In this chapter, we investigate the consecrating role of Flanders Literature and the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award (ALMA), especially regarding their impact on the transnational circulation of the work of Belgian writer and ALMA winner Bart Moeyaert. We pay special attention to the Swedish translations of his work, positing that translation into Swedish was pivotal. We put specific focus on forms of ‘multiple mediatorship’ established by interconnected networks of cultural mediators. These are constructed around and between actors and institutions of power, with each of these playing their specific role in the chain of events leading to the circulation, translation, and consecration of a specific authorship. The most crucial mediating mechanisms that we identify are the author's self-mediation, German as a transit language, and the Swedish publisher's own transnational networks. The results, furthermore, show that the ALMA had a clear impact on the translation and consecration of Moeyaert in Sweden, but this only holds to some extent for the further transnational circulation of his authorship. In particular, we can see an effect of the ALMA on the circulation of Moeyaert in some areas of the literary periphery, but here financial support from Flanders Literature proves to be essential.

The impact of globalization on children’s media is often hotly debated. While proponents welcome global media to broaden children’s horizons, opponents warn of the potentially negative effects of an increasingly ‘Disneyfied’ culture. More recently, several language and media scholars have noticed a growing counter-movement of cherishing ‘the local’, but also ‘the glocalization’ of global media. This relationship between the global and the local is at the core of our dubbing analysis. With a methodology informed by Social Semiotics and (Audiovisual) Translation Studies, the Swedish and Dutch dubbed versions of the internationally distributed Disney series PJ Masks are analysed. In our comparative analysis of the Swedish and Dutch dubbing, we use multimodal transcription grids to study how the series’ female superhero and villain are portrayed multimodally through spoken language, visuals, sound and (to some extent) voice, focusing on diversity, gender and agency. Our findings show that the Dutch and Swedish versions can be considered ‘glocal’ artefacts resulting from a global product that is imported and localized in both language areas. The analysis reveals interesting (non-)shifts in the depiction of female superhero and villain characters, but also in the semiotic interplay between the different modes in the text.

Retranslation is important for the dissemination of canonical works and for building (inter)national literary identity. This chapter demonstrates the complexity of defining retranslation in the context of children’s literature. With reference to earlier research on retranslation, it proposes a broader definition by insisting on the multimodal essence of children’s literature and the impossibility of dissociating the verbal from the visual. The chapter then critically engages with the retranslation hypothesis, a central yet contested hypothesis within research on (re)translation, and its relevance in relation to children’s literature. Further it offers a comprehensive survey of contemporary research endeavours within the field, examining the multifarious factors that underpin the retranslation process in children’s literature. These factors encompass, but are not limited to, the effects of ageing, ideological considerations, societal and cultural norms, as well as economic imperatives. Additionally, current research also shows the influence exerted by external factors such as the personal histories of authors and illustrators, literary awards, cinematic adaptations, and the significance of multimodality. Finally, it explores recent studies on the reception of retranslated children’s literature and suggests avenues for future research, including the application of concepts such as remediation and transcreation.

Departing from Lefebvre’s work on the social production of space, this paper explores the intersection between perceived and lived space from the perspective of spatial discourse analysis. Empirically, the paper studies how the spatiality of international airports performs affective discursive work and establishes prerequisites for air travelers’ feelings of being “in control” and “excited” vs. feelings of being “controlled” and “surveilled”. The concept of binding is applied in order to understand how affect is spatially afforded at Stockholm Arlanda Airport and Vienna International Airport. The analysis reveals that alternations between bound and unbound spaces construe the airports as distinctly ideological sites with different affective potentials. Accordingly, this article adds to the understanding of how airport atmospheres are construed by means of spatial resources such as the height, depth, and shape of walls and ceilings and by the transparency and opaqueness of the built material, as well as by more dynamic elements such as carpets, colors, signage, and retractable belt barriers.

This chapter focuses on the recontextualization of images and the translation of simultaneous action expressed multimodally in picture book translations. It analyzes several spreads from the globally translated and distributed picture books about Grandpa Pettson and Findus by Swedish author-illustrator Sven Nordqvist and compares their French and Dutch translations using a social semiotic multimodal text analysis examining both words and images. Within the theoretical framework of social semiotics, but also drawing on central thoughts within Descriptive Translation Studies, the authors see translation and the act of translating as motivated by and within its specific social and situational context, depending on the signs that are culturally available within this context. The results of the analyses show that the translated picture books about Pettson and Findus can be described as ‘glocal’ artefacts, combining globally spread images with new meaning depending on the local choices made in the different translations, in this case as expressed through the depiction of simultaneous action.

Analog bulletin boards are omnipresent in Swedish urban areas, yet little systematic knowledge about this communication medium exists. In the shadow of the rapid emergence of digital media the analog bulletin board has received less attention than its digital successors, many of them having incorporated similar functionality with novel technical solutions. In this study we used a citizen science method to collect 1167 messages from bulletin boards around Sweden aided by school children and teachers, with the purpose of shedding new light on what is communicated on the boards, by whom, using what types of technologies and in what way the messages refer to other media. Results show that the most common messages are invitations to events, such as concerts, lectures and sports events, followed by buy-and-sell ads for goods and services. The most frequent sender is an association, for example NGOs, sports associations or religious communities. Almost half of the sampled messages were professionally printed, about forty per cent were made by home printers. Only six per cent of the messages were handwritten, almost exclusively by private persons as senders. Moreover, we show how the analog bulletin board has adapted to recent changes in media technology-a media landscape which is saturated with electronicand mobile media. Further, the bulletin board still holds a firm place in a media ecology where local communication is in demand, and exists in parallel with electronic media. Close to forty percent of the messages contained hyperlinks to web pages and we found (and removed for anonymization purposes) more than six hundred phone numbers from the dataset.