Introduction

Abstract

This study has been occasioned by the fact that there has so far been no book available in English about the translation of Polish children’s literature in general, and about the translation of Korczak in particular. Janusz Korczak (1878–1942), the pen name of Henryk Goldszmit, was a Polish-Jewish children’s writer and paediatrician, known for his innovative pedagogical methods as the head of a Warsaw orphanage for Jewish children in pre-war Poland. His most famous children’s book Król Maciuś Pierwszy [King Matt the First] is the novel most frequently translated into English from all of Polish children’s literature, although its English-language translations have so far received very little scholarly attention. Focusing on four different translations of this classic text and some other titles by Korczak translated into English over a period of seventy-five years, this linguistically oriented study aims to fill this void. The book’s major contribution lies in showing how Polish-to-English translators mediate children’s fiction, activating different reserves of meaning of the source texts and leaving their “linguistic fingerprints” on the target texts—modifying them in terms of their linguistic organization, underlying ideologies, cultural references and style.