Cromwell in the Shtetl: Translations of Non-Jewish Literature in Early Hebrew Periodicals for Children*

: This article presents preliminary research on literature translated into Hebrew and published in the early Hebrew press for children. The periodicals under study are Olam Katon (Jerusalem, 1893), Gan Sha’ashu’im (Lyck, 1899– 1900) and Olam Katan (Vienna/Cracow, 1901–1904). The article discusses not only what was translated in these periodicals, but also how and why certain pieces were translated. As the majority of the translated children’s literature was writ - ten by non-Jewish authors, the author is especially interested in the translators’ strategies of dealing with the sometimes obviously Christian content and how they negotiated the extent of “otherness” to which they exposed Jewish children. In addition to identifying some general tendencies, the author offers a close reading of three translations of stories by Mark Twain, Agnes Giberne and Edmondo de Amicis which serve as illustrations of the discussed problems.


Introduction
Olam Katon, edited by the icon of the Hebrew revival, Eliezer Ben Yehudah, and his colleagues, can be considered the first Hebrew children's periodical. 1 Yet its first issue, published in Jerusalem in 1893, opens with a translation of a poem Ha-shemesh ve-ha-yareaḥ [The Sun and the Moon] instead of an original piece of Hebrew writing. 2 The decision to begin this periodical with a translated piece may seem puzzling-after all, this was a (proto)Zionist periodical for children who were expected to build a new, authentic Erets-Israeli culture-but it actually is a fitting illustration of the general condition of Hebrew literature for children, the role of translated literature in the Hebrew literary polysystem, and translation strategies at the eve of the Hebrew revival.
In this article I analyze the role and character of the non-Jewish literature translated into Hebrew and published in the early Hebrew press for children.The periodicals I study are the following: Olam Katon [Small World] (Jerusalem, 1893), edited by Eliezer Ben-Yehudah and his associates; Gan Sha'ashu'im [Playground]  (Lyck, 1899-1900), edited by Avraham Mordechai Piurko; and Olam Katan [Small World] (Vienna/Cracow,  1901-1904), edited by Avraham Leib Shalkovich (aka Ben-Avigdor) and Shmuel Leib Gordon. 3The bulk of the texts published in these periodicals were originally written in Hebrew for young Jewish readers, or adapted for them from other Hebrew writings.But there was also a body of translations or adaptations from non-Jewish literatures which merit closer scholarly attention.This article presents some preliminary research on this subject.
All three of these periodicals were part of the much bigger project of the Hebrew revival.The aim of the revival was to re-vernacularize Hebrew language, bringing it back to contemporary Jewish life and making it a part of the national identity of modern Jews.The Haskalah, which started in the late eighteenth century, enhanced the status and use of Hebrew, but it was the rise of Zionism at the end of the nineteenth century that gave Hebrew new life.From the very beginning, the crucial element of the plan to re-vernacularize this language was the children whose fluency in Hebrew as a modern, everyday language was a sine qua non condition of the revival.Various Zionist intellectuals, educators and writers took upon themselves the task of creating young Hebrew readers, and eventually also Hebrew speakers. 4Children's literature and periodicals in Hebrew were instrumental to the realization of this goal. 5lthough the three above-mentioned periodicals advocated the idea of Jewish linguistic/national revival, they used translated materials to educate and/or entertain their young readers when original children's literature in Hebrew was scarce.This article discusses not only what was translated in these periodicals but also how and why it was translated.In my analysis, I refer to the wide framework of previous research in the theory and history of translated literature, especially to studies by Zohar Shavit, Gideon Toury and Itamar Even-Zohar.As a decisive majority of the translated children's literature was written by non-Jewish authors, I am especially interested in the translators' strategies to deal with the sometimes obviously Christian content of this literature and how they negotiated the extent of "otherness" to which they exposed Jewish children.In addition to identifying some general tendencies, I also offer a close reading of three translations of stories by Mark Twain (1835-1910), Agnes Giberne (1845-1939) and Edmondo de Amicis (1846-1908) which serve as illustrations of the discussed problems.
Before proceeding to the analysis, it is necessary to explain why translated literature for both younger and older readers was so important for emerging modern Hebrew literature.First, as Gideon Toury noted, already in the Haskalah period translating was "an obvious way of producing texts 4 For one such initiative, see Agnieszka Jagodzińska, "How to Create a Hebrew Reader?Olam Katan (1901-1904) and the Young Hebrew Reading Public," Children's Literature in Education (2022), https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007/s10583-022-09520-w.pdf [retrieved: 22 Dec. 2022].
5 The scholarship on the Hebrew revival is rich.For a concise introduction to this problem, see: Yael Reshef, "The Re-emergence of Hebrew as a National Language," in Stefan Weninger et al. (eds.),The Semitic Languages: An International Handbook (Berlin-Boston, 2011), 546-554 (esp.bibliography).For more on the role of children in the process of the Hebrew revival, see: Basmat Even-Zohar, "Shituf ha-yeladim ba-yozmah ha-'ivrit ba-shanim 1880-1905," in Yeladim be-rosh ha-maḥaneh: yaldut u-ne'urim be-'itot mashber u-temurah (= Dor le-dor 36) (2010), 39-69, and Yael Reshef, "The Role of Children in the Revival of Hebrew," in Anat Helman (ed.),No Small Matter: Features of Jewish Childhood (New York, 2021), 20-38.quickly and in quantity,"6 which was important in the field of modern secular literature generally and children's literature particularly.7Both were in dire need of further development, and translated literature compensated for what was scarce in the original Hebrew.Itamar Even-Zohar explained such the role of translated literature in the literary polysystem in the following way: translated literature simply fulfills the need of a younger literature to put into use its newly founded (or renovated) tongue for as many literary types as possible in order to make it serviceable as a literary language and useful for its emerging public.Since a young literature cannot immediately create texts in all types known to its producers, it benefits from the experience of other literatures, and translated literature becomes in this way one of its most important systems. 8har Shavit noted the centrality of translated literature to the Hebrew literary system at the early stage of development of the literary center in Palestine. 9To use her own words: "The emphasis lay at this time not only, or not primarily, on Hebrew literature but on literature in Hebrew." 10 In the case of Hebrew children's literature, this was true for both Erets Israel and the diaspora.Before a subsystem of Hebrew writings for children fully developed, the genre had to heavily depend on translations and look to the foreign literature as a model. 11

Translations, adaptations, imitations
The contemporary Hebrew word for 'translation,' tirgum, was also usedinterchangeably with ha'atakah-in the studied period.12However, 'translated' works in the Hebrew children's press included adaptations, reworkings or imitations of works for children written in other languages, not just the translations associated with this term today.13These para-translations were often qualified be-ikvot ('in the style of'), al pi ('according to'), ḥikui ('imitation') or me-ein tirgum ('a sort of translation').14However, as Toury pointed out, translated texts often were not identified as translations, and it remains unclear if the readers were able to identify them as such.He also observed that "many compositions which did not draw on foreign texts in a one-to-one fashion were still collations of parts of existing texts in another language, or the realization of imported sets of 'formation rules' such as generic models."15At times it is difficult, if not impossible, to identify the original authors whose works served as "inspiration" for such adaptations, if no specific information about the source was provided.Neither knowledge of comparative literature nor tools of digital humanities (like stylometric analysis) are especially helpful here, as sometimes there are serious differences in style, alterations to the original plot, and modifications to the names of the characters and/or the geography; whether the translation was full or only partial depended on the translator's whim.
A considerable number of such para-translations appeared in Gan Sha'ashu'im, a second Hebrew children's periodical but the first one published in Europe. 16The name of the translator and qualifications (like "in the style of") were usually added to the titles of para-translations in this periodical, but there is no certainty that these titles are identical to the original, and the source of the translation is often missing.In some cases, the original author is identified (e.g., be-ikvot Warhaftig).17Sometimes the source is vaguely referred to as be-ikvot meshorer tsarfati ('in the style of a French poet')18 which in this specific case presumably refers to Jean de La Fontaine.But it would be wrong to assume that when "a French poet" is mentioned, it automatically means that the text was translated or adapted from the original French-second-hand translations (which will be discussed further) were still very popular at the time.So, the information about the original language of the source of the (para)translation is yet another element that is often missing.There are also cases where no information-neither about the original author or title, nor even about the person who rendered the text into Hebrew-is provided, as in the case of a poem entitled Ha-meshorer which is only qualified as "a sort of translation." 19ll of these types of adaptations point to the popularity of para-translations in children's literature at the turn of the nineteenth century.As Shavit explained, the peripheral position of this literature in the literary polysystem allowed the translator to take greater liberties in working with this kind of material.20It is also evident that Gan Sha'ashu'im still continued the legacy of Haskalah both in the language (often quite elaborate, melitsah-style Hebrew) and in the way it approached the translation. 21In the later children's periodical, Olam Katan, published in Vienna/Cracow, the editors opted for simpler Hebrew but even in this periodical we find adaptations, para-translations, or translations that do not acknowledge their sources.

Who was translated?
In the surviving seven issues of the first Hebrew children's periodical, the Jerusalemite Olam Katon, four works officially qualified as "translations"22 but only one of them named the original author. 23Although the two later periodicals did not always acknowledge the original source of translation, it became more common to identify the original authors.The names of these authors reveal whom the editors of these periodicals considered to be educative or entertaining for their young readers.However, the body of translated literature found in these periodicals cannot be treated as a canonical selection, nor an adequate representation of non-Jewish children's literature in general.Shavit, discussing Hebrew translations from German children's literature in the Haskalah period, noticed that the selection of what was or was not translated was an ideological choice and that the content of the translated text was additionally often adapted to suit the agenda of the maskilim. 24Apart from the ideology that might have influenced the representativeness of what was printed, in the case of the children's press there is yet another factor that needs to be taken into consideration-and it is the randomness of this selection.Some of the choices were definitely well thought-out and planned, as sometimes the editors were translators themselves (see the case of Shmuel Leib Gordon below), and it stands to reason that they commissioned some other translations, too.But we also know for sure-for example from Piurko's replies to the readers' letters sent to Gan Sha'ashu'im-that they also received uncommissioned texts.All this results in a diverse body of texts in which the classics of the world's children literature are printed alongside lesserknown authors.And of course, apart from children's authors, there are also writers whose texts were not originally intended for young readers but nevertheless were adapted for children's sake.
So who got translated?One group is classic writers from the Enlightenment period like Jean de La Fontaine and Daniel Defoe. 25 As Ryszard Waksmund wrote, "The Enlightenment is the antiquity of the children's literature.[It is] both its archaic beginnings and the classical period." 26At the turn of the nineteenth century, the Hebrew children's press considered these classic authors still to be in fashion. 27La Fontaine's poetic fables were very popular, especially in European Olam Katan, and sometimes they were accompanied by illustrations. 28Their translator was Shmuel Leib Gordon, a writer and educator and the co-editor of Olam Katan.Gordon published his translation in the periodical first, but a couple of years later he also had them printed in a separate booklet.As the booklet is prefaced by his introduction, we have a rare opportunity to see what motivated the co-editor of Olam Katan to undertake this particular translation.Gordon praises La Fontaine's fables "as wonderful in their honesty and in their pleasant morals."After writing with some exaggeration that they have been translated to "every language," he stressed 25 Defoe's classic story about the adventures of Robinson Crusoe was adapted by Ben-Tsvi to a short play entitled "Robinzon al ha-i ha-shomem (maḥazeh li-yeladim bemaarachah aḥat)" [Robinson on the Desert Island (a Play for Children in One Act)] and published in Olam Katan (1903), 37, 38.In 1904, subscribers who bought a full-year subscription to this periodical were promised to a new, illustrated edition of the story, this time adapted by Yehudah Gur-Grazowski (Olam Katan (1904), 25-26:[569-570]).In the table of contents of several issues of Olam Katan in 1904, this translation is listed as if it appeared inside the periodical issue, however, it is not printed in the copies I consulted (Olam Katan (1904), 43-44 from the collection of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem and nos.45-46, 47-48 from the collection of the Jagiellonian Library).It can be found, however, in the two subsequent double issues (nos.49-50 and 51-52, copies belonging to the collection of the Jagiellonian Library) with a separate page numbering, which suggests that this story was meant to be torn out for collecting purposes.For more on Jewish adaptations of Defoe's story see: Leah Garrett, "The Jewish Robinson Crusoe," Comparative Literature 54 ( 2002), 3:215-228.
27 Gideon Toury demonstrated the popularity of translated fables in Hebrew literature at the time when they were already outdated in their original literary context.See Gideon Toury, "An Enlightened Use of Fable: Christian Fürchtegott Geliert in Hebrew Literature," in Dirk de Geest et al. (eds.),Under Construction: Links for the Site of Literary Theory-Essays in Honour of Hendrik Van Gorp (Leuven, 2000), 197-209.I thank Tal Kogman for drawing my attention to this article.
28 See, e.g.: [Jean de La Fontaine], "Mishlei La-Fontaine" [La Fontaine's Fables], mashal 4 [Fable 4]: "Ha-tsfardea ha-mekanah" [The Jealous Frog], trans.Shmuel Leib Gordon, Olam Katan (1901), 27:[17-18].that now Hebrew readers would have a translation "edited in easy and accurate style." 29The booklet was published by the Tushiyah publishing house, whose founder and owner was Ben-Avigdor, the second co-editor of Olam Katan and also Gordon's brother-in-law.But it would be wrong to assume that the translation was only published thanks to this family connection.Apparently, it was a wider strategy of Ben-Avigdor's: some of the texts that first appeared in the periodical were later re-published as separate books or booklets. 30ther authors published in translation in Olam Katan included: the Danish icon of children's literature, Hans Christian Andersen; French educator and activist Marie Pape-Carpentier; popular Italian writer Edmondo de Amicis; American authors like Louis Beauregard Pendleton, Mark Twain and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; British writers including Agnes Giberne and Charles Dickens; and the German Sophie Wörishöffer (aka Sophie Andresen) and Wolrad Eigenbrodt.The selection of translated literature presented young Jewish readers with a varied sample of European and American children's literary tradition.Although the German tradition was still a notable part of this translated literature-either through works of German authors, or through German as the mediative language in second-hand translations31 -the scene was much more diversified than in the Haskalah period.
There were two other factors that added to this diversity.The first was the inclusion of Eastern European non-Jewish literary traditions32 and the second was translations of Jewish authors whose works were written in Yiddish. 33Both groups of texts can be found in Gan Sha'ashu'im and Olam Katan.This is unsurprising, if we remember that the core readership of these periodicals lived in the Pale of Settlement and partly in Poland, 34 and that these Slavic/Yiddish literary traditions were close to them.
From the Eastern European literary traditions we find, for example, a translation of a poem by Michail Lermontov, the prominent poet representing Russian Romanticism, prepared by no other than Zalman Shneour. 35This future famous Hebrew and Yiddish poet and writer was still in his teens when he adapted Lermontov's piece.His rendering, entitled Ba-midbar, was based on the poem Utes, originally written in 1841, only a few months before Lermontov's tragic death. 36he Polish authors are represented by Bolesław Prus and Andrzej Niemojewski.The work of the first one, Z legend dawnego Egiptu, 37 inspired Tsvi Rubinovitch to publish his translation in Gan Sha'ashu'im in 1899. 38his short story, detailing the tragic last hours of the life of young Horus, the successor to the throne of ancient Egypt, seems to be translated from Russian, however, and not from Polish.This is hinted at by the name of the main character, which is transcribed to Hebrew according to the Russian (Gorus) and not Polish (Horus) style.Z legend dawnego Egiptu had already been translated to Russian in 1899 and this, together with the fact that Rubinovitch, the translator, lived in Berdychov in the Pale of Settlement, makes this possibility more than probable.
From Andrzej Niemojewski's works, a translator who identified himself only as Y. G. chose a short story, Matka i dziecko, 39 which he published in Olam Katan in 1903. 40The story may seem quite dramatic for a young reader: celestial beings watch a mother first care for her dying baby and then mourn over her infant's death as they take the baby's soul away to heaven.It is important to remember, however, that what may seem unsuitable for children nowadays was standard for the children's literature of the period.From a contemporary perspective, the choice of these two authors also may seem puzzling, as they are associated with critical (Prus) or even hostile (Niemojewski) attitudes toward Jews, but these authors' ideological metamorphosis took place years later.It is especially evident in the case of Niemojewski, who still thought of himself as a philosemite until 1905. 41iddish writers appeared in both Gan Sha'ashu'im and in the European Olam Katan, which printed translations of their poetry, prose and folkloreinspired works.In both periodicals we find, for example, the poems of Shimon Frug, a poet who first wrote in Russian and then in Yiddish. 42The great classic of Yiddish literature, Sholem Aleichem, appeared in Gan Sha'ashu'im in 1900. 43In 1903, young Pesach Kaplan published his Hebrew translation of a popular Yiddish song, Oyfn pripetshik [On the Hearth], in Olam Katan. 44 It means that the first known Hebrew translation of this song actually appeared two years earlier than it was previously thought. 45he periodicals also published original Hebrew works of other Yiddish writers, who-although famous for their literature in Yiddish-could and did write in Hebrew.The prominent Isaac Leib Peretz, whose story appeared in the first issue of Olam Katan, was one such author. 46ranslated literature was essential in forming a Hebrew chrestomathy for Jewish children.It is interesting to see how translators balanced non-Jewish literary traditions and values presented in the source material 41 Grzegorz Krzywiec, Polska bez Żydów.Studia z dziejów idei, wyobrażeń i praktyk antysemickich na ziemiach polskich początku XX wieku (1905-1914)  (Warszawa, 2017), 212.On the evolution of Bolesław Prus and Andrzej Niemojewski's attitude toward Jews in this wider context, see: ibid., passim.
against the needs and sensitivities of their young Jewish readers.In the following sections of this article, I offer close readings of three selected pieces that shed light on the strategies of negotiating the Other in translation, the problem of second-hand translations and the specific character of translations published in instalments in periodicals.All three selected translations come from Olam Katan for two reasons: either the selection offered special insights into the strategies of translators/editors in regards to the aforementioned problems, or the problem represented in the selection never appeared in the two earlier periodicals (like the translations published in multiple instalments).

Mark Twain: the Other enters the shtetl
The first case is Death Disc, a story by famous American writer Mark Twain originally published in English in Harper's Magazine in 1901. 47The story appeared in translation in the European Olam Katan just one year later. 48The publication identified both the author (Mark Twain) and the translator (Ben-Moshe)-though it is quite probable that Ben-Moshe was just a penname.The story is set in England at the time of the English Civil War, and one of its protagonists is Oliver Cromwell himself.So, in 1902, within the pages of a Hebrew children's periodical, Cromwell entered Jewish shtetls in Eastern Europe.Either the translator or, more likely, the editors added a short footnote containing biographical information that was supposed to educate readers and help them to understand the plot.Footnoting was a common strategy in Olam Katan, used to explain words that might have been difficult for readers or to provide the context necessary to understand a given text.Interestingly, the explanation of difficult words appeared in footnotes mostly in Russian or in Yiddish, 49 which corroborates the geography of Olam Katan's readership known from other sources.  4Mark Twain, "Ma'ase be-khadur odom [sic].Sipur" [Tale of a Red Disc (a Story)], trans.Ben-Moshe, Olam Katan (1902), 7:137-142;10:203-208. 49 It is interesting to compare this case with the Jerusalemite Olam Katon, where difficult words were explained in French or in German.
50 Letters sent to the periodical by children indicate that the core readership of Olam Katan was located in Eastern Europe, see also n. 34.
In case of Death Disc, it remains unknown why the editors chose this particular narrative about political and religious wars that took place 2,000 kilometers from where the majority of the periodical's readers lived (Pale of Settlement) and more than 250 years before their time.I speculate that it was because of the dramatic role a child (a little girl named Abigail in the original) plays in this narrative.It is only natural that a protagonist about the same age as the readers of the periodical could have helped them better relate to the story.Another reason might have been the author himself-the editors might have chosen a story by Mark Twain to demonstrate that their periodical brought the most recent world class literature to Jewish children.
The story shows how the Other was "domesticated" before they could enter Jewish shtetls but, at the same time, how they still remained the Other.The translator of this story, like many others whose works were printed in Olam Katan, had to negotiate what to preserve from the original story and what to change in order to make the text suitable for Jewish children.The most obvious element was to eliminate the Christian message or the Christian context.Such censorship is visible in the translation of one of the most important scenes in Twain's story.Twain gives the following justification for the decision his characters are about to make: "They said they were Christians, and the Bible forbade men to take their own lives."In the Hebrew version this sentence is rendered simply as: ‫ולאלוהים.‬‫לנפשם‬ ‫וחטאו‬ ‫הזה‬ ‫כדבר‬ ‫לעשות‬ ‫להם‬ ‫וחלילה‬ "It is forbidden for them to do such thing and sin against their souls and God." 51 Apart from eliminating the Christian elements in the text, there were other strategies translators chose to "domesticate" the Other.Shavit, studying translated children's literature from the Yishuv and early State of Israel period, listed several of them: changing literary characters' foreign names to Hebrew ones, replacing the Christian calendar and holidays with Jewish ones, introducing Jewish holidays and customs to the text, replacing unkosher food or animals with kosher ones, changing the surrounding or the setting of the story, introducing references to Jewish literature instead of non-Jewish ones, and replacing foreign idioms with Hebrew ones. 52These strategies were also eagerly deployed in earlier translations of children's literature.
However, in analyzing the Other in translated literature, it seems important to look equally at what was not changed as at what was.Although the translator of Death Disc censored an important scene in the story, he preserved the Otherness inherent to the very fiber of the world described by Twain.The plot was not moved, for example, to Erets Israel, and Cromwell was not replaced with some powerful biblical figure.Was the Cromwellian context perceived as something interesting and worth discovering for Jewish children, or was it a necessary evil, tolerated only to an extent?Perhaps it was both.
This translation can serve as a good example of the strategies used by the editors of Olam Katan to create intriguing but still "kosher" Hebrew content for Jewish children.Ben-Avigdor and Gordon were quite open in their selection of content for the periodical and did not hesitate to let the periodical's young readers discover the non-Jewish world around them, past and present.In introducing the Other, the editors did not limit themselves to European and American literature but also reached to much more distant traditions like Arabic and Japanese folklore. 53The extent of "domestication" of the Other depended, of course, on the character of the text and the choice of the individual translator.

Edmondo de Amicis: translation in instalments
As Toury pointed out, in the initial period of the Haskalah the texts that got translated were either short works or selected parts of longer ones.The limited length not only made it easier for the translator to handle the material but also to publish it in periodicals and collections. 54his tendency was followed to some extent in the early Hebrew children's press.In the Jerusalemite Olam Katon we find short translations published in one or two instalments. 55In Gan Sha'ashu'im the translated literature is either poetry or prose which was not published in multiple instalments 53 See respectively: "Ha-na'ar ha-dayag Urashima.Agadah yapanit" [Urashima, the Young Fisherman.A Japanese Tale], trans.Ben-Moshe, Olam Katan (1904), 30:687-692, and "Ben-ha-melech ve-ha-ḥayat (agadah aravit)" [The Son of the King and the Tailor (an Arabic Tale)], trans.Israel Lipski, Olam Katan (1904), 1:23-28; 2:61-66. 54Toury, "Translation and Reflection on Translation," XXIII. 55See n. 23.
either. 56At one point, its editor announced his intention to publish Masot Guliver-which was supposed to be the translation of Gulliver's Travels, originally written by Jonathan Swift-in several parts. 57The promise was repeated in subsequent issues 58 but never actually fulfilled.European Olam Katan was the first of the early Hebrew children's periodicals to translate longer texts to Hebrew and publish them in multiple instalments; of the three early periodicals, it has the greatest variety of shorter and longer translated pieces. 59Several appeared in just the first year of its publication (1901-1902), including works by Giberne, Carpentier and de Amicis that were each published in 8 instalments, a work by Pendleton published in 12, and a 20 instalment translation by Wörishöffer.None of these works was published continuously, and often there were gaps between the subsequent instalments, sometimes for several issues.There may be two possible explanations for these gaps, depending if we interpret them as coincidental or not.The intervals between the instalments may suggest that translations were done similarly to serial novels, where the author did not complete the whole text before publication began but instead wrote simultaneously, sometimes leaving editors to wait for the next part to be written.Or perhaps the intervals were not a coincidence at all, but a calculated strategy: anticipation for the next instalment could have induced readers to keep buying the subsequent issues.It is interesting that Olam Katan did not print only one serial publication at time, but would publish several serialized stories interchangeably, perhaps trying to get readers attached to (and willing to pay for) the periodical.Patrycja Kaleta observed that serial novels published in a newspaper could increase its sale by whetting the readers' appetite, which made them continue reading in anticipation of every next instalment. 6056 See, e.g., the already mentioned "Hagadat Mitsrayim atikah," translation of Z legend dawnego Egiptu by Bolesław Prus, which was published in only two parts.There were two longer texts in Gan Sha'ashu'im which were published in multiple instalments, but they were original Hebrew works, not translations-for more about them, see Ofek, Sifrut hayeladim, 354.  5Gan Sha'ashu'im (1899), 44:1.
59 The publication of literature in instalments was not only typical of the Hebrew children's press-it was a much broader phenomenon in magazines for various audiences in various languages.
One of novels whose partial translation was published in Olam Katan over several instalments between 1901 and 190461 was Cuore [Heart],62 by a popular Italian writer, Edmondo de Amicis, and translated by Israel Shaf.After the first instalment appeared, the editors published a short text introducing the life and work of the writer.As in the case of Gordon's introduction to La Fontaine's fable, mentioned above, the text emphasized that Cuore had already been translated into many languages and now Jewish readers also had a chance to read and enjoy this story in Hebrew, thanks to the translation published in the pages of Olam Katan. 63 Cuore is another example of a story set in a Christian country, this time in Catholic Italy.This automatically suggests a need for adaptation, and indeed we find differences between the original and translated versions.Shaf alters parts referring to Christianity or skips them altogether.He also experiments with the calendar.At the beginning, he converts dates given in the Georgian calendar system in the original story into the Hebrew calendar.This leads, however, to some peculiar situations.At one point in the story he refers to moed ve-ḥag ('feast days') on the second day of Kislev,64 which must have been puzzling for Jewish readers as no holidays fall on this day in the Jewish calendar. 65This starts to make sense after looking at the Italian original, which mentions the Christian holidays of All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day at this part of the story. 66In any case, Shaf seems to be uncertain about his decision to use the Hebrew calendar: after a few issues his calendar format slips back into the Gregorian system.In a later instalment, the translator drops the dates altogether.
This uncertainty about which calendar system to choose suggests that translated literature published in instalments might have shared certain traits with the original serial novels published in the press.The translation or adaptation of a text that was a work in progress is marked by imperfections-such as the inconsistency of the calendar style-which could have been easily eliminated if the text was prepared as a complete book and carefully edited before the publication.Unfortunately, to the best of my knowledge, Shaf never completed the translation of the whole volume of Cuore, so we do not get a chance to see what style he finally chose for the calendar.Only few translated episodes of de Amicis' writings printed in Olam Katan were later re-published by Ben-Avigdor's Tushiyah publishing house, in the form of separate booklets in his series for children, Peraḥim [Flowers]. 67One of these booklets confirms that Shaf did indeed use republication of his translation to correct a mistake first made in Olam Katan.In 1903 he published a translation of another de Amicis' text-the short story Ha-na'arah ha-giborah (sipur)-in two instalments in this periodical. 68n both these instalments, de Amicis' surname appeared with an incorrect first name: Fernando, instead of Edmondo. 69In the 1907 booklet containing the same story, the first name of the author was corrected to Edmondo.
In the case of translations of de Amicis' works, as in the earlier case of Le Fontaine's, we can again observe a relationship between what was published in the periodical and what later appeared in separate booklets.As Janusz Dunin noted, there existed a form of symbiosis between periodicals and books, especially when the same entrepreneur was engaged in printing both.The symbiosis could function in both directions: either a periodical project supported publishing books, or books were published to support the periodical. 70Ben-Avigdor made the most of this symbiosis-once produced, he made sure a given piece of literature (translated or not) was properly recycled through other channel.
69 De Amicis used the following first names: Edmondo Mario Alberto.I could not find any source confirming the name "Fernando." 70 Janusz Dunin, Rozwój cech wydawniczych polskiej książki literackiej XIX-XX wieku,  intro.and ed.Jacek Ladorucki (Łódź, 2018), 235-236.Parts of this last book appeared in the European Olam Katan between 1901 and1902, 74 translated to Hebrew by Yehudah Gur-Grazowski, who used the penname Yigal Ha-Karmeli. 75Despite its obvious references to Christianity, which were of course censored (either by the translator or by the editors), the text must have been considered attractive for Jewish children since it was printed in the periodical.While no sources which directly comment on the editor's decision to include Giberne's story in Olam Katan, a possible explanation for why Ben-Avigdor and Gordon found this text worthy of publication is that it aligned their general editorial strategy.One of the main goals of their periodical was to educate Jewish children through Hebrew-language texts, but it seems that certain topics were not satisfactorily covered in this language.According to Tal Kogman, The nineteenth century saw a marked increase in scientific writing in Hebrew.Traditional topics, such as astronomy and mathematics, were marginalized, and discourse on new branches of science, which had been highlighted in modern European culture, such as zoology, geography, and modern technology, received precedence.This phenomenon seems to also characterize scientific texts in Hebrew written for children. 76e lack of original Hebrew texts discussing the current state of knowledge in astronomy, especially texts which would be accessible to children, surely explains why the translation of Giberne's work was a valuable contribution to Olam Katan.
The original English version of Among the Stars presents astronomy through a fictional story about Ikon, a young boy interested in stars, planets and other celestial bodies.The child-protagonist makes it easier for a child-reader to relate to the story, and the dialogic style of the narrative makes the astronomical knowledge easy to comprehend.Ikon learns about astronomy from the characters he encounters: his German Professor (Herr Lehrer), Mr. Fritz, and another child-character, Stella.
As mentioned, Giberne's writings were influenced by the Evangelical Christianity.Yehudah Gur-Grazowski, who needed to adapt this story for Jewish readers, naturally removed these references to Christianity.For example, in the English original, in one of his conversations with Ikon, 74 See Olam Katan (1901-1902), 19, 23, 27, 31, 34, 38, 53, 60. 75  the Professor, and who modified the geography, replacing England with Germany. 80Gur-Grazowski simply followed his lead in this respect, treating the German translation as his "original."Toury emphasized the role of German as the language mediating second-hand translations during the Haskalah period, especially from English and French, 81 but this case may point to its continuing importance in this later period.Toury noticed that the new Hebrew culture which emerged via second-hand translations mediated through German came into contact with the original cultures indirectly, and that this mediation already altered the original texts: "The intermediate culture quite naturally adapted the foreign texts to its own needs, so that the mediating texts could hardly purport to be adequate representations of the originals." 82o, from all the modifications discussed so far, the only one Yehudah Gur-Grazowski introduced was the omittance of the references to Christianity.But these were not the only changes he made in the process of adapting the story for Olam Katan's readers.He applied some other strategies to domesticate the Other.Following a longstanding practice in translations to Hebrew, 83 he changed the names of the characters: the protagonist, who is called Ikon in the English version and Eduard in the German one, goes by Ḥashavyah in the Hebrew translation.Gur-Grazowski also further modified the geography from the German translation, as seen in this comparison of a passage in the English original to its Hebrew translation/adaptation: "The twinkling is merely in appearance," said Herr Lehrer."It is caused by the layers of air through which the rays of light have to pass.In parts of the earth where the air is clearer, the twinkling is much lessened.In England, however, you may generally know a planet from a star, by the fact that stars do twinkle, and planets as a rule do not."As we can see, the translator decided the fragment "in parts of the earth where the air is clearer" should refer to Erets Israel. 86Furthermore, Gur-Grazowski supplemented Germany, which Kirchner already substituted for England in his translation, with an additional reference to Russia.Through both these modifications, Gur-Grazowski showed his consideration for young Jewish readers of the pro-Zionist Olam Katan, the majority of whom lived in the Pale of Settlement, and for whom Erets Israel was the land of most vivid interest.

Conclusion
These three texts-about a girl and Cromwell, about adventures of children in Italy and about a boy interested in astronomy-presented readers of the Hebrew children's press with the diversity of children's lives in various lands and times.While their translators tried to broaden the horizons of Jewish children by introducing them to new cultures and customs, they were careful about the values they exhibited to Jewish children.All three analyzed cases share a similar translation approach: translators tended to skip parts that identified the characters as Christians or alter elements relating to Christian religion or customs in order to make Jewish readers better identify with the protagonists.
Even-Zohar pointed to two ways in which translations correlate-one is the way in which they adopt given norms, behaviors and policies, and the other is the way in which the target literature selects source texts for translation. 87Although we have few sources that can shed light on how the editors of Jewish periodicals selected the translations that were later published in their periodicals, one thing is certain: their periodicals 85 Giberne, "Bein ha-kokhavim," Olam Katan (1902), 60:295. 86 It may not be just a simple swap of geographical places, but also a more meaningful domestication strategy referring to Talmudic discussion of the properties of the air in Erets Israel.See Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 158b.I am grateful to Wojciech Tworek for sharing this suggestion with me. 87Even-Zohar, "Polysystem Theory," 46.
helped to shape an early body of children's literature in Hebrew.At the end of the nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries, children's Hebrew literature in both Palestine and Eastern Europe relied on translations.Toury wrote that in the Haskalah period, translation was "a privileged mode of generating texts, alongside the cumulative volume of translation production," and that it had a great impact on the development of Hebrew culture. 88In the case of children's literature one hundred years later,89 this observation remains true.Hebrew children's periodicals offer insight into what was selected for translation and into how these texts were adapted for Jewish children.Three different periodicals printed between 1893 and 1904 demonstrate the evolution of translation standards concerning acknowledgment of the original author and the translator.These periodicals also testify to diverse approaches that different translators had to original texts: alongside some "proper" translations, we find also various types of para-translations.The degree of "domestication" of the Other in the translation also varied.The medium of serial publication shows how some translators' endeavors were works in progress, and helps us to study the translators' strategies as well as their doubts and inconsistencies, as in Shaf's problem selecting a calendar style.Through studying these imperfections we come closer to understanding the challenges that translators of children's literature faced at the eve of the Hebrew revival.This article presents some preliminary research on the subject and leaves room for further investigation.One direction for future studies is the question of the possible impact of the serial medium on the published translations and also of their impact on readers and periodicals' position in the market.The body of correspondence from readers, which was quite regularly printed in the European Olam Katan, may be promising material for researching this avenue.A postulate for future research also includes statistical analysis of translated literature in each of the periodicals versus the originals, or further comparative research to demonstrate if the translated literature in Hebrew children's periodicals is similar to what can be found in the children's press of other languages, such as Polish, Russian or German. 50
Ofek, 361.76TalKogman, "The Emergence of Scientific Literature in Hebrew for Children and Youth in the Nineteenth Century: Preliminary Directions for Research," Jewish Culture and History 17 (2016), 3:258.