Picturebooks in a Minority Language Setting: Intra-Cultural Transformations

In this article, one of the key questions I will be asking is whether the publication process of children's literature written in a minority language and the interrelationship between the illustrations and text during this process call into question the notion of a predetermined original, as well as the binary model of the translation process and, ultimately, the fixed nature of language. As a case study, I will analyze a picturebook-Selina Chonz's Uorsin (1945)-that was simultaneously released in two languages (one a major language and the other a minority one) and in multiple dialects (of the minority language). I will also discuss Uorsin's two sequels, Flurina und das Wildvoglein (1952) and Der grosse Schnee (1955)-which were first written in German as accompaniments to the images of the illustrator, Alois Carigiet, and which were only translated into Romansh at a later point in time. I will draw on scholarship in translation studies (Roman Jakobson; Andre Lefevere), adaptation studies (Linda Hutcheon), children's literature (Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott; Benjamin Lefebvre), and children's literature translation studies (Emer O'Sullivan; Riitta Oittinen; Gillian Lathey) and show that the written text and its illustrations are already in conversation during the publishing process. Thus, each can be described as a form of adaptation of the other.