Young Adults Novels from communist Poland in Translation: a comparative look at Hanna Ożogowska's "Ucho od śledzia" in German and Italian versions

Young Adult Novels from Communist Poland in Translation: A comparative look at Hanna Ożogowska’s Ucho od śledzia in German and Italian Versions Polish novels for YA produced in communist Poland (1945-1989), their undeniable literary value notwithstanding, proved difficult to translate. Even if the topics they were concerned with, typical of coming-of-age problems, were universal enough for foreign readers to share and understand, the cultural and social context of communist Poland could be perceived as puzzling or utterly incomprehensible to young readers from other countries. In my chapter, I analyse the problems related to the translation of the culture-specific elements of Polish reality for young readers on the example of Hanna Ożogowska’s novel Ucho od śledzia (1963), comparing the strategies used in the German translation published in 1970 in GDR and later in 1978 in abridged version in Western Germany under the title Ein unruhiges Haus and the Italian one, printed in 1975 as Un orecchio d’arringa.