Framing Bambi: Paratexts in the English Translations of Felix Salten’s Lebensgeschichte aus dem Walde

Abstract

This article examines two recent translations of Austrian author Felix Salten’s novel Bambi (1922). The first full-length English translations to appear in print, 100 years after the novel’s original publication, and 70 years after Walt Disney’s famous animated film that shaped the global image of Bambi, Jack Zipes’ and Damion Searls’ version (both 2022) set out to reinstate the deeper layers of Salten’s work and liberate both the original author and his famous protagonist from the shadow of Disneyfication. To this purpose, a complex paratextual frame is utilized in which the translations enter a dialogue with prior rewritings: the animated Disney film, the first English translation by Whittaker Chambers in 1928, and critical engagements with the text and its adaptations. By strategically enveloping the actual literary work itself, these paratexts reframe Bambi as a text of literary value by an author largely (and unjustly) unknown in the English-speaking world.