The translation of pre-school picturebooks: towards a different child image and of a different voice of the adult aloud reader

The translation of pre-school picture books is characterised by a distinctive feature: the voice of the adult reading a picture book aloud to a child is shaped by the text itself. This often poses problems for translation. In fact, while the conciseness and the apparent simplicity of the written text, together with the fact that the books’ format and the illustrations remain practically unchanged, may lead one to believe that no considerable modification can be introduced in their translations, it will be argued that several changes frequently occur, many of which depend not only on the different images of the child intended by source and target texts, but also on different images of the adult dealing with the book and thus with the child. In particular, a selection of Italian translations of American picture books published in the 1960s and the 1970s – the period of the emergence of modern picture books – will be analysed.