Documenting and researching translations as a cultural ecosystem

The goal of the article is to investigate translations from a language of relatively low diffusion (Polish) into the world’s lingua franca (English) in the period of 1912–2021. In the context of a significant asymmetry between the import and export of children’s literature in the Polish setting, where numerous titles are translated from dominant languages but few are translated out of Polish and published abroad, the article seeks to address questions about emerging translation patterns across history. Specifically, it aims to identify periods of heightened activity and inactivity, delayed translations, the popularity of specific authors and genres and how such patterns relate to and reflect shifting cultural priorities, institutional support, or global literary trends. The article sets out by considering translation as a cultural ecosystem of historically and anthropologically situated practice, where both texts and contexts matter, to move on to address the methodological and practical challenges of a project dedicated to investigating and documenting the history of Polish children’s literature in English translation (1912–2021) in a lexicon format. These challenges involve periodization, time framework, inclusion criteria as well as macro- and micro-structure of the lexicon. The article also discusses selected findings of the project, such as the establishment of translation-specific turning points in the discussed period and the identification of internal, domestic distribution channels of literary transfer in the historical and political context of the Polish People’s Republic. For the analysed period, a corpus of around 100 translations was established. The most frequently translated genre of Polish children’s literature published abroad was the picturebook, with the English translation of richly-illustrated Maps (2013) and its international success paving the way for further translations of visual literature.