By Andrew Wong, Tokyo, Japan
As we ease into the end of World Kidlit month, I caught up with Michael Blaskowsky (MB), translator of Yuki Ainoya’s 『うさぎのさとうくん』 series into the Sato the Rabbit series with Enchanted Lion Books, the first of which was listed among the Batchelder Honor books in 2022.
AW: The last time we did an interview, we were celebrating the publication of the first Sato the Rabbit book. How many books in the series have been translated into English so far?
MB: To date, three books have been published―Sato the Rabbit; Sato the Rabbit, The Moon; and Sato the Rabbit, The Sea of Tea. The success of the English translations spurred the publishing company to ask the author for a fourth book, which was published in Japanese in December 2022. Hopefully an English translation will be coming out soon.
AW: The fourth book came out of the English translation? Can you share with us how you heard about it?
MB: I don’t actually recall precisely, but I think the author posted something about this on the “うさぎのさとうくん” X (formerly Twitter) account (which you should follow, it’s really cute). She mentioned that in talking with her publisher, the interest for translated versions of this series showed them that there is interest in the series, and so they encouraged the author to create another book.
AW: I’ve heard of translations spurring new print runs of the original, but this is quite amazing! Do you know if your English translation has been used for translating into other languages?
MB: The English translation was not used for translation into other languages, but it did catch the eye of people in other cultures and acted as a catalyst for them to reach out and create translations in Spanish and Catalan. The series is also available in French, but those translations preceded the English versions.
(AW: I see El Conill Sato (tr. Natalia Asano and Marta Martí Mateu) and El Conejo Sato (tr. Natalia Asano), both published by Pastel De Luna, who seem to have done quite a few Japanese favorites by Toshio Iwai and Shinsuke Yoshitake.)
AW: Besides making the Batchelder honor list, were there any particular reviews or comments that were particularly satisfying? Have you met any of your readers?
MB: I don’t recall any comments that stand out in particular, but I did enjoy seeing so many people love the series for the same reasons that brought me to it. “Whimsical” came up a lot in reviews, which was great to see. I was very pleased to see readers focus on the art and story and what Ainoya-san was able to create.
AW: It really is hugely satisfying to hear about readers enjoying your work, particularly if it was the way you had hoped they would. Are there certain parts that were particularly challenging to translate?
MB: The onomatopoeia were quite difficult, and many times we opted to use a more descriptive verb in English instead of using a sound word. There were a couple places where the most accurate term in English was too technical and so we needed to find a workaround to make the text fit better with readers. For example, in one story Sato removes one piece of a raspberry (つぶつぶのひとつ), which is technically called a drupelet, but I had never heard that word before this series, so adding that word would have been too confusing for 4-8 year olds (and their parents, too).
“Blue Skies” in Sea of Tea contained a particularly challenging onomatopoeia where Sato ties a fork to a kite and the fork stabs into the sky. The Japanese uses “さく” which is a commonly used sound for stabbing or inserting something. I wanted to find a word that would convey the softness of the sky being stabbed and even asked friends how they would describe a marshmallow being stabbed by a fork to source ideas, which gave me a lot of very creative ideas to work with.
AW: I think you created a new sound word in the process and a “drupelet” would have stumped me! Other than onomatopoeia, Japanese children’s picture books often have a fair amount of repetition and use tense in a particular way, so I’m curious about how you dealt with the tense and repetition, whether with instances of similar sentence structures or sounds, or other techniques used in the original Japanese?
MB: We chose to put everything in the present tense to make it feel like readers were exploring along with Sato, even though the Japanese did use past tense in several places. Ultimately, we felt that keeping everything in the present tense neatly complimented the discovery-aspect of the series and the idea that anything could change at any moment. The Japanese did use past tense every now and then to set up something that had happened during page transitions, but in our discussions, Claudia (Enchanted Lion) and I felt that maintaining a consistent tense was more important and more in line with English story conventions.
AW: This is a very interesting and important choice that helps to draw us into Sato’s world and join him in exploring and interacting with things as we read.
MB: For similar sentence structures and other techniques, I don’t recall much in the original that was too challenging, but English children’s books do have a longer history of rhyming, and so I tried to add alliteration for some playfulness, and I also opted for more fantastical or nice sounding words. I would write lists of synonyms for each word in a sentence and play around with combinations until I found a couple that I liked, then see how those worked with the sentences around them.
For example, page two of “Walnuts” in the first book describes how sometimes walnuts contain really special things. The text as lain out in the book is:
ときどき
とくべつ すてきな ものが
はいている
くるみが あります。
So I wrote:
- Every so often a walnut has
- Now and then a walnut has
- Once in a while a walnut has
- Sometimes a walnut has
and
- something extraordinary and wonderful inside.
- something unique and magnificent inside.
- something extraordinary and magnificent inside.
- something unique and marvelous inside.
- something extraordinary and marvelous inside.
And then tried different iterations like this:
- Once in a while a walnut has something unique and wonderful inside.
- Once in a while he finds a walnut with something unique and wonderful inside.
- Every now and then a walnut has something unique and wonderful inside.
- Every now and then he finds a walnut that contains something unique and wonderful.
- Every now and then he finds a walnut with something unique and wonderful in it.
- Every now and then he finds a walnut with something unique and wonderful inside.
I settled on “Every now and then he finds a walnut with something unique and wonderful inside” for the first draft, which was later subjected to reviews and conversations with Claudia.
AW: You said before that the positions of the images were flipped for this spread, which I think made the English text and pictures work better together. Do you face any issues or challenges in the translation or publication process, whether with these books or with any projects you’re working on?
MB: The translation process itself was very fun and I really liked working with an editor. I was very lucky in that Enchanted Lion was precisely the right publishing house for this series and they were also the first people I reached out to, so the hardest part of the process was very smooth. For other series I’m interested in publishing, I’ve since tried this same process and just finding people to respond to book inquiries and trying to line everything up is probably the most time- and energy-consuming aspect, since there is no guarantee that a publishing house will respond and if they do, there is no guarantee that they will be interested. Since Sato the Rabbit, I’ve spoken with both US and Japanese publishers and both sides understandably prefer that the pieces are in place on the other side before committing too much (e.g. Japanese publishers want to have a US publisher lined up and US publishers that I’ve reached out to want to make sure that rights and everything are in place before going much further). Translation may require a lot of time and energy, but it is creative energy towards a finished product.
AW: I think we know how difficult it can be to find a publisher, and how things can quickly develop when we make that connection! Can we look forward to your translation of Sato’s latest adventures in English?
MB: I hope so! Claudia is working on that side of things and so I don’t know much about what is going on with regards to that. I would like to add that I’m seeing more Japanese children’s books with English translations, which is fantastic! I’m always on the lookout for new books and many times in the last year I’ve found existing translations.
AW: It is really pleasing to hear that more children’s books from Japan are being translated into English! The Publisher’s Weekly translated titles web search is a resource you might turn to to find out whether a title has been translated for publication in the US. Good luck and we hope to hear more good news from you!
Catch Sato the Rabbit at Enchanted Lion or follow @hanerusato on X (formerly Twitter)!
Michael Blaskowsky’s translation website
*Japanese original titles are 『うさぎのさとうくん』(2006);『うさぎのさとうくん つきよ』(2008); 『うさぎのさとうくん こうちゃのうみ』(2014);『うさぎのさとうくん あさひ』(2022) by Yuki Ainoya (相野谷 由起), Shogakukan.
SCBWI Japan Translation Group 