Translating National History for Children: A Case Study of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

Abstract: Mark Twain’s classic novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is arguably about the history of the United States in terms of slavery and race relations. How, then, can this be translated to another language and culture, especially one with a very different background in regard to minorities? And in particular, how can this be translated for children, who have less knowledge about history and slavery than adult readers? In this article, I analyse how Twain’s novel has been translated to Swedish. I study 15 translations. Surprisingly, I find that instead of retaining Twain’s even...