This program focused on translation practice in Socialist Yugoslavia, paying special attention to the translation of children’s literature. Professor Nike K. Pokorn (University of Ljubljana) presented the results of her recently finished research, in which she analyzed translations of children’s books into Slovene, Croatian, Serbian, and Macedonian that were created in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The results of Pokorn’s research show that almost 80 percent of these translations were ideologically censored: in particular, passages referring to Christianity were either eliminated or attenuated. Her interviews with the editors and translators of the period and her systematic research of the archival material reveal that that these omissions and replacements were the result of self-censorship: translators, consciously or unconsciously, internalized the Communist attitude toward religion.

Illustrating her argument with examples taken from Yugoslav translations of Johanna Spyri’s beloved Heidi, Pokorn also suggested that many translations of that period are still being reprinted or repurposed in contemporary primers and textbooks.