Tracing a Tradition

'Tracing a Tradition' takes a textual corpus of twelve Australian children’s novels translated into German, published in the period between 1945 and 2007. The author traces the state of the children’s book market in Australia and Germany (including former East and West Germany), publishing trends in the current global children’s book market, the notion of Australian identity and its influence on Australian culture and cultural representations, and the status of children’s literature in translation form the theoretical foundation of this study. The analysis of the corpus takes into account the translation of key thematic areas: the Australian natural environment, Aboriginal Australia and multicultural Australia, as well as a close examination of strategies used for the translation of culturally specific references including (among others) names, geographical locations, food & drink and Australian slang.