Ecoliteracy in translation: verbal and visual transfer in the Italian version of Emilia Dziubak’s picturebook Draka Ekonieboraka

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In the last decade there has been a surge of interest in Polish picturebooks in Italy, prompted by the international success of Aleksandra and Daniel Mizieliński’s Maps. This article examines the attitude of Italian publishers towards the strategies used for picturebook translation, taking as a case study Emilia Dziubak’s Draka Ekonieboraka (in Italian Piccola guida per ecoschiappe), a book which tries to introduce small children to the topic of environmental protection. A close comparison between two versions shows that the changes involve both the verbal and in the visual components of the picturebook. In fact, the Italian edition not only takes many liberties with the contents and the register of the text, but it also heavily modifies the original graphic layout and illustrations. I examine both the motives and the effects of this shift.

KEYWORDS: Ecoliteracy, Polish Picturebooks, Translation, Emilia Dziubak, Polish Children’s Literature in Italy