburg and Hexe Lilli by Ludger Jochmann (Knister). The main conclusion is that even in these works, in which female characters embody new prototypes, either due to factors that are overlooked in the original and passed on in the translation, or to manipulations motivated by the reception pole of the translation, some of the stereotypes meant to be eradicated are perpetuated.