About us

Hlapić - A Promoter of Croatian Culture is a project of the Croatian Association of Researchers in Children’s Literature – CARCL (www.hidk.hr). The project is about the international visibility of Hlapich as a missionary of Croatian literature and culture around the world.  It focuses on the circumstances of the individual translations and on their role in establishing cultural dialogue. The reception of the translations of Hlapić in the target cultures is recorded, and international connections are established among interested translators, researchers in children’s literature, and other experts. Special attention is given to the challenges translators and illustrators have encountered in conveying elements of the source culture to the contexts of target cultures, and to the solutions they adopted.

The children’s novel Čudnovate zgode šegrta Hlapića [The Strange Adventures of Hlapich the Apprentice] by Ivana Brlić-Mažuranić, originally published in 1913, a classic work of Croatian children’s literature, has been translated into over twenty different languages. Its first translation, into Czech, appeared in 1930, and new translations keep appearing to the present day. The results of the project will be used in preparation of the book Hlapić in the Big Wide World, which will include comparative analyses of all the translations according to a common methodological procedure specifically developed for this academic publication.

Project Coordinator: Smiljana Narančić Kovač

Project Secretary: Silvija Hanžić Deda

Project Team

Croatian (HIDK): Berislav Majhut, Ivana Milković, Ana Batinić, Tihomir Engler, Iris Šmidt Pelajić, Sanja Lovrić, Corinna Jerkin, Katarina Aladrović Slovaček, Marin Mikulić, Alba Puig Casas, Tea Andrić