So I’m having lunch with author Jeff Baron (I REPRESENT SEAN ROSEN) the other day and we’re talking about his play VISITING MR. GREEN. It’s a remarkably popular work, and has had debuts all over the world. The topic naturally turned to translation and Jeff mentioned that he takes an active role in reading and critiquing the various translations of his work. This got me to thinking about translated children’s books. Not the foreign titles that are translated into English, but the American books that are translated into other languages around the world.
The fact of the matter is that the time and care and attention that Jeff has pored into the translations of his staged productions do not have much of a children’s book correlation. American authors, by and large, don’t tend to care what the translated versions of their stories sound like. And even if they do, I don’t think there’s a publisher contract out there that gives the author creative control over translation (you may feel free to correct me on this).
Authors care about the translations of the titles of their books, of course. Jeff Kinney, for example, has gotten a lot of laughs from the fact that DIARY OF A WIMPY KID couldn’t be directly translated into German because there is no German equivalent for the word “wimpy”. Many authors, as it happens, enjoy seeing the different covers and titles of their books worldwide. How many, I wonder, take it a step further and translate back their own books so that they can see how their words have been changed? After all, if you’re going to be known to a foreign nation solely through your writing, wouldn’t you want that writing to be as pitch perfect and accurate as possible?
For a time I had some fun collecting various editions of Harry Potter from around the world. Indeed, I have quite the little collection. My favorite of all these were the various editions of HARRY POTTER AND THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS. Why? The anagram. At one point in the story the words “I AM TOM RIDDLE” turn into “LORD VOLDEMORT” (should I have said “spoiler alert”?). In enjoying the various iterations of that anagram my husband and I noticed that in many cases the very names of the characters had changed. Two of my favorites -
Italian: “Tom Orvoloson Riddle” becomes “Son io Lord Voldemort”.
Czech: “Tom Rojvol Raddle” becomes “Ja Lord Voldemort”.
I’ve searched and searched for a website where someone comments on the changes in a foreign edition of one of the HP books but so far no go.
So I’m going to throw this one out to the authors out there, and not just those of the American persuasion. I want to know if in other countries writers care more about their English translations than we do about our foreign ones. Perhaps they don’t. Maybe no one cares. Maybe everyone does on some level. And are there authors here that have offered to personally oversee the translations of their books? Likely, but is it allowed? Will it ever be?
Much to chew on.
I spent a lot of time exploring this site when I was waiting for Deathly Hallows to come out, which looks at the Chinese, Japanese, and Vietnamese translations.
http://www.cjvlang.com/Hpotter/
I got a little confused when you mentioned that the words “I am Tom Riddle” had become “Lord Voldemort”. Actually it was that the words “Tom Marvolo Riddle” became “I am Lord Voldemort”. (Just to be exact). Thanks for an interesting post!
Betsy, are you talking about novels, too? There’s nothing built into the translation process that gives me that kind of access and, at the risk of sounding like a bad author, just trying to imagine the logistics of working closely with translators exhausts me. I’d either have to travel to the country where it was being done to go over the manuscript line-by-line with the translator — or have the translation sent back here to be re-translated back into English by someone else. Right?
You’ve just upped my guilt quotient for the day. Sigh.
Oh blooming heck! How right you are!! I am correcting immediately. Yikes!
I’m not trying to guilt anyone, I’m just trying to find out the difficulties. I don’t think anyone should be obligated by any means to do the multiple multiple steps you just specified. But I am curious as to whether it has ever been done by an author. Authors have enough work on their plates, so I suspect not so much. Still . . . there’s gotta be somebody, right?
Emily, I was fighting with myself as to whether to point that out or not, I am glad you did though…
I had one of my books translated into German by Eva Plorin. I don’t have enough German even to read the book, let alone translate it, but Ms. Plorin sent me a number of queries to make sure she translated just what I had in mind: for example, she asked if a certain character’s coat was a long coat or a short coat, since there is no German word that covers both a long and a short coat. She asked me where I imagined characters were standing in relationship to each other during climactic scenes; she also asked me to describe the exact shades of the colors I alluded to in various passages. I was enormously impressed by her attention to detail, and how strong her desire was to get everything exactly right. Another of my books was translated into French by Antoine Pinchot. Since my French is much better than my German, I could see that the translator condensed some passages and made things up in others, but the things he made up were right on pitch for the different characters, and the style was right. The translation was not accurate, if you looked at it word for word, but the translator got to the heart of the matter, all the same.
The strangest translations for me have been the Korean and Japanese and Chinese translations–I look at books I WROTE and am unable to read a single word.
Laura, I have the same experience with my Asian translations. And they seem so short — all that white space. It’s unsettling. They could have swapped books on us without our knowing it. Maybe there are some Japanese children who think I’ve written your books and vice versa.
I’d be proud to the point of weeping to have written any of your books. Come to think of it, maybe enough time has elapsed so that I can reread them again….
My question would be how many authors even have the opportunity to ask. I’ve only had a couple of books translated (that I know of!) but I wasn’t told till after the foreign editions were published. In fact, I think I only found out when it appeared on my royalty statement.
Beyond that, for me it’s not so much a question of too much work as lack of skills. If I don’t know a language, how do I tell if the translation is off? And if I have it translated back, why should I trust the second translator more than the first?
Always point out my mistakes. Always.