Translating Educational Objects in English and Italian: Framing the Stories of Fatima/Iqbal, Parvana, and Malala for a Young Audience

Translation in children’s literature is a powerful tool to help young readers’ empathy grow towards socio­cultural issues from other countries. In Eastern countries (Iran, India, Afghanistan, and Pakistan for example) the historical development of translations for children from the 19th century has shown how literature framed crucial political and social issues involving children. Despite the rare research in this field, it seems that the contact with Western countries often resulted in exporting issues such as children in warfare or child labour into narratives that found a more fertile ground in translation among Western languages than from narratives originating where these issues were actually experienced. The development of children’s literature in Eastern countries served as a springboard to introduce local writers and iconic figures in the 20th century in Western chidren’s literature. This paper wishes to explore three selected writers who sourced their material from direct local testimonies or literature to depict images of child characters especially in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where the issues of warfare and child labour are strongly felt. Deborah Ellis, Jeanette Winter and Francesco D’Adamo come to mind for their painstaking effort to bring young readers’ attention to iconic figures of courage and generosity that echo through their struggle to achieve a decent education. Above all, considering the topics at hand, these three are among the very few writers that have been translated into Italian (Ellis and Winter) and English (D’Adamo). Ellis’ The Breadwinner (2000), Parvana’s Journey (2002) and My Name is Parvana (2012) and D’Adamo’s Storia di Iqbal ([2001] 2015) share an interesting aspect that makes the main characters’ stories cross paths: the use of educational tools to overcome hunger, loneliness, captivity, in difficult and often dangerous situations. The story of Iqbal as told by D’Adamo finds a counterpart in Malala’s fight for education in Winter’s double picture book Malala/Iqbal, aimed at younger children, where the book and pen become symbols of bravery against tyranny. It should be borne in mind that these stories were originally written according to a Western set of frames that needed to fit in the broader context of children’s literature written in English and Italian. The paratextual analysis of source texts is the first step to achieve the main objective of this research: the descriptive analysis of target texts, with special emphasis on the framing of unconventional educational tools and contexts for the receiving public. Preliminary results show how, in the English ­speaking context, D’Adamo’s story has been rewritten to respond to a more inclusive and active educational context familiar to the American public, whereas Ellis’ and Winter’s translations seem to reflect a closer interest in sharing with the Italian audience the symbolic charge attributed to educational tools as shown in the source texts. It may therefore be suggested that the way educational objects are translated contributes to transform collective imagination in the receiving culture, arguing that translation plays an active role in the educational processes that shape different cultures.