By Avery Fischer Udagawa, Bangkok
As Translator Coordinator for SCBWI Japan and the first International Translator Coordinator for SCBWI, I often encounter questions about recognition and remuneration of translators.
Translators need to know if they are accepting terms that uphold the profession. Publishers need to know translators’ roles and needs.
All translators deserve certain terms and conditions, what I call the 3 Cs:
Copyright
- Translator holds copyright to the translation
- Author holds copyright to original text
Copyright information for The Devil’s Whisper, authored by Miyuki Miyabe and translated by Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi. Published by Kodansha USA.
Compensation
- Adequate advance
- Royalties
Credit
- Name on book’s cover, title page
- Profile in biodata
- Name on publisher’s website and entries with online retailers
For examples of appropriate crediting of translators, please see below this article.
Translation of a children’s book is a creative act. The translator reads and interprets what an author has written—and not written—and renders it in a language that may look, sound, and act utterly unlike the original.
The translator considers cultural gaps, the background knowledge of new readers, and literary values of the target market. The translator must also write well—as well as established authors in the target language.
Far from converting a text, a translator renders or performs it much as a musician performs a piece. The composer has notated music in one form, and the musician brings it to life in another.
As a harpist deserves the 3 Cs for recording a sonata composed by someone else, a translator deserves the 3 Cs for translating a story authored by someone else. The translator’s task differs from the author’s, but it is creative and essential. In children’s publishing it is also a freelance not in-house task, so must be credited for the translator to build a career.
Increased awareness of the 3 Cs promises to help translators pursue their vocation, resulting in a great body of world literature for children. There’s another C!
Further information:
Skirting the Juniper Brambles: A Translator Narrowly Misses Getting Trapped in the Copyright Thicket
By Anne Milano Appel with legal commentary by Erach F. Screwvala, Esq. in the ATA Chronicle
Copyright “Rustling” in English-Language Translation: How Translators Keep (and Lose) Rights to Their Work—Data from Translations Published in 2014
By Wendell Rickets on ProvenWrite.com
Copyright “Rustling” in English-Language Translation: How Translators Keep (and Lose) Rights to Their Work—Data from Translations Published in 2014
An Author Asks: Why Should a Translator Get Royalties When the Story is Mine?
By Lisa Carter on Intralingo.com
Intellectual Property and Copyright: The Case of Translators
By Linda M. R. Esteves in Translation Journal
A Model Contract for Literary Translations
By PEN America
Examples of appropriate crediting:
Here are examples of appropriate crediting of translators, to illustrate the third “C” above.
- Name on book’s cover, title page
Cover of Brave Story, authored by Miyuki Miyabe and translated by Alexander O. Smith. Published by VIZ Media, LLC.
Title page of The Friends, authored by Kazumi Yumoto and translated by Cathy Hirano. Published by Yearling.
- Profile in biodata
Profile of translator Lynne E. Riggs, translator of “Love Letter” by Megumi Fujino for Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction—An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. Published by Stone Bridge Press.
- Name on publisher’s website and entries with online retailers
Publisher’s online catalog entry for Otogizoshi: The Fairy Tale Book of Dazai Osamu, translated by Ralph R. McCarthy. Published by Kurodahan Press.
Amazon.com entry for The Whale that Fell in Love with a Submarine, authored by Akiyuki Nosaka and translated by Ginny Tapley Takemori. Published by Pushkin Children’s Books.
All publishers should endeavor to credit translators in all of the above ways.
SCBWI Japan Translation Group 