Both writers and translators of children’s literature have often been motivated by the use of such literature as a pedagogical tool. Despite protestations that literature for children should both entertain and educate, there can be little doubt concerning its role in socializing children into a particular ideology and the acceptance of a specific set of values. Because children tend to be less sophisticated readers than adults, they believe much of what they read. Until they have been taught to read critically, with an awareness of the ways in which authors manipulate both characters and readers, they identify with, accept, and imbibe the ideas and assumptions implicit in texts.

 Children’s literature, and translated children’s literature, has an immense power to influence the young reader – a power that can be used to further international understanding and tolerance, but also a power that can be used to breed intolerance and to indoctrinate children in a particular world-view. In the current climate of terrorism, religious conflict, and civil war in many parts of the world, children’s literature has a role to play in nurturing a new generation characterized by tolerance, rather than hatred. Texts are translated for children, and often adapted to make them appropriate and acceptable to the new audience – which does not consist of children only, but also of parents, teachers and librarians, or those with the economic power and means to purchase books for children.

 The selection of works for translation, for example, is of major significance in achieving this objective. Currently the situation is lop-sided – with many works translated out of English into other languages, but very few works going into English. For example, where are the translations of works written in Arabic for Palestinian children, or works written in Hebrew for Israeli Jewish children? What about works written for children in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or any other country currently ravaged by political or social conflict, if indeed such works have been written? Can children’s literature and its translation intervene in the sense of building a bridge between children of different nationalities and religions? What is actually happening in the field of the translation of children’s literature in different parts of the world? Who is translating what for whom? How can teachers and parents facilitate the reading of texts from different cultures? This is of particularly relevance when looking at works written for children dealing with conflict and war, especially in Africa and the Middle East, but also increasingly, for example, in the United States of America, given its current preoccupation with terrorism.

 This panel aims to discuss issues of violence and intolerance in relation to the translation of children’s literature, within the broader context of the theme of the conference as intercultural encounter and intervention.

 Papers are invited on any topic relating to the translation of children’s literature in an intercultural context, and which address such translation as a process of intervention, repositioning the new subject in relation to the text, whether the implied reader either identifies with, or is alienated by, the subject position created in the original text.

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