V is for Van Lieshout

Ted van Lieshout

Ted van Lieshout is an award-winning Dutch poet, author and illustrator, well-known for pushing the boundaries when writing for children and young adults. His book Brothers, translated by Lance Salway and published in 2001 by Harper Collins, it was shortlisted for the Marsh Award for Children's Literature in Translation in 2003 and has been re-issued in 2011.

I was a little confused as to why it was set in the seventies when it was written in the nineties, but apparently it is semi-autobiographical and based on van Lieshout and his own brother (or one of them - he is one of eleven).

It is the story of two brothers, Luke and Marius, yet it begins six months after Marius's death. Their mother wants to burn Marius's things in a grand gesture of farewell. Luke is outraged and determined to save his brother's diary by writing in it himself. So begins a conversation that the brothers could not have had in life. The subtitle of the English translation is Life, Death, Truth and although those are very big themes to be covered in such a slim book, it is a fair reflection of what it is about. Luke discovers the truth of various events in both their lives, beginning to come to terms with his own sexuality and insecurities as he gains an understanding of his brother's. All the while, the question hanging over him is Can you be a brother when your brother is dead?

Being written as a diary, or perhaps a series of letters, it has an immediacy and dry wit that draw the reader in straight away. Occasionally, I found this aspect of the book irritating - it's difficult to give the reader enough background information without breaking character - but for the most part it works. It is moving and sensitive, yet never sentimental, and Lance Salway has succeeded admirably in maintaining that balance in his translation. A word about the title: in Dutch it is Gebr. ("Bros.") yet in English, French, German and Italian (at the very least - those are the languages I understand of the ones I've seen) it has become Brothers. Perhaps this spelling out is inevitable - to me at least Bros. is too reminiscent of the '80s pop group - yet it loses something. As the Nederlands Letterenfonds website points out:

"Van Lieshout uses the abbreviation to indicate a breach in the relationship between two brothers and the premature end of a young life."

All the same, even without that little subtlety, it's a poignant and gripping story by a writer unafraid of taking risks and tackling some big ideas. The "scenes of a sexual nature" make it one for older teens, with the publishers pitching it at 15+.

T is for Traitor...

... my own first published translation.

For my MA dissertation, I chose to write an annotated translation of Die Verräterin by Gudrun Pausewang and I was lucky enough to find a publisher, at Andersen Press, for whom the story resonated with his own experience. Traitor was published in 2004.

It's the story of Anna, a teenage girl living in the Sudetenland at the end of the Second World War. Although this area is now in the Czech Republic, she and her family are German. Anna is fairly ambivalent towards the Nazi regime, but her older brother is fighting in the German army while her younger brother, Felix, is a passionate member of the Hitler Youth. When she meets an escaped Russian prisoner of war, instead of doing her duty and reporting him to the authorities, she helps him - finding him a safe hiding place, bringing him food and clothes. Anna hopes that he will soon escape over the Czech border. As her relationship with Maxim deepens, Anna finds herself questioning more and more about the society around her and becoming much more politically aware.

Pausewang herself lived through this era, in this area, until she and her family were forced to flee from the advancing Russians in 1945. As a girl she was as fanatically pro-Hitler as Felix, yet she became a pacifist and vehemently opposed to war and injustice - her changing views can be seen represented by Anna, her family and friends.

I was particularly keen to translate the book because it presents young readers with a different angle on the Second World War and shows that not all Germans were Nazis. As the fascination with the Third Reich shows no sign of waning, it is good to get this message across. At the same time, negative stereotypes of Germany came about for a reason and I also wanted to challenge any ideas that "This couldn't happen here". Anna's dilemma shows that nobody can ever know how they will react in any given situation. It challenges the reader to wonder what they would have done and flags the importance of individual responsibility. I'm pleased to see from various reader reviews on Amazon, goodreads.com and elsewhere, that other people have responded to the book as I hoped they would.

And, if you'll pardon my blowing my own trumpet a little, who wouldn't be pleased with a review like this?

Q is for Québec

A guest post by Katy Manck as part of the WordCount Blogathon 2012:

When we first meet Sam in his small Québec hometown in The Book of Time, he’s sure that the junior high bully is going to beat him up. By the end of this compelling young adult trilogy, Sam has become stronger in many ways – as a friend to his cousin Lucy, as a quick thinker and problem solver, as a person who can resist the temptations of easy illegal riches, and as a young man who knows that the perils of going into high school are nothing compared to what he’s faced during his time travels.

Series author Guillaume Prévost is a history professor in France and has also written novels for adults – all in French. In a 2007 interview, he stated how much he enjoyed having William Rodarmor translate all three books in The Book of Time series, as Rodarmor frequently consulted him to clarify historical points and plot nuances. When his adult novels were translated, Prévost had very little involvement with the process.

As a reader, I feel that having the same translator for the entire series kept the narrative flow clear and the characters’ voices distinct as we hurtled back and forth through Time together. For more details (but no plot spoilers) about the books, please click on each title below to open my recommendation in a new window/tab:

The Book of Time (#1) introduces Sam, his recently bereaved father, and their shared gift of traveling through time using the sunstone and special coins.

The Gate of Days (#2) takes Sam and his cousin Lucy to the castle of Vlad Tepes, Chicago’s gangster days, and rumbling Vesuvius as they search for Sam’s dad.

The Circle of Gold (#3) that enables time-travel from any location is what the Archos man seeks, so he holds Sam’s girlfriend hostage in Renaissance Rome until it is found.



Will Sam, his dad, Lucy, and Alicia all get back to Québec safe and sound?
Will the mysterious Archos man be defeated?

You’ll have to read The Book of Time series to find out!

Check your local library, bookstore, or the publisher:
USA: Arthur A. Levine Books – all 3 books in hardcover
UK: Scholastic Books – first 2 books in paperback
Canada: Scholastic Books – book 1 in paperback

**Katy Manck, MLS
http://BooksYALove.blogspot.com
follow me on Twitter: @BooksYALove

About the author: Katy Manck is a retired academic/corporate/school librarian who finds joy in recommending young adult books beyond the bestsellers on her BooksYALove blog. She is treasurer of the International Association of School Librarianship and publicity chair for IASL’s free online international GiggleIT Project for student writers.

O is for Outside In

O is for Outside In:

"the organisation dedicated to promoting and exploring world literature and children's books in translation." 

 I have found this website of enormous help in compiling and researching this A-Z, and the nice people there provide all kinds of ways to discover new books. You can search for a specific author or  title, browse by age range or choose a country from an interactive map of the world. Or you can have a look at their book of the week. Not all the books are translations, incidentally - some are written in English by international authors.

There is also information on their work bringing international books to children in the UK and a whole range of schemes and events supporting translated children's literature: it really is a worthwhile site to check out!

Meanwhile, here's a range of translated picture books beginning with 'O' that I found there - follow the links below the images to read their reviews:

Odd Bird Out

Oink, Oink Benny

On the Farm

Oscar and the Very Hungry Dragon

K is for Kaaberbøl

Lene Kaaberbøl to be precise, who is interesting because she translates her own books into English from her native Danish. I don't know of any other instances in children's literature, although I'm sure someone will be able to correct me on that. Self-translation undoubtedly has many advantages - the author/translator knows their own text better than anybody and never has to wonder exactly what some phrase or other means. It also requires a bilingual fluency of a sufficiently high level to be able to write as well in another language as you can in your own - a skill of which I am frankly in awe!

To get a taste of her writing for this A-Z project, I read Kaaberbøl's Silverhorse. The publishers, MacMillan Children's Books, have let this and the sequel Midnight go out of print, which is a shame because it's an excellent book. It is set in a post-apocalyptic world where nobody is allowed to own the land, but it is passed down from mother to daughter. Women are the rulers with a duty to care for the land, and men lead an itinerant life. The main character is 12-year-old Kat, daughter of Tess, the maestra of Crowfoot Inn. Kat has a fiery temper and fights constantly with her stepfather. In the end, Tess has no choice but to send Kat away, despite it being very unusual for a girl to travel in this society. After a disastrous apprenticeship to a dyer, she ends up at the academy for Bredinari, who ride the strange and dangerous hellhorses - wild nightmares crossed with sturdy mountain horses - and serve justice and law in the land of Breda. Here, Kat has to learn to control her temper so she can master the weapons and horses she will need to handle. Events come to a head when she gets caught up in power politics beyond her control or understanding, and finds herself fighting for survival.

The plot rattles along at a good pace and Kat is an engaging and sympathetic, if flawed, character. Her struggles with both authority figures and bullies her own age are all too recognisable and the book also tackles the reverse-sexism of her world, snobbery, loyalty, betrayal and true friendship.

I found that as I was reading, I was constantly trying to second-guess Kaaberbøl - had she used this word or that (injust, for example) deliberately for archaic effect or by mistake? - a trap that is all the easier to fall into when the author/translator is known to be writing in a language not her mother tongue. I also found myself irritated by the interjection 'Sweet Our Lady!' - coming from a Christian tradition, I would have found 'Our sweet Lady' or even 'Sweet Lady!' more natural, but then perhaps she was deliberately trying to distance herself from 'Our Lady' as the Virgin Mary... That said, the writing is truly fantastic, in every sense of the word.

Highly recommended!

F is for Cornelia Funke

Cornelia Funke is a hugely successful, award-winning German author of fantasy and adventure books for children of all ages - they range from picture books to young adult novels. She started out as an illustrator before beginning to write herself and became very popular in Germany in the nineties before her books began to become known in English a decade or so later. She is probably best known for the Inkworld trilogy, the first book of which, Inkheart, was also made into a 2008 film with what you might call an all-star cast.

I was just about to write that Funke is an author I hadn't previously read, when I checked her publications list and realised that fils aîné had borrowed The Princess Knight (tr. Anthea Bell, Chicken House, 2003) from the library a while ago. It's the story of the entirely non-girly Princess Violetta who wants to be a knight like her brothers and is disgusted when her father holds a tournament with her hand in marriage as the prize. With ingenuity and determination, "Little Vi" manages to outwit them all and choose her own path in life. It's also beautifully illustrated by Kerstin Meyer and a welcome antedote to all the Disney princess stuff that makes me glad to have boys!



Anyway, although I was aware of the Inkworld trilogy, I hadn't read any of Funke's fantasy novels because they came along too late for my childhood and the boys are still too young for them. In the last couple of weeks, I've read Igraine the Brave (tr. Anthea Bell, Chicken House, 2008) and Dragon Rider (tr. Anthea Bell, Chicken House, 2005) and hope that they provide a fairly representative sample of her work - I couldn't get hold of Inkheart etc in time for this project.

Igraine is another little girl who wants to be a knight. The book is for younger children, 7+ according to the publishers, and I hope it's the sort of thing fils aîné might be getting round to before long.  Her parents are famous magicians who manage to accidentally transform themselves into pigs. This means that Igraine has to put things right, meeting dragons, giants and all kinds of adventures on the way. It would be a good introduction to chapter books, chivalry, knights in armour and so on because none of the dangers ever get beyond what the film industry calls "mild peril", and it's short at 224 pages. It is also wittily told by both Funke and Bell, and illustrated by the author.



Dragon Rider, also illustrated by Funke herself, is a more ambitious undertaking altogether. Weighing in at 560 pages, it's for the 10+ age group and tells the story of a dragon named Firedrake, a brownie named Sorrel and a boy named Ben. Together they set off on an epic journey to find the long-lost valley where the last dragons can live in peace, undisturbed by human greed. Of course there are plenty of dangers to be overcome here too, and an ancient enemy is on their trail... Reading as an adult, I quite enjoyed it but felt that it lacked depth. The characters seemed rather too obvious, the dangers rather easily overcome. And I do always feel a little irritated when the journey out takes 550 pages and the return leg can be summed up in a couple of lines! Probably despite the length and the 10+ label it might be suited to a younger audience still. I can imagine that in a few years' time, the boys will love it.

Domestication vs Foreignisation via Red Rage

This post was originally published on Lisa Carter's Intralingo blog a month ago: http://intralingo.com/domestication-vs-foreignisation-via-red-rage/

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One of the eternal debates in translation studies is whether to favour the domesticating or the foreignising approach, and one of the most famous quotations on the subject comes from Friedrich Schleiermacher’s On The Different Methods of Translating of 1815:

  “Either the translator leaves the writer in peace as much as possible and moves the reader toward him; or he leaves the reader in peace as much as possible and moves the writer toward him.”

(For a more detailed look at the article as a whole, check out this excellent post by Susan Bernofsky at Translationista, which I discovered while making certain I’d remembered the wording correctly: http://translationista.blogspot.com/2011/02/friedrich-schleiermacher.html )

On only my second ever book translation, I got the chance to see a practical application of each approach. Allen & Unwin in Australia and Annick Press in Canada had jointly bought the rights to Rote Zorn by Brigitte Blobel and I was approached to translate it. Relatively early on, I enquired whether to use the metric or imperial systems for weights and measures, given the differing approaches of the varying readerships to metrication. Leave them as they are, I was told. We’ll sort that out later.

But that was only the start. In the end, the two editions of the translation came to exemplify the foreignisation/domestication debate. Red Rage is the story of Mara, a sixteen-year-old girl, her dysfunctional family and the problems caused by her uncontrollable anger. The Canadian publisher decided to leave the reader in peace and move the story to a generic city high school somewhere in North America. The Australian publisher decided to leave the writer in peace and keep Mara in her post-war estate* in Essen.

Now this is where things start to get interesting. If we move the writer towards a North American reader, as well as using miles, we have to change most of the characters’ names. Mara stays the same, but her parents Günther and Beate become Gary and Beth, for example. The nationalities of the immigrant neighbours change. Suddenly sixteen-year-olds can no longer (legally) drink beer or ride a moped.

It is certainly true that anger, fear, dysfunctional families and rough estates* can be found anywhere. Perhaps it is easier for a North American teen to identify with a character if they don’t have to worry about cultural differences. All the same, I regret the loss of Mara’s father’s back story. His one great achievement had been to escape to the West from East Germany; after that, though, he’d never amounted to anything, and this goes a long way to explaining the way he acts now. Obviously, once the translation is no longer set in Germany, this section has to go. It’s only a couple of paragraphs, doesn’t affect the main plot. But it does add something. The author put it in for a reason…

I’ve gained more experience since then. Perhaps if the situation were to arise again I’d argue the case for leaving the writer in peace. It depends though. The balance between the writer and the reader shifts from book to book. I recently translated a series of detective novels set in London. As a result, I aimed to make them as smooth as possible. To use the imperial system, to make the dialogue sound British so as to avoid jarring the reader. But maybe it would have been interesting to see ourselves as the Germans see us?

No, there isn’t a simple answer, but I’d be interested in what anyone else thinks about it!
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* UK housing estate = US housing project. Thanks to Amalia Gladhart for making me aware of that little Pond difference.