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The members of the research team continue their activities in the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature and Culture (CRCLC), established at the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb.
The members of the Centre are Croatian researchers on children’s literature and culture. CRCLC performs and supports research in the field of comparative children’s literature and related areas, prepares new research projects, and promotes interdisciplinarity.
An overview of the project
BIBRICH UIP 2014-09-9823 was an installation research project, funded by the Croatian Science Foundation from September 2015 until the end of August 2018. The project was affiliated to the Faculty of Teacher Education, University of Zagreb. It had exceptional support from the management, the administration, and other employees of the Faculty.
Research
The project team followed the set goals as described in the Project Summary published on this website at the beginning of the project period.
A special goal of the project was to establish comparative children’s literature within literature studies and humanities in general as a new research field in Croatia, and to form a consistent research group. This goal has been accomplished.
Corpus
For the needs of the project, a corpus was defined in terms of genre and period; it comprises translations of narratives published in book form during the 20th century. It includes titles which belong to the literary system of children’s literature, adolescent literature, young adult literature and crossover texts, as well as titles of popular literature and adult literature adopted by young readers. A Bibliography of Translations (link) from and into Croatian was compiled, which is now available on this website.
Methodology
The methodology was interdisciplinary and modified to the specific research tasks. It was founded on an interdisciplinary methodology of comparative (children’s) literature, especially contact and transfer research, combined with methods used in Translation Studies and related disciplines, such as bibliography and historical research, digital linguistics, etc.
In compiling the Bibliography of Translations, the project team relied on the methodology established in previous research (in particular, the Croatian Ministry of Science project “The Croatian Bibliography of Children’s Books until 1945”, 227-2270674-0724, led by Berislav Majhut, 2007-2013). The methodological frame was extended and adapted to the needs of the BIBRICH project. The Bibliography itself was used as an analytical tool and source of data in investigating cultural and historical translation and publication trends.
Project team and collaborators
The project team consisted of eleven members: the principal investigator, nine researchers and one doctoral student. Two researchers joined as collaborators: Ana Batinić, PhD and Edin Badić, a doctoral student.
The progression of the project
The project was conducted in three stages, which partly overlapped. The first stage was dedicated to establishing the corpus and the methodology, and to peer-teaching, i.e. sharing various approaches and experiences among project team members. The second stage focused on research and sharing results through mutual counselling. The final stage primarily centred on disseminating and evaluating the results.
Project activities
There were two kinds of activities: shared tasks and individual research tasks. The shared tasks included the compilation of the Bibliography, the organisation of colloquiums and project meetings, while individual tasks included field research, professional development, and dissemination (conference participation, publications, and public presentations).
The Bibliography comprises over 4700 entries. It can be searched according to different criteria. The project team members can add new entries online. The Bibliography will be continuously appended in the future. In addition, there are specialised lists of references and translations (link) available online.
The project team organised five colloquiums, three of which hosted international experts. There were 22 project meetings. The project members attended nine workshops of professional development, summer schools, and seminars. They actively participated in international and domestic conferences with 40 presentations (39 talks and one poster presentation).
Until the end of the project, the project members published 20 papers, with 32 papers forthcoming by the end of the project. There are two project publications (monographs) in preparation; Hlapić in the Wide World and Translations of Children’s Literature: The Croatian Perspective (both in Croatian).
The project team initiated the establishment of the Centre for Research on Children’s Literature and Culture and created its initial materials.
Results and contribution
The results of the project are primarily visible in various publications of the project team members.
The results include a compilation of a large corpus of translated children’s literature from different languages into Croatian and from Croatian into different languages. Established methodological procedures were fine-tuned to fit individual research tasks. The basic trends and tendencies of translation and publication practices in a historical context were described and the influence of translations on the development and modifications of Croatian children’s literature considered. Several pairs of source texts and target texts, and also retranslations, were analysed and translation strategies established at various levels of discourse. Adaptations of several international children’s classics for young readers were studied, as were other specific issues.
The contribution of the project also consists of the establishment of a new research field in the Croatian academic context and the formation of a consistent research team which can ensure the future application of an interdisciplinary approach in the field of comparative children’s literature and related literary systems. The project team has compiled databases necessary for further research.
The project results have also set the foundations for further development in this field.
Material conditions for the future work have been ensured through the establishment of the CRCLC.
1 September 2018
Principal investigator: Smiljana Narančić Kovač, PhD
Project duration: 1 September 2015 – 31 August 2018
Contact: bibrich@ufzg.hr
Savska cesta 77, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia
Texts, Contexts and Strategies
UIP-2014-09-9823
