Ploughing the Field: YA in Translation

In agricultural terminology, ‘monoculture’ describes the cultivation of a single crop, to the exclusion of others. In YA, fictional monoculturalism can lead, at best, to monotonous stories in which the same (white, able, cisgender, heterosexual, and middle class) characters go on the same adventures. At worst, it can work to reinforce the monolithic social structures embedded in dominant Western culture. YA in translation has the powerful ability to disrupt any tendency of YA to tell a “single story” (Adichie) by expanding and diversifying the narratives that are available. As B.J. Epstein and Elizabeth L. Chapman suggest in International LGBTQ+ Literature for Children and Young Adults, “translations will help to create a change in society by importing new ideas” (5). Scholarship interrogating the function and practice of children’s and YA literature in translation has expanded over the past few years.1 In this edition of Ploughing the Field, we further investigate the development of YA in translation, specifically, by bringing together the perspectives of five academics and practitioners in an edited transcript of a roundtable discussion held at the YA Studies Association’s 2020 conference.