Interchange 1.pdf: Learn English for International Communication with this Student's Book

PATTERNS OF CULTURAL INTERCHANGE IN CHILDREN'S LITERATURE: Data from the Mildred L. Batchelder Award Books Mildred L. Batchelder, longtime Executive Secretary of the Children's Division of the American Library Association, has stated that When children of one country come to know and love the books and stories of many countries, they have made an important beginning towards international understanding. . . . Interchange of children's books between countries, through translation, influences communication between the peoples of those countries, . . . ? In 1968, the American Library Association first presented a citation, appropriately named the Batchelder Award, for the most outstanding translated children's book. Recent research on elements in the forty-two books nominated for the Batchelder Award in its first decade (1968-1977) included study of the original languages from which the works were translated into English, settings of locale and time, genres, and structures. The objectives were to identify any predominance of pattern in these elements, both in the ten Award recipients and among the total number of nominees. The results of the analysis reveal that the Award does not yet reflect the worldwide interchange hoped for by Mildred Batchelder and others in the field of children's literature. For example, Paul Hazard, the French scholar, wrote that "Every country gives and every country receives . . . and so it comes about that in our first impressionable years the universal republic of childhood is born. "2 Though study of the Award books indicates that Hazard's ideal of universality has not been realized, the cause is not bias on the part of publishers or the Batchelder Award Committees (which select the nominees) 3 so much as the conditions of cultural exchange. Production limitations restrict the translated materials available to American children. Anne Pellowski, Director-Librarian of the Information Center on Children's Cultures of the United States Committee for UNICEF, has described some of the limitations: . . . ninety percent of current print and audiovisual literature for children is produced in a handful of countries. . . . The number of translations grows each year, but this is limited to translations to and from the Western European languages , with only a few exceptions. ^ Mary 0rvig of Sweden, secretary of the International Research Society for Children's Literature, has also written to this point: Economic laws and situations play a very important part in this context. Nor should one forget the great influence of ancient cultural links on the translation scene. 5 Study of the languages from which the forty-two books nominated for the Award were translated reveals that they come from only nine languages, eight of them European. Of these, five are Germanic. Two Slavic languages are represented . Greek is the original language of two books; one book alone, in Japanese, comes from a nonwestern language. The nominated books come overwhelmingly from the Germanic languages: 71.4% (30 of 42), subdivided as follows: German, 40.5%, Dutch, 9.5%; Swedish, 9.5%; Norwegian, 7.1%; and Danish, 4.8%. From the Slavic: Russian, 16.7%; and Czech, 4.8%. Greek: 4.8%; and Japanese: 2.4%. The books which have received the Award come from six languages: German , four; Greek, two; Danish, one; Dutch, one; Norwegian, one; and Russian, one. This analysis of the Batchelder Award books shows a definite skew toward the Germanic languages. Evidence indicates that, in the publication of children's books translated from other languages, the United States is a member of a Western European cultural constellation, special bonds being with Germanic language countries. Noteworthy is the absence of nominees from any of the Romance languages. Although translations from the Germanic languages have dominated the roll of the nominees, settings in the countries of these languages are not predominant. Thirteen of the nominated books have such settings. Over half, twentythree , of the nominated books, to be sure, are set in Eu137 rope. More than half of these, fourteen, in turn, have settings in North Europe: Scandinavia and Russia. Only one book (of twenty-seven heroic legends)has settings which include various areas of the world.Two works are set in Colombia, South America; one book isset in Africa: Ethiopia. Two others have settings inthe Middle East. All of these six, interestingly, are by...

Interchange 1.pdf

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