The selection of Potter for publication in Romania (by a Romanian publisher) and of Romania as a market for publishing Potter’s works (by Warne) is a significant challenge in the publishing process. A discussion of this challenge is justified by Potter’s puzzling absence from the many children’s writers translated into Romanian since the early twentieth century, when translations of her works began to be published elsewhere. The possible reasons for this absence and for the publication of the recent translations are explored below.
There is no reason to believe that Potter was not translated because translations for children were unimportant, or because of a lack of development of CL in Romania, in the early twentieth century. As shown in Chapter 4, Romanian CL developed considerably during that period and translations were an important contribution to that development. However, another explanation is more plausible. Pelea (2010b) shows that throughout the nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, the most significant cultural influence in Romania was the French one (pp. 79, 83, 101). Moreover, the data provided by Moraru (2009, see Appendix C) regarding the collections of children’s books (Libraries) published in early twentieth-century Romania shows that French-language authors are more numerous than British authors. It is possible, therefore, that Romanian publishers favoured French-language writers, rather than British ones, because the French cultural influence was much stronger than the British. Furthermore, when selecting those (fewer) British authors, Romanian publishers may have preferred those originally published in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, whose works were already established as successful children’s books, for example, Defoe and Dickens (who are included in the Libraries), to relative newcomers such as Potter, whose tales began to be published and translated in the 1900s-1910s.
The most obvious explanation for the lack of Potter translations in the second half of the twentieth century (the communist decades) is the strong influence of Soviet culture and political censorship, which rejected Western European cultural products. This explanation has been proposed regarding the translation of Potter’s books in
185
Russia and Lithuania (see Chapter 3) and is supported by the apparent absence of translations of Potter into other Eastern European languages (see Appendix B). However, while it may be true of the early communist period in Romania, when Soviet influence and censorship were particularly strong, the explanation cannot apply to later communist times. As explained in Chapter 4, most international children’s classics continued to be translated in the last decade of the communist regime, including nineteenth and early twentieth-century British works such as Carroll’s Alice books, Barrie’s Peter Pan and Wendy and Wilde’s Happy Prince (see Appendix C). These books originated in the same culture as Potter’s tales and their cultural specificity is comparable to that of Potter’s stories. Therefore, it is unconvincing to claim that Potter was deemed too Western and subversive to be translated. While copyright issues or financial difficulties may have played a part in her exclusion, further historical research is necessary to establish the reasons more precisely.
After the fall of communism, the earliest translation to appear is the 1998 Aventurile. Subject to the economic difficulties and possibly the lack of professionalism in Romanian publishing during the 1990s, this edition has a comparatively modest appearance. Its lack of visual appeal may explain why it has not become widely popular, so that as late as 2013 Romanian bloggers interested in children’s books were referring to Potter’s originals (Vida-Rațiu 2013a, 2013b) and in January 2014, CL translator, Frunză, stated that the 2013 Aventurile was the first Romanian translation of Potter’s works (Frunză 2014a).
As the above suggests, some Romanians have been aware of Potter’s stories in the original, owned them and read them to their children. This awareness is mostly probably due to increased contact with the West after 1989 the fall of communism, through the internet, the entertainment industry, migration, travel and the importation of Western consumer products, including children’s books. Thus, indications of Romanians’ awareness of Potter and her stories begin to occur online from September 2006, on a parenting forum, where one of the members posted a link to the Project Gutenberg collection of Potter tales (Dianami 2006)24. The biographical film “Miss Potter”, premiered in November 2007 in Romania, appears to have contributed to increasing interest in Potter and her works. From 2008, several
186
positive remarks about the film appeared in Romanian online forums, including statements that some people were searching for further information about Potter and were interested in buying her books, after watching the film (Svety 2008, Frunză 2010, Luckyrock 2011, Kid_Rainen 2012, Pete 2012, Silving 2013). Others state that they received Potter’s books from friends abroad, or bought them online, and some regret the lack of Romanian translations (Vida-Rațiu 2013a, Silving 2013). There is also evidence of some awareness of the animated series “The World of Peter Rabbit and Friends” (Pete 2012, Popescu 2013). According to Bâldea, the 2013 translator, she first saw a Potter book in 2006 in the Victoria and Albert Museum shop. Finally, in 2011, Potter’s tales were available in the English Bookshop “Anthony Frost” in Bucharest. It can be concluded, therefore, that some Romanians were interested in Potter’s stories in the late 2000s – early 2010s. It was probably the desire to make them available in Romanian which motivated the authors of the online translations. Such phenomena indicate a potential market demand for a translated version of the tales and may have contributed to Editura Arthur’s decision to publish them. Nonetheless, Warne may not have been aware of this, or may have considered it insufficient for publishing the books in Romania25. According to Lovett, the Rights
Assistant at Penguin Books, they had not been interested historically in Romania as a target market, due to a perceived low popularity of Potter in Romania, in comparison with other countries, and it was the Romanian publisher that contacted them (personal communication, January 2014). No doubt, Warne’s lack of interest contributed to delaying the publication date of the first licensed edition to 2013. On the Romanian side, the impetus for selecting Potter came from her translator-to- be, Bâldea. Bâldea states that she saw a book by Potter in Arthur’s offices, a present for the child of an employee. As Bâldea had wanted to translate the tales for her three-year-old daughter, she told the publisher that she would like to translate them and her suggestion was well received. To explain the publisher’s openness to Bâldea’s idea, some characteristics of their publishing policy should be noted. Like many other Romanian CL publishers, Arthur publishes mostly translations from the Western, Anglophone world, mainly Britain and the United States. Moreover, Arthur selects prestigious authors such as Dahl, Sendak, Jansson and Kästner, and values the art of book design and illustration. Its books are carefully designed and beautifully
25 For convenience and consistency, Warne is considered the decision-maker in relation to Potter’s
187
illustrated, its website features a special section dedicated to the illustrators of their books and the online presentation of its parent company mentions that the “group” are very careful about the visual aspects of their books (Editura Art n.d.). These general characteristics of Arthur’s publishing policy favour the selection of Potter for publication, as she is a famous British children’s writer still popular at present and her books feature artistically accomplished illustrations.
Nevertheless, although the initiative was taken by the Romanian publisher, publication would not have been possible without Warne’s permission. The British publisher, who still claims copyright for Potter’s tales, had the power to decide whether the stories would be published in Romania at that time, by Arthur. According to Lovett, Warne was willing to publish only if they found a publisher “who would commit to the brand and was right for it” and Arthur had to demonstrate that they met Warne’s criteria for acting as a licensee. Judging by the criteria outlined by Lovett, Warne’s primary concerns were business-oriented. The Romanian publisher had to undergo a credit check, present a marketing plan and sales forecast and demonstrate “good distribution in all sales channels”. Yet, the weightiest factor was Arthur’s experience in “managing literary brands”. This seems particularly important for Warne and its owner, the conglomerate Pearson, who have developed a wide range of products derived from Potter’s books and are particularly concerned with securing copyright for her work. Moreover, it suggests that the increasing commodification of British CL, discussed in Chapter 1, also influences the selection of publishers for translated British books, based on commercial criteria. It can be concluded, therefore, that the selection of Potter for publication in Romania and of Romania as a market for Potter’s tales are linked to political, economic and cultural factors, which account for the late date of publication of Potter’s tales in Romania and for the small number of translations published to date. These factors include the relationships between the SC and TC, the cultural influence exerted by other countries and the publishing policies of the SC and TC publishers. Individual translators have also prompted the translation of Potter, in print and online versions.
188