Not So Simple! Translating Young Adult Literature as Resistance and Entertainment

Folio: The Seattle Athenaeum is pleased to welcome three distinguished translators—Sawad Hussain (Arabic), Shelley Fairweather-Vega (Russian and Uzbek), and Takami Nieda (Japanese)—for an engaging discussion on Translating Young Adult Literature as Resistance and Entertainment.

There is a common misconception in literary publishing that books for children and young adults are “simple” and are, therefore, easy to translate. But translating literature for younger people is not simple at all. How does the process of “curating” young people’s literature involve translators’ negotiation with the expectations of English-language editors and publishers? How might translation of young people’s literature into English function as a form of decolonization and resistance? What are the sensitivity issues that are particular to publishing young adult literature? Should young adult literature in translation be handled like highbrow adult literature in translation, like “ordinary” YA literature, or something in between? And, finally, does the original language of the book or…