Objectives:
This study explores the role of translation in mediating short stories' morals by examining the differences in communicating messages through meta and publicly elaborated narratives. Methods: The study adopts a contrastive content analysis method; it contrasts the different impacts of public and meta-narratives on Jordanian elementary school students' reception of short stories that aim to reinforce or introduce a new value. Results: The study shows that public narratives proved effective in reinforcing pre-existing values, while meta-narratives proved effective in introducing new values when adopting translation as mediation. The study also emphasises the importance of the narrative dimension of meaning because the study did not find statistically significant differences between the fourth and seventh grades; the differences were limited to meta and public narration. Conclusions: The study concludes that the translator needs to adopt different translation strategies when reinforcing, contesting, or introducing a new interpretation based on the translator's knowledge of the target language context and culture. For example, the importance of recycling could be considered as a reminder for one society and a new representation for another.
