by Andrew Wong, Tokyo, Japan
SCBWI held a separate virtual edition of the SCBWI Winter Conference 2024 to offer people like me the chance to join live online across different time zones and access recordings of the event. Given a choice of three live online creative workshops, which are also available for later viewing, I plumped for The Big Feelings Picture Book Workshop led by Melissa Manlove. The 2-hour online workshop gave me the chance to bounce ideas and gain inspiration early on a Sunday morning with creators across the pond.
During the session, we worked through several exercises to delve into our past, into the feelings of our memories as a child, and talked about using them to tell stories that help children give shape to their futures. It developed into an exchange where we put our ideas and questions out in the chat and got live feedback without ever seeing each others faces or revealing our own.
Other than being emboldened by this faceless anonymity to put out responses in the chat (which I would have been done more readily and quickly if I were typing away on a keyboard rather than swiping it on my phone), my eyes took in the many brief text responses that communicated ideas and feelings succinctly. Words with deep, powerful nuances that evoked emotion were placed alongside ones that colored the imagination to create the setting. Not unlike some of the decisions wordsmiths sometimes make.
When considering how to make a story commercial came up, some of us thought about using animal characters for our stories, which is not uncommon in picture books to help make a story universal and speak more widely. While there was opinion that animal characters may better convey story elements, some of us also noted that some animals would work better over others.
The question of who reads picture books also came into the equation. Picture books are (generally) created for children but read for (to) them and purchased by adults. It made me think that the choice of animal over human protagonist could be made to remove some human aspects that are not essential to or could complicate the story, and might even sway any decision to pick up the book.
Like readers, translators do not get to see these decisions and the many alternatives that fall by the wayside. Since communicating with the author is not a luxury often available to a translator, creative workshops like this get me thinking about why some picture books can tug those heartstrings, and about the words and characters chosen to tell the story. I’d like to think that these allow me to delve deeper and feel closer to the story in its original language. And if I were to translate it, along with any research and background information, being able to feel closer to the story would be like having an emotional guide as I find a way to convey the story in another language.
SCBWI Japan Translation Group 