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Picturebooks in a Minority Language Setting: Intra-Cultural Transformations

Abstract:In this article, one of the key questions I will be asking is whether the publication process of children's literature written in a minority language and the interrelationship between the illustrations and text during this process call into question the notion of a predetermined original, as well as the binary model of the translation process and, ultimately, the fixed nature of language. As a case study, I will analyze a picturebook—Selina Chönz's Uorsin (1945)—that was simultaneously released in two languages (one a major language and the other a minority one) and in multiple dialects (of the minority language). I will also discuss Uorsin's two sequels, Flurina und das Wildvöglein (1952) and Der grosse Schnee (1955)—which were first written in German as accompaniments to the images of the illustrator, Alois Carigiet, and which were only translated into Romansh at a later point in time. I will draw on scholarship in translation studies (Roman Jakobson; André Lefevere), adaptation studies (Linda Hutcheon), children's literature (Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott; Benjamin Lefebvre), and children's literature translation studies (Emer O'Sullivan; Riitta Oittinen; Gillian Lathey) and show that the written text and its illustrations are already in conversation during the publishing process. Thus, each can be described as a form of adaptation of the other.