Mulling The House of the Lost on the Cape with Avery Fischer Udagawa

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi, Japan

Avery Fischer Udagawa, translator of the 2022 Mildred L. Batchelder Award-winning Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba, has translated a second book by the same author. The House of the Lost on the Cape (岬のマヨイガ) is set in the Tōhoku region during and right after the March 11, 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster. It was published by Restless Books in English in September 2023, but the original was serialized in the children’s section of a Tōhoku newspaper (Iwate Nippō) in 2014–15, before being published as a book by Kodansha in 2015.

Accolade and names on the cover

 

The story begins with an older woman about to check herself into a home for the elderly, a woman fleeing an abusive husband, and a little girl, recently orphaned and on her way to go live with an uncle she has never met. The earthquake and tsunami come as each member of the trio arrives in the town of Kitsunezaki, and they all end up at an evacuation shelter.

Deborah Iwabuchi: Avery, there are so many aspects of this book that I’d love to discuss with you. Since it was first published in the junior section of a Tōhoku newspaper in the 2010s, Kashiwaba obviously had young disaster survivors in mind. Although the story is full of magic and mythical creatures, it must also have resonated in the hearts of young readers due to the reality they had experienced. The three main characters are all female, but more importantly, they represent some of the most vulnerable segments of society. It turns out, though, that their heartbreaking experiences make them strong and resilient.

Avery Fischer Udagawa: You’re right, Deborah. I think this may be part of why the story moves people in many different contexts, though it was first written for youth in Iwate. Sachiko Kashiwaba grew up in Iwate, in the towns of Miyako-shi, Tōno, and Hanamaki—home to author Kenji Miyazawa—and has lived throughout her adult life in the prefectural capital of Morioka.

(Tōhoku has six prefectures: Akita, Aomori, Fukushima, Iwate, Miyagi, and Yamagata. Fukushima, Iwate, and Miyagi were hardest hit in March 2011, being located on the Pacific coast.)

Sachiko Kashiwaba and Avery Fischer Udagawa with the Jizō on Honchō Dōri avenue in Morioka, Iwate

Deborah: What I also found fascinating was that while in reality, so many people had to evacuate from locations in Iwate, the three main characters in the story ended up escaping to it—specifically to the fictional town of Kitsunezaki.

Avery: Indeed, their story shows how people can reach a place of feeling safe, even blessed, in a situation of hardship and grief. I think this is a helpful message for readers, both as validation if they have had a similar experience, and also as a source of hope if they are suffering.

Deborah: Three years after 2011, this story brought up the disaster in a way that validated young readers in what they probably remembered about what happened. Toward the end, a legendary snake conjures the forms of friends and family who moved away from Iwate right after the disaster. I thought that the characters’ attachment to these apparitions demonstrated how very natural it was to miss people. The main characters’ perseverance must also have allowed the initial readers of the story—people who had stayed put in Iwate—to be happy that they had stayed despite the crisis. This novel is an adventure for sure, but the author manages to comfort and empathize with her characters and her readers, as well as encourage them to believe in their own resourcefulness.

And it is a story for our times. There are so many natural and unnatural disasters these days. This book seems to offer a useful way to process things with children who are thrown off balance.

Avery: Indeed, in her review of the book, Hong Kong author Maureen Tai quoted these lines by US author Kate DiCamillo:

“So that’s the question, I guess, for you and for me and for all of us trying to do this sacred task of telling stories for the young: How do we tell the truth and make that truth bearable?”

Maureen wrote, and I agree, that Sachiko Kashiwaba tells the truth and makes it bearable in The House of the Lost on the Cape. This novel joins others from around the world that impart hope while also telling children the truth about tragedy, such as (to name just a few):

• The Raven’s Children by Yulia Yakovleva, translated from Russian by Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, set in Stalinist Russia
• Dragonfly Eyes by Cao Wenxuan, translated from Chinese by Helen Wang, set during China’s Cultural Revolution
• Wild Poppies by Haya Saleh, translated from Arabic by Marcia Lynx Qualey, set during the Syrian War

I believe young people can all benefit from these portraits of hanging on when hope is in extremely short supply. And these stories serve the practical purpose of informing their readers. Even in Japan, elementary and middle schools are now full of children born since March 2011, who need to know what happened in Tōhoku.

Deborah: Getting down to the nuts and bolts, many people who have read your translation are impressed by the way you worked Japanese words into the English text. There were lots of names and nouns, and you dealt with onomatopoeia that’s so great in the Japanese language for its simplicity, but can be a real headache for J to E translators for whom that simplicity is elusive. How did you decide which words to leave in Japanese? Did you have a specific reader in mind?

Avery: I knew from the beginning that I was translating for children in the US, home of Yonder: Restless Books for Young Readers, which had commissioned the translation. Anime, manga, and translated literature have made American readers far more aware of Japanese culture than when (say) I was a child in Kansas, so I wanted to leave plenty of Japan-isms in the pages—mochi, futon, miso, kimono. At the same time, I wanted to keep readers oriented, so I inserted brief glosses where terms that were less widely known first appeared: river spirits after kappa, mats after tatami, porch after engawa. I received valuable input from the Restless editorial team when it came to deciding all of this. I appreciated their openness to transliterating Kashiwaba-san’s onomatopoeia for the sound of the tsunami slamming the base of a train platform in the opening chapter, as honestly, I had no words.

Deborah: Although it looks effortless on the page, I imagine there was more involved in actually developing the translation. Can you tell us about that? I know you are personally acquainted with Sachiko Kashiwaba. Did you work with her at all?

Avery: I definitely exchanged email with her while working on the translation. I also got to see her in Washington, D.C. to accept the Batchelder Award for Temple Alley Summer after I had completed the first draft of The House of the Lost on the Cape. And she and I presented in Hong Kong at the Hong Kong Young Readers Festival and International Literary Festival in March 2023, when Cape was in the final stages of the editorial process.

School visits with Sachiko Kashiwaba in Hong Kong! The @litfest_hk Young Readers Festival connected us with more than two hundred students. We talked about TEMPLE ALLEY SUMMER and introduced THE HOUSE OF THE LOST ON THE CAPE, due out in September 2023. #middlegrade #worldkidlit pic.twitter.com/UrSEUo1bgI

— Avery Udagawa (@AveryUdagawa) March 24, 2023

The experience of co-presenting helped me get to know Sachiko Kashiwaba better as a person, which surely fed development of the translation. For example, seeing the way she spoke to students in Hong Kong about the March 11 anniversary (which fell right when we were there), I realized that she clearly wished to inform people about it as well as to support survivors. That emboldened me to make the translation slightly more explanatory. For example, the opening words are あの日, literally “that day” as in “that day that’s seared in all our minds,” but after Hong Kong, I felt better making this “On March 11, 2011.”

Due to Japan’s long Covid-era border closures, I was not able to enter Japan while I translated The House of the Lost on the Cape—a situation that made me nervous at times. Many, many elements of it were specific to Iwate, especially to Morioka and Tōno. My family and I traveled there this past summer after the manuscript had been submitted, and I fretted that I might discover some key detail I had missed while translating about Iwate from afar. In Morioka, I caught myself mis-pronouncing the name of a street where an important Jizō statue is located, and back at our hotel, I whipped out my laptop to make sure I had named the street correctly in the manuscript. Fortunately, I had!

One step I am glad I took during the translation process was hiring Chikako Imoto, an eagle-eyed wordsmith with formidable cultural and research savvy, to do an accuracy pass. Her go-over focused not on the effectiveness of the English, but purely on whether I had caught every bit of the source text. Sometimes, I get so wrapped up in crafting the translation that I drop a line or miss a meaning that should be blindingly obvious, and Chikako saved me from myself. I also enlisted my husband and daughters and various other unsuspecting souls in my effort to make Cape as faithful and readable as possible—and the staff at Restless Books found many ways to polish and improve.

Deborah: Like Temple Alley Summer, The House of the Lost on the Cape has a story (or stories) within a story. The role of the folklore in this book is different as is the way it is communicated.

Avery: Right. While Temple Alley Summer has an embedded fantasy story whose authorship the characters investigate, and which appears in two long sections, The House of the Lost on the Cape features short interludes where the elder character Kiwa tells a folktale. Some of the folklore she shares is found in a real collection called the Tōno monogatari (Legends of Tōno); other material was created by Sachiko Kashiwaba in keeping with the spirit of the Tōno legends, which she has adapted in a volume for children. Another difference in The House of the Lost on the Cape is that creatures from folklore make appearances in the main story!

Visiting an L-shaped, thatched-roof house in Tōno

 

Deborah: I love the illustrations by Yukiko Saito (see View the Illustrations here). Did you get to see them as you did the translation? Even when reading the translation and even though I’ve lived in Japan most of my life, I found the illustrations helpful for confirming certain details. Not to mention the wonderful map of Kitsunezaki in the endpapers. I see the Japanese version had the same illustrator, were any illustrations added for the English version?

Avery: I worked from the 2015 Kodansha edition of the book, which had all of the same illustrations by Yukiko Saito. None were added for the Restless edition, all were kept, and some of my decisions about what to explain (or not) were based on information the illustrations provide. They especially help convey the atmosphere of traditional shrine dances, as well as the characteristics of various spirits and deities who defend the Kitsunezaki community. But I won’t spoil here their daring and dazzling deeds!

Deborah: Avery, thanks so much for this interview! As usual, talking with the translator reveals so much about a book and its author, along with the actual process of translation. I’d also like to note to readers here that Avery’s name is on the cover of The House of the Lost on the Cape. Naming the translator of a children’s book prominently is now a requirement for the Batchelder Award.

SCBWI Japan Translation Days 2022 on Zoom

By Yui Kajita, Munich, Germany

The biennial SCBWI Japan Translation Day(s) returned for its seventh run in November 2022 with another exciting line-up. As with the last event in 2020, it took place over Zoom, allowing speakers and participants to gather from different countries all over the world, including Australia, Canada, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, Thailand, the UK, and the US. Always highly anticipated by both familiar faces and newcomers, this year’s program was once again full of useful information, inspiring anecdotes, and translation conundrums that everyone loves to mull over.

A Conversation with Editor Kathleen Merz, interviewed by Deborah Iwabuchi

Editorial Director Kathleen Merz

Kicking off Day One (November 12, 2022) was a live interview with Kathleen Merz, Editorial Director at Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, led by Deborah Iwabuchi. We heard about how Eerdmans came to focus on children’s books in translation: Garmann’s Summer (by Stian Hole, translated by Don Bartlett), which won the Batchelder Award, was an important starting point, and now at least half of the titles they publish each year are translations. Historically, they’ve found many European titles through the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, but they are eager to branch out to Latin American, Asian, and African publishers as well to expand the range of their list.

While Eerdmans originally specialized in theological textbooks (their history goes back to 1911), Kathleen is interested in a broad range of books, both fiction and non-fiction, picture books and middle grade. She loves to find books that are great conversation starters, introducing kids to things they might not be familiar with. For example, some favorites that she recently edited include a beautifully illustrated book about the Spanish Civil War, called Different (written by Mónica Montañés, illustrated by Eva Sánchez Gómez, translated by Lawrence Schimel) and a picture book introduction to paleontology, One Million Oysters on Top of the Mountain (written by Alex Nogués, illustrated by Miren Asiain Lora, translated by Lawrence Schimel), which is finding its way into school curricula. Kathleen values storytelling most of all, where different cultures, traditions, and so on are lived out as part of the narrative rather than shoehorned into the moral of the story.

It was interesting to hear about the part translators can play even in a book’s format: at Lawrence Schimel’s suggestion, Eerdmans took the text-dense picture book, Different, and transformed it into an illustrated middle-grade novel, which made it more accessible for the right US readership.

Though Kathleen often finds new translators through networks, she also shared useful tips on what she’d like to see in a pitch. Participating in this kind of SCBWI event is certainly another way for emerging translators to get their foot in the door.

Jocelyne Allen on Translating Colorful by Eto Mori, introduced by Holly Thompson

Translator Jocelyne Allen

After the “speed share” session, where the group got to hear from each participant about their current project, Jocelyne Allen gave a dynamic talk on how she came to translate the beloved classic Colorful (Counterpoint Press, 2021) by Eto Mori and the process of working closely with the editor, Yukiko Tominaga, to shape the voice of the novel.

Jocelyne was approached by Counterpoint Press to translate the book—she had been recommended to them by the foreign licensing team at Bungeishunju, whom she had known for years, and it also helped that the editor at Counterpoint had read Jocelyne’s translation of A Small Charred Face by Kazuki Sakuraba before. Jocelyne said it was a joy to work with Counterpoint, from the sample translation and grant application stage all the way to book production, as they truly respected her work as a translator.

Diving into the nitty-gritty details of the translation process of Eto Mori’s deceptively simple prose, Jocelyne offered so many juicy examples of what thoughts went into certain stylistic choices and how she dealt with particularly tricky issues, ranging from questions of tone and register to recurring keywords, and how to localize the text with minimal glossing. For example, she found a way to channel the character Hiroka’s childish, coquettish way of talking in English by using babyish words (like “horsey” for horse), peppering her dialogue with “like” and “so” (as in “so pretty”), and opting for more descriptive dialogue markers (“squeal” or “coo” instead of just “said”). She also shared how she arrived at a translation of the word 再挑戦 (rematch? re-try? do-over? second chance?) that would actually sound like a 14-year-old boy while also fulfilling its role as a keyword for the theme of the novel.

It was engrossing to hear how she brought the text to life in English, and how she worked together with her editor to make it happen.

You can find out more about Colorful and Jocelyne’s translation in this in-depth interview by Holly Thompson.

Presentation and Discussion of Japan Foundation Grant Funding by Aya Tamura from The Japan Foundation

Aya Tamura from The Japan Foundation

One funding scheme that supported both Jocelyne’s translation of Colorful and Avery Fischer Udagawa’s translation of Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba was the Japan Foundation’s Support Program for Translation and Publication.

Aya Tamura, who works in the Arts and Culture Department’s Planning and Coordination / Literary Arts Section at the Japan Foundation, gave a thorough presentation on the Japan Foundation’s wide-ranging initiatives, especially the evolution and the reach of their translation support program. To date, they have supported the publication of nearly 1,500 books in 75 countries or regions, translated into 52 different languages. Excitingly for the kidlit community, they have recently launched Lifelong Favorites, a selection of children’s books that are or are expected to become classics that many children grow up with in Japan, which will be given priority in their support program selection. Though they had always been open to awarding grants for children’s literature, now, with this list, they hope to encourage more applications from children’s publishers.

While the grant application must be submitted by publishers, not individual translators, the Japan Foundation is enthusiastic about supporting the work of translators, and Aya invited ideas from the participants as well. The Japan Foundation’s recent projects include the Translator’s Roundtable Series (More than Worth Sharing, which garnered much attention from the translator community), the Translator Spotlight video interview series, and the Writing to Meet You series (an exchange of letters between authors). Her presentation offered information on other governmental support programs as well, including Japan Book Bank, an online catalogue of rights to Japanese content. Translators can look forward to more support initiatives from the Japan Foundation in the future!

Illustrator Naomi Kojima

We were also treated to an insider’s look at Naomi Kojima’s process of creating the banner and logo for Lifelong Favorites. She walked us through how she developed the illustration concept, starting from the idea of flying books, gradually evolving into the joy of welcoming and meeting a good book. Her brainstorming sketches were delightful to see.

A few examples of Naomi Kojima’s sketches for Lifelong Favorites

A Conversation with Editor Marilyn Brigham, interviewed by Andrew Wong

Senior Editor Marilyn Brigham

Day Two (November 19, 2022) began with an interview with Marilyn Brigham, led by Andrew Wong. Marilyn is Senior Editor at Two Lions and Amazon Crossing Kids, the two children’s book imprints at Amazon Publishing, and she shared how the imprints and she herself came to be involved in translated children’s books, the imprints’ commitment to regional diversity, and what they look for in kidlit in translation.

Observing the big push in recent years for diverse children’s literature as a way of getting fresh voices and perspectives, Marilyn is hopeful that an increasing openness to translations will continue in the future. Amazon Crossing’s list has a good mix of commercial and literary titles, and the books she has worked on have won both critical and popular acclaim, including multiple USBBY Outstanding International Book awards and a Goodreads Choice Award finalist for Best Picture Book. She is also eager to expand their middle-grade list, especially story-driven books with a commercial plot: she is currently working on a mythological fantasy story from Kazakhstan and a historical crime-mystery series from Sweden. Her enthusiasm was infectious as she introduced two brand new books, My GrandMom (by Gee-eun Lee, translated by Sophie Bowman) and Piece by Piece (by David Aguilar and Ferran Aguilar, translated by Lawrence Schimel).

She is always on the look-out for books, and there are many ways in which she meets new translators: through networks, recommendations from publishers, or books that come with the translator attached.

In her editorial choices, she prefers to retain the source culture as much as possible—sometimes adding a little glossary, or a publisher’s note, depending on the project—because she likes the books to have a sense of place. “Books can show all the ways we’re different, and all the ways we’re the same, and that’s the beauty of it.”

Takami Nieda on Translating The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, introduced by Alec McAulay

Translator Takami Nieda

Takami Nieda gave a fascinating talk on her experience of translating The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart (Soho Teen) by Chesil. We heard the surprising story of how this book came to be in the first place—Chesil was initially pursuing a career in acting, but she challenged herself to write a novel to mark the end of her twenties, and this very first book she wrote was shortlisted for the Akutagawa Prize. The protagonist, a zainichi teen straddling different cultures, is also a blossoming writer, and it is a story of how she reclaims or makes sense of her past and of herself through writing.

Because of her own background as an Asian American, the novel’s themes of “in-between-ness” resonated with Takami. As with Kazuki Kaneshiro’s Go, another book she translated, Chesil’s work struck her as the kind of story she wished she had had access to as she was growing up in the US. At the same time, it’s a “teachable story,” which she is always looking out for as a community college teacher.

Takami’s talk explored various questions, such as how much cultural bridging we should do in children’s books. She resists that idea and usually tries to do as little of it as possible, unless it’s absolutely essential for the story, so that readers can encounter stories that don’t center around their own culture or experience—after all, it’s only natural for readers to come across things they don’t understand.

Takami Nieda discusses translating a key phrase in The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart.

There’s often talk about “what’s lost in translation,” but it was great to hear examples of what’s gained instead. For instance, the English novel could play up the theme of crossing cultural identities by varying the spelling of the protagonist’s name depending on where she was: Ginny Park in Oregon and Pak Jinhee in Japan. Also, since English can’t skip over pronouns as much as Japanese does, the star that Ginny has a conversation with was written with she/her, enhancing the sense of sisterhood between them. Chesil was very accommodating when discussing all these questions, as she came to the project with the understanding that a translation of her novel would be another being on its own.

You can read more about the book and Takami’s translation in this interview by Susan Jones.

After her talk, Takami valiantly led a translation workshop, critiquing the participants’ translations of an excerpt from Natsuki Koyata’s 『望むのは』, a book about difference and accepting difference—where your classmate’s mother can be a gorilla, and your friend can have a crush on an ostrich—which won the Sense of Gender Award in 2017. The group had a lot of fun picking apart questions of word-choice, sentence structures, condensation and embellishment, and so on, including how that slippery wasei-eigo イメージ (a katakana version of “image,” widely used for an impression, a look, how one perceives someone, how one visualizes an action or idea, etc.) can be handled as its meaning shifts throughout the passage.

You can read seven translations of the passage, including Takami’s, here.

Overall, Translation Days 2022 was a stimulating event, giving us renewed energy to carry on with our current projects and discover new ones. These inspiring conversations and a generous session on submission opportunities(for participants only), with practical tips on how to find leads and build connections, are sure to keep the fire going!

All credit goes to the lead organizer, Avery Fischer Udagawa, and the SCBWI Japan regional team, Mariko Nagai, Mari Boyle, Alec McAulay, and Naomi Kojima, for their enthusiasm for all things world kid lit and their dedication to putting together a wonderful program for the community.

Announcing SCBWI Japan Translation Days 2022

The Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators presents

SCBWI Japan Translation Days 2022

Two days of online presentations, workshopping, and conversation for published and pre-published translators of Japanese children’s and young adult literature into English.

Dates: Saturday, November 12, 2022, and Saturday, November 19, 2022

Time: Meeting Room Opens 8:30 a.m. Sessions 9:00 a.m. – 1 p.m. JST

Place: Remote via Zoom

Fee: 3,500 yen for current SCBWI members; 5,000 yen for nonmembers. One fee covers both days. 

Translations of text for workshop with Takami Nieda due by November 5, 2022. Fee payments due by November 9, 2022.

Registration: To reserve your place and receive event details, send an email to japan (at) scbwi.org.

Recordings will be available to registered participants until the end of November 2022.

This event will be in English and Japanese. All dates and times are Japan Standard Time (JST). 

Schedule

Kathleen Merz

DAY 1: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 12

8:30 Meeting Room Opens

8:50 Opening Remarks

9:00-9:45 A Conversation with Editor Kathleen Merz

At Eerdmans Books for Young Readers, half (or more) of the titles published each year are translations. Editorial Director Kathleen Merz responds to questions in a live interview about what it takes to publish children’s books in English translation.

Jocelyne Allen

9:45-10:00 Break

10:00-10:15 Speed Share

Participants join a lightly structured “speed share” of their current projects.

10:15-11:00 Jocelyne Allen on Translating Colorful by Eto Mori

As the translator of Colorful by Eto Mori—a YA novel known in many languages and the basis of multiple films—Jocelyne Allen shares about the process and issues involved in bringing this iconic work to life in a US English-language edition.

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:45 Presentation and Discussion of Japan Foundation Grant Funding

Aya Tamura

The Japan Foundation’s Support Programs for Translation and Publishing, and its recent Lifelong Favorites initiative, promise to increase the visibility and viability of publishing Japanese children’s literature in English translation. Avery Fischer Udagawa introduces the role Japan Foundation funding played in the publication of her translation of Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba (11:15-11:30). Then, Aya Tamura of the Japan Foundation presents about its programs (11:30-12:15). Finally, participants in Translation Days have the opportunity to discuss how such support might connect to their projects (12:15-12:45).

12:45-1:00 Closing Remarks for Day 1

Marilyn Brigham

DAY 2: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 19 

8:30 Meeting Room Opens

8:50 Opening Remarks

9:00-9:45 A Conversation with Editor Marilyn Brigham

Amazon Crossing Kids is an imprint focused on global literature for children. Marilyn Brigham, senior editor of Two Lions and Amazon Crossing Kids, responds to questions in a live interview about what it takes to publish children’s books in English translation.

9:45-10:00 Break

10:00-10:15 Submission Opportunities

Participants learn about submission opportunities for those who join in this event, from interested publishers.

Takami Nieda

10:15-11:00 Takami Nieda on Translating The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil

As translator of The Color of the Sky is the Shape of the Heart by Chesil, Takami Nieda describes facilitating the English-language debut of a third-generation Korean born in Japan, whose writing raises key questions about identity and justice.

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:45 Takami Nieda: Translation Workshop

Takami Nieda critiques participants’ translations of an excerpt from 『望むのは』, a title by Natsuki Koyata as yet unpublished in English.

Participants interested in receiving feedback during this workshop must submit their translations of the workshop text by November 5, 2022.

Names will be removed. Participants are not required to submit translations in order to join the workshop.

12:45-1:00 Closing Remarks for Day 2

Speakers

Jocelyne Allen (she/they) is a Japanese translator and interpreter, and has translated hundreds of short stories, novels, and manga, including the beloved Japanese classic Colorful by Eto Mori and the Eisner Award-winning Lovesickness by Junji Ito. As an interpreter, she has worked with Japan’s most celebrated authors and artists, including Sayaka Murata, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Hideo Furukawa, and Akane Torikai. @brainvsbook 

Marilyn Brigham (she/her) is senior editor of Two Lions and Amazon Crossing Kids, the two children’s book imprints at Amazon Publishing. Her noteworthy titles include the upcoming picture book Ruby & Lonely by bestselling author Patrice Karst and illustrated by Kayla Harren; the It’s Not a Fairy Tale series by popular author Josh Funk, illustrated by Edwardian Taylor; and What If Everybody Said That? by Ellen Javernick, illustrated by Colleen Madden, the sequel to the Amazon bestseller What If Everybody Did That?. Prior to joining Amazon Publishing in 2012, Marilyn was at Marshall Cavendish, where she began as an intern and worked her way up to editor. There she edited books for kids of all ages, including popular title Goodnight, Little Monster by Helen Ketteman, illustrated by Bonnie Leick. Marilyn is the author of the board book Swim!, illustrated by Eric Velasquez, and the educational title Dik-Dik (Even Weirder and Cuter Series). When not editing or writing, Marilyn can be found at the beach.

Kathleen Merz (she/her) is the Editorial Director at Eerdmans Books for Young Readers. She has worked on a number of award-winning titles, including books that have won the Caldecott Honor, the Batchelder Award for translation, the Sibert Medal, and other honors. She studied English and linguistics, and especially enjoys working on translated books and nonfiction picture books. She is always looking for original picture books, narrative nonfiction, and middle grade stories—particularly books that tackle contemporary social issues and celebrate diversity or multiculturalism, and stories that have well-crafted voice and strong characters. Kathleen lives in Michigan, and when she’s not at work editing she can usually be found outdoors biking or kayaking.

Takami Nieda (she/her) was born in New York City and has degrees in English from Stanford University and Georgetown University. She has translated and edited more than twenty works of fiction and nonfiction from Japanese into English and has received numerous grants in support of her translations, including the PEN/Heim Translation Fund for the translation of Kazuki Kaneshiro’s GO, which went on to earn a Freeman Book Award for Young Adult/High School Literature from the National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. Her translations have also appeared in Words Without Borders, Asymptote, and PEN America. Formerly an assistant professor of translation at Sophia University in Tokyo, she currently teaches writing and literature at Seattle Central College in Washington State, US. @TNieda

Aya Tamura (she/her) joined the Japan Foundation in 2003. After working in the General Affairs Department and at the Japan Cultural Institute in Paris (Maison de la culture du Japon à Paris), she joined the Arts and Culture Department’s Planning and Coordination / Literary Arts Section in 2021. Support Programs for Translation and Publishing 

Avery Fischer Udagawa (she/her) serves as Translator Coordinator and Japan Translator Coordinator in the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators. Her translations include the Mildred L. Batchelder Award-winning novel Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba, illustrated by Miho Satake, published by Restless Books. @AveryUdagawa

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AFCC (Part 2): Translating the Picture (Book)

By Andrew Wong, Tokyo

Having previously joined a few editions of AFCC as an attendee, I was invited to contribute this time to AFCC’s first Translation Forum as a panelist on translating picture books.

Lined up alongside more experienced translators Ajia (English to Chinese) and Lyn Miller-Lachmann (Portuguese and Spanish to English), Helen Wang (Chinese to English) moderated a rich sharing session on how pictures, and sometimes the story, were changed in translated versions. From how a risque calendar was changed to a picture of a volcano in The World in a Second, how the plot was tweaked in The President of the Jungle, to how word rhythm and sounds were integral to translating Uri Shulevitz’s Dawn and Where the Wild Things Are into Chinese, and how representations were made diverse and appropriate in The World’s Poorest President Speaks Out, it is clear how much creativity and attention is put into transforming a picture book for a new readership. Involving not just the gatekeepers of the original, but also the agents, translators, editors, designers and everyone else working on the translated edition, it is a process that might bring a better picture book into the world.

  Clockwise from top left: Moderator Helen Wang, Ajia, Andrew Wong, and Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Before we wrapped up the session, Helen kindly gave us the chance to voice our wishes as translators and for picture book translations, some of which we can certainly work on together.

– Push the boundaries of self-censorship by publishers (in China)
– Use our voices to make the translator’s craft and its importance known
– More adults sharing the experience of reading picture books with children
– Acknowledge the author, illustrator, and translator in reading sessions
– #TranslatorsOnTheCover
– More translations (in the US) and more from the wider, less represented world
– Support translated books so there are more of them!

Other than the sessions in the Translation Forum, I was particularly interested to hear how some publishers were looking at diversity and inclusion, the situation with translation in Southeast Asia, and how stories were being told and retold in this part of the world where there are many linguistic and cultural bridges to cross and build. There’s much to catch at AFCC, so I’m grateful that most sessions are available on demand till the end of the month!

A handful of us from SCBWI Japan were involved at AFCC 2022. Read more in Avery Udagawa’s wrap-up at AFCC (Part 1): Shifting Perceptions.

Batchelder Award for Temple Alley Summer; Criteria Revised

By Holly Thompson, Kamakura, SCBWI Japan Co-Regional Advisor

Mariko Nagai, Tokyo, SCBWI Japan Co-Regional Advisor

Naomi Kojima, Tokyo, SCBWI Japan Illustrator Coordinator

 

Among the ALA YMA Awards last month, the 2022 Mildred L. Batchelder Award for a book translated from another language into English went to to Temple Alley Summer written by Japanese author Sachiko Kashiwaba, illustrated by Miho Satake, and translated from the Japanese into English by SCBWI Japan Translator Coordinator/SCBWI Translator Coordinator Avery Fischer Udagawa!

This was thrilling news for many: for publisher Yonder, an imprint of independent publisher Restless Books; for Sachiko Kashiwaba, author of many beloved children’s books; for illustrator Miho Satake; and for Avery. Avery has been an advocate for young people’s literature in translation and a champion of children’s and YA translators of other languages into English, co-organizing our biennial SCBWI Japan Translation Days since 2010, overseeing this SCBWI Japan Translation Group blog, and managing Google Groups for both SCBWI Japan translators and for all interested SCBWI translators who translate into English. Avery has helped build communities of translators and created opportunities for both emerging and established translators, and she has long been advocating for crediting translators, lately via #NameTheTranslator and #TranslatorsOnTheCover.

In the SCBWI Translation community, we were also delighted when, just days after the Youth Media Awards announcements, we learned the great news that the ALSC board passed a motion to revise the Batchelder Award criteria, such that translators must be named on, or in, the books submitted. As explained in this World Kid Lit blog post by Paula Holmes of ALSC, “The translator(s) shall be named on all titles submitted for consideration. The translator(s) name(s) shall appear, at minimum, on the title page along with the author(s) name(s), and ideally the translator(s) name(s) shall appear on the cover along with the author(s) name(s) as well.”

So a special hurrah and thank you to Avery! And to translators of children’s and young adult literature from other languages into English, we applaud you all! Do persevere! English-language young readers deserve to read the world.

Voicing a Story

By Andrew Wong, Tokyo

We were recently treated to a double header on voice and character with two (yes two!) award winning kidlit creators, Traci Chee and Avery Fischer Udagawa. Attending both sessions, I saw how their approaches toward characterization and narrative were different by nature of their roles in the creative space—a writer shapes characters from scratch to best convey a narrative, while a translator recreates a story and the experience of reading it in another language.

A strong voice draws readers (that includes publishers too) and drives a story, and both Traci and Avery touched on how writers create voice. Using various techniques to put sentence length and vocabulary to work with non-textual cues, and sometimes with how the text falls on a page, to create tone, pace, and atmosphere, authors and translators use basically the same tools for a text-based narrative.

Voicing and Tone: – PianoBuyer.com

But unlike authors, translators work on an existing text. Even so, Avery cautioned against being too concerned about fidelity. Taking an example from music, she mentioned how the notes of an accurately tuned piano may sound fine, yet they are different from the sound that flows from a voiced piano. My take on this would be that when a pianist (translator) plays music scripted by a composer (writer), a performance focused on hitting the right notes alone would sound sterile as compared to a nuanced expressive one.

Avery used submissions from a workshop at SCBWI Japan Translation Day a few years ago to show how two translations of the same passage can sound very different. This reminded me that a translator’s reading of the original, their interpretations and choices, affect every aspect of the translation. Indeed, no two translations from workshops over the past six editions of Translation Day have given off quite the same vibes.

Having shown how translation is a highly subjective endeavor, besides reading the story in rakugo-style and asking family members for input, Avery shared how communicating with Temple Alley Summer author Sachiko Kashiwaba sometimes influences her, for example encouraging her to trim her sentences (when in doubt) to reflect Kashiwaba’s often tightly phrased emails. While Avery mentioned that Kashiwaba doesn’t write herself into her stories, this experience suggests how personal connections between the writer and translator are simply precious and can sometimes prove instrumental in fine tuning the voice, narrative or otherwise.

We had already dipped into the depths of characterization and voice in the preceding workshop with Traci Chee, and together the two sessions made me think deeper about the tools available to (re)create characters and the story world, and about the clues lying there in the pages waiting to be discovered and conveyed. For more on Traci Chee’s illuminating workshop on voice in her book, We Are Not Free, watch for Mari Boyle’s write-up at the SCBWI Japan blog.

Participants in the Voice and Character event (photo taken after Avery’s session)

Talking about Temple Alley Summer

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi, Japan

Avery Fischer Udagawa is the translator of a middle grade novel just out from Yonder, an imprint of Restless Books. Temple Alley Summer was written by Sachiko Kashiwaba, a well-known author in Japan. Her book The Mysterious Village Veiled in Mist influenced the Studio Ghibli movie Spirited Away.

Today, I’m talking with Avery about her work on Temple Alley Summer (TAS). In the past months, I’ve had the opportunity to do a few of these interviews. Each one brings new discoveries, and I’m enjoying it so much that I’m about ready to give up doing translation altogether and just READ translated books so I can talk to the translators about them.

TAS was thoroughly engrossing, and I sailed through the 200-plus pages. There’s no way a brief synopsis without spoilers can do it justice, but let me give it a try. What begins as a story about modern Japanese schoolchildren moves quickly into an old neighborhood legend and a mysterious statuette that can bring people back from the dead. Fifth-grade Kazu witnesses such an event and becomes privy to the truth behind Akari, a girl who suddenly appears in his class. If Akari’s story were not enough, Kazu and Akari end up in pursuit of another, older and darker fantasy, an unfinished story in a magazine that Akari read in her first life, and which Kazu is determined to find the conclusion to. The reader gets to read the story along with Kazu, and is left hanging as he searches for its author. This story within a story keeps the reader glued to the page until the very end. What happens to Akari? And what about Adi in the other story? Rest assured, all the puzzles are solved, but that’s all you’re going to get from me!

Sachiko Kashiwaba, author of Temple Alley Summer

Deborah: Avery, you were interviewed a year ago about another story by Sachiko Kashiwaba that you translated, “Firstclaw,” online at Words Without Borders. In the interview, you also talked about your impressions of TAS, so I encourage blog readers to visit that posting too.

You describe TAS as “a middle grade novel that showcases Kashiwaba’s gift for writing fairy tales, Japan-inspired fantasy, and contemporary realism, all in 52,000 engrossing words.” Can you tell me how you came to meet Kashiwaba and translate this book?

Avery: I met Sachiko Kashiwaba through translating another of her works for Tomo: Friendship Through Fiction: An Anthology of Japan Teen Stories. The opportunity to translate for Tomo and the introduction to Kashiwaba both grew out of involvement in SCBWI Japan (then called SCBWI Tokyo) and its network, and the impetus to translate TAS came from a competition connected with the Asian Festival of Children’s Content 2016. I asked the author’s permission to submit a translation of TAS to the competition and then, later, to English-language publishers.

Avery Fischer Udagawa, translator of Temple Alley Summer

Deborah: I’d like to look at the different layers of the story. The story begins with Kazu, his family, and a day at his typical Japanese school. I imagine the author wanting to bring her Japanese readers in close with a familiar setting before leading them into the supernatural. I find it difficult to translate beginnings of books that involve Japanese school life. To me, it’s always the most difficult part of a translation. The aspects of Japanese society familiar to people living here are the parts that I as a translator have difficulty explaining for non-Japan-based readers in a way that doesn’t get in the way of the original.

In this case, too, there was a certain amount of school and household terminology to get through to discover the old town map with the name Kimyō Temple—an essential plot element. After that, the story takes off. The cast of characters from Kimyō Temple Alley and the somewhat eccentric former resident, together with Kashiwaba’s fantasy, are all described—and of course translated—thoroughly and engagingly. Every time I thought I had the plot figured out, it took a step in a different direction. Any comments on parts of the translation you found more challenging, and parts that were more fun to do?

Avery: Thank you for your kind words about the translation! The opening was indeed a challenge, due to the setting’s many Japan-specific features. Young readers of English cannot be expected to know that class sections in every grade at Japanese school are numbered, or that these sections routinely subdivide into numbered small groups, or that students will remove their street shoes at school and wear indoor shoes, which they may take home during vacations. The early chapters contain many references to such details, which I needed to try to include without stopping the story to explain. It comforts me that you, too, have struggled with this! I would love to see enough Japan school stories become known in English that a bit of background knowledge can be assumed.

Another challenge, which actually arose after translating, has been conveying that religious practices and objects play a role in TAS yet do not make the story religious—just as religious activities are part of life for many people in Japan who are otherwise secular. Everyone in a community might turn up for a festival at a temple to the bodhisattva Kannon, yet not venerate Kannon otherwise. A small statuette of the Buddha might be experienced as simply a household object. A family altar, more than being a site of worship, might imply something closer to missing departed relatives.

Explaining the role of religion in Japan is hard even for scholars and for Japanese themselves. I have tried to convey that TAS unfolds in a culture that has many religious influences, which nonetheless is often nonreligious. And TAS is not a religious novel, any more than The Letter for the King and The Secrets of the Wild Wood by Tonke Dragt, translated by Laura Watkinson, are religious due to including a chapel, a monastery, a knight saying a prayer, and so on.

Deborah: This is an excellent point. As someone who has been in Japan for decades, I tend to forget about the flexibility of Japanese society when it comes to religion and how unusual it can seem.

Avery: As for especially fun parts of TAS to translate, I relished working with dialogue and narrative voice to bring out the relationships between characters. The love/hate connection between fifth-grade Kazu and his 83-year-old neighbor Ms. Minakami was fascinating to translate, because rough equivalents of their words rarely served anything like the same function in English. For example, in a spot where Kazu harps on Ms. Minakami to do something, she says urusai! to him. I could hardly render this literally as “(You’re) noisy!” because the issue is Kazu’s nagging, not his loudness. Nor could I express urusai! with the commonly used but overly blunt “Shut up!” I needed to fashion some English that preserved the level of respect a child and an elder in the same tight-knit neighborhood would show to each other, even when fighting mad. And they really do get fighting mad!

Deborah: So how did it work out in the end? What did they say to each other in English?

Avery: “Kazu. You’re driving me crazy,” she said on the phone. (かずくん、うるさい！)

“Crazy is as crazy does…” [Kazu] replied. （自業自得ってやつです。）

Deborah: Well done! Both the difficult-to-translate urusai (drive me crazy) and jigō-jitoku (crazy is as crazy does) with one fell swoop.

Avery: The embedded tale within TAS, “The Moon Is On the Left,” also offered many interesting passages to translate, including a dramatic scene with rockfalls, flames, volleys of arrows, and lightning bolts indoors! My daily life doesn’t afford many chances to say rockfalls.

Deborah: One thing I liked about TAS was the fact that it WASN’T written in five volumes—when it very well could have been. On the other hand, there are a few aspects that I’m left wondering about and that I wouldn’t mind visiting in a sequel. What happened to the Kimyō Temple statuette? Did Akari’s first-life mother ever find out she came back to life? Are there any aspects you wanted to know more about, and has Kashiwaba written any other books to follow?

Deborah Iwabuchi and Avery Fischer Udagawa

Avery: Sachiko Kashiwaba has not published a sequel to TAS; I, like you, would certainly love to read more, especially about Akari’s former mother Ms. Ando. At the same time, I appreciate that certain things remain a mystery, and I too like that the book stands alone.

Kashiwaba has gone on to publish a number of other works, including the young adult/adult novel Misaki no mayoiga (The Abandoned House by the Cape), which takes place during and after the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami of March 11, 2011. This book has recently been made into a play, and it is also the basis of an anime movie to be released in Japan in August 2021.

Kashiwaba’s other recent works include several fantasy novels, an adaptation of the beloved Tōno monogatari folk legends, and volumes in her long-running Monster Hotel series—rollicking early readers that bring together yokai and western-style monsters.

People interested in her earlier works can check out the film Spirited Away, influenced by her debut novel The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist; and the film The Wonderland, based on another early book. We also have a blog post here at Ihatov with excerpts from a workshop that drew on her 2010 novel Tsuzuki no toshokan (The “What’s-Next” Library).

Deborah: The titles alone are fascinating! Thanks for sharing this book and your experiences with it, Avery. I hope we’ll be seeing more of Kashiwaba in translation before too long. Meanwhile, I’m heading out to look for rockfalls.

Takeaways from AFCC 2021

By Andrew Wong, Tokyo

A tinge of uncertainty seemed to hang over the start of the Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC) 2021 when an email from the Singapore Book Council notified me that the hybrid event would be moved entirely online. Joining remotely from Tokyo, I wasn’t affected by this change, but as I caught up on the event’s recordings, which remain available to attendees until the end of June, I could sense that children’s content creators from the UK across Asia to the US were glad to see a familiar face or form new connections with people on the other side of their screens.

As with past editions, AFCC 2021 offered something for every breed of children’s content creator. Sessions on diversity, mental well-being, and accessibility in children’s books mixed with those on digital content, market entry, and distribution that were presided over by writers, illustrators, publishers, book sellers, and digital creators, and a handful of translators too.

From Japan, Mariko Nagai helped to envision poetry not as “Poetry” but as “poetry,” and Oscar nominee Koji Yamamura talked about his process and the differences between animation and picture book illustrations.

Lawrence Schimel who traverses both writer and translator realms spoke at length about producing picture books that are sensitive to their audiences. On writing about disabilities, he demonstrated how he sought to embrace disability and difference as normal, for example, by not needing to mention them in the text and leaving readers to see the pictures as they are. While this approach was made possible by the stories, reframing “the other” as part of the “normal” came across as both refreshing and liberating.

Screenshot edited by Andrew Wong

 

Speaking about translated works, Lawrence noted how visual cues were sometimes adjusted in translations of his books. For instance, a no-parking sign was changed from an “E” (proibido estacionar) in the Portuguese version to a “P” (no parking) for the English version. A quirkier change was how a pack of margarine was magically transformed into butter for the Swiss version of another of his picture books. He also appreciated how sometimes a translator of his work would come up with a much better expression than he had, like the German title Hundemüde (dog tired) for the English title Bedtime, Not Playtime!.

The conversation continued into how translations are often published in and processed through dominant languages and how decisions in translation can sometimes be influenced by the political relationships between or among the languages. In tune with embracing minority representations, Lawrence also asserted to keep words from a foreign language in regular style instead of italicizing and “othering” them.

Because this idea of the “other” is deeply entwined with translation, it was only natural that the topics carried on into a panel involving not two or three, but six (yes!) literary translators. Lawrence was joined by Avery Fischer Udagawa (Japanese-English) in Thailand, Helen Wang (Chinese-English) in the UK, Vertri (Hindi-Tamil) in India, and Nur-El-Hudaa Jaffar (Indonesian-Malay) and Shelly Bryant (Chinese-English) in Singapore.

Moderated by Shelly Bryant, the lively roundtable kicked off with the question of access to translated works. This part of the chat covered how there are many translated classics around us and what needs to be done for everyone to see more translations, from getting past the numerous gatekeepers of the publishing industry to giving translations the space and attention they need as literary works that are both relevant and important. On bypassing the dominant English gatekeepers, I quickly noted that Epigram Books in Singapore are looking for translations, particularly of stories from Southeast Asia.

Besides sharing experiences of working with cultural differences, such as how it is considered normal (or at least not weird) in Japan for the whole family to sleep side by side on futon in the same room, Vetri, Nur-El-Hudaa, Lawrence, and Shelly also touched on an interesting topic, of bridge languages, which normally would be dominant languages such as Chinese, English, Spanish, or, in the case of India, Hindi.

This discussion on bridge languages linked to a separate session on books featuring dialects and vernacular languages. Writer/publisher Yulia Loekito spoke to field linguist Alexander Coupe about using Javanese in her picture books. In one example, Yulia used Bahasa Indonesia, the dominant language, for the narrative and the vernacular Javanese for the dialogue so that readers can experience the diversity of spoken tongues and Javanese children can reaffirm their identities. In another one, she used different scripts (Javanese and romanized Bahasa Indonesia) to create a bilingual text, which works to bridge the linguistic and cultural gaps between readers of the two languages and preserve the Javanese script at the same time. Lawrence also spoke about how bilingual texts faced the need to be pretty much parallel in content. This illustrated a key difference from a translation – translations do not give readers the luxury of access to the original nor are they as strictly bound by it.

The idea of preserving languages and their wisdoms came up again when Daphne Lee and Joel Donato Ching Jacob spoke about retelling folktales for today’s children. Conversations with someone on the same wavelength can sometimes reveal unexpected connections, so I wasn’t surprised when they stumbled upon a similarity in the much-loved Malaysian trickster mouse deer Sang Kancil and the Philippine pilandok while they discussed various versions of the Pontianak in the region. But while they both agreed that folktales from minority peoples need to be passed on, Joel opined that it might be hard to find such own voices because they might be busy with putting food on the table.

To that end, I found that what storyteller/writer Rosemarie Somaiah had to share from her experience during this pandemic – be kind, first to yourself, and also to others – emanates through my takeaways from AFCC 2021. Embracing the less represented among us; sensitivity to portraying cultural nuances; awareness of political perspectives in dominant languages; reaching out to help those stories waiting to be told. A clear guiding light from AFCC shone through the apparent uncertainty – when we have the breathing space to find and spread kindness, we’ll pull through this pandemic together better.

New Translations Presented at SCBWI Japan Showcase 2021

By Deborah Iwabuchi, Maebashi, Japan

On April 9, 2021, SCBWI Japan held its first showcase of members’ new publications since January 2017. Sixteen books by thirteen members were presented, and a significant number were translations (seven books by five translators)!

The showcase was offered free of charge and teachers, librarians and other interested parties were—and are—invited. To view the recording of the session, follow the simple instructions here.

Here are the books recently published in translation that were showcased.

Kiki’s Delivery Service by Eiko Kadono, translated by Emily Balistrieri

The Beast Player and The Beast Warrior by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano

The World’s Poorest President Speaks Out by Yoshimi Kusaba, illustrated by Gaku Nakagawa, translated by Andrew Wong

1945←2015: Reflections on Stolen Youth, compiled by Motomi Murota and Naomi Kitagawa, translated by Deborah Iwabuchi

Of the remaining two, one is just out:

Soul Lanterns by Shaw Kuzki, translated by Emily Balistrieri

And the other will be out this summer:

Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba, translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa.

We should be hearing more about both of them soon!

View the recording of SCBWI Japan Showcase 2021 to learn more about these and all of the books presented.

SCBWI Japan Translation Days 2020 on Zoom

By Susan E. Jones, Kobe

The year 2020 has thrown all of our best laid plans awry. Thankfully, SCBWI Japan did not allow that to derail the organization of Translation Day, a biennial event eagerly anticipated by members old and new. The current circumstances meant that the event was held completely online via videoconference. In the capable hands of Translator Coordinator Avery Udagawa who moderated and organized the event along with Holly Thompson, Mariko Nagai, and Naomi Kojima, everything was executed like clockwork.

Unlike past Translation Days, participants enjoyed two half-days instead of one jam-packed day. While this may have been planned to accommodate the time zones of participants from around the world, the result was that participants had time to reflect and digest information between the two days. Holding the event online also meant that it was easy to record and share with participants for a time after the event, and share links and other information concurrently with the presentations and discussions. This format made the event more inclusive than ever with participants and speakers calling in from Japan, the US, Thailand, Australia, Singapore, and the UK.

Editor-publisher Beverly Horowitz

A Conversation with Beverly Horowitz

Day One began with a conversation with Beverly Horowitz, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books. She shared important information for translators regarding the type of books she looks for when sourcing works in translation. In a nutshell she is looking for “a perfect book in any language.” That is to say, if the book is captivating in one language it will likely be captivating in translation provided it is translated well.

As for the process of new title acquisition, she uses a combination of visiting foreign rights fairs such as the Bologna Children’s Book Fair, accepting pitches from foreign rights agents, and connecting directly with publishers. She said that an important point for translators wanting to pitch a book to an agent or publisher is to first make sure that the English publication rights are available.

When talking about the difficulty of pitching works in translation, she mentioned that in the North American market “a vision of the broader world is not part of everyday life” and this limits the appeal of works in translation. There is certainly the impression that translated works might somehow be perceived as difficult or unrelatable—one reason why translator attribution on the cover may often be missing.

Emily Balistrieri on Translating Kiki’s Delivery Service

Emily Balistrieri was another featured speaker on day one. He gave us a fascinating view of his experience translating Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing winner Eiko Kadono’s Kiki’s Delivery Service (Delacorte Press, 2020).

Translator Emily Balistrieri

Balistrieri described some of the translation challenges this project presented such as the description of how Kiki came up with the name for her delivery service and how that description had to be changed slightly since the name is “Witch’s Delivery Service” in Japanese. And “The Infamous Phone Number” episode in which he made Kiki’s phone number 1-800-KIKI-CAN in the original translation, but had to change course when readers began actually calling that number and reaching—well, not Kiki’s Delivery Service, but an entirely different sort of service. (Moral of the story: localization is not always the best choice.) Translation of special effects, puns, and even poetry added to the hurdles presented and handily cleared in Kiki’s Delivery Service.

Translation Workshop

Capping off day one was a valuable opportunity for children’s book translators: Emily Balistrieri’s critique of participants’ translations of an excerpt from Eiko Kadono’s 『大どろぼうブラブラ氏』. From rookie mistakes to more nuanced observations, it was a great way to compare translations and discuss why some choices were better than others.

Click image to enlarge this spreadsheet Emily Balistrieri prepared for the workshop, which compares different translators’ renderings of a name, a phrase, and a food.

A Conversation with Arthur A. Levine

Day two started off with important insights from industry veteran Arthur A. Levine, founder of children’s book publisher Levine Querido. His own childhood peppered with translated books such as Isaac Bashevis Singer’s Mazel and Shlimazel: or The Milk of a Lioness and Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking, he understands and has a deep love for good books no matter where their origin. But it took time to learn how to publish translations well. From finding the perfect source material via a network developed over thirty years, to working with translators and editors, it is a process he has honed throughout his successful career.

Editor-publisher Arthur A. Levine

Levine had some useful observations about how translations are currently received in the Anglophone market. Like Horowitz, he addressed the issue of translator credit. While it is standard to recognize the translator on the title page, it is still not common to find their name on the book cover. One reason, he says, is practical; it is more information for the reader to remember about the book. Another reason is intuitive; readers may pass over a translation for being “difficult” or not something they would choose for pleasure reading.

Finally, Levine shared his own philosophy regarding translated works: “The reader should have as close to the same experience of reading the text as the reader of the original.” Long experience allows him to discover the right translator for a project, and he encouraged translators to “let your passions be your power” when it comes to deciding what to translate and pitch to publishers and agents.

Andrew Wong: Translating The World’s Poorest President Speaks Out

Andrew Wong shared his experience of translating Yoshimi Kusaba’s adaptation of a speech by Uganda President José Mujica in The World’s Poorest President Speaks Out (Enchanted Lion, 2020) for the US market. This project held a significant challenge: the text of Mujica’s original speech was in Spanish, and it was adapted for the children’s book by Kusaba. In other words, Wong’s job was to translate a translation. Translators are well aware of “lost in translation” tropes, but Wong went the extra mile and consulted the original Spanish text to ensure that the book’s message and voice were portrayed clearly and accurately.

Click image to enlarge this slide by Andrew Wong, about the themes in José Musica’s iconic speech.

Wong also faced the problem of biases in the illustrations which were not apparent at first glance. Not only did the publisher successfully lobby the illustrator, Gaku Nakagawa, to make some illustrations more diverse, but that also had a positive impact on the original Japanese publication which began using the new illustrations as well. A translator’s influence on the original work in later editions is certainly not unheard of, and this is an encouraging example.

Panel: Translator Rights from a Range of Perspectives

The final session on day two was an in-the-trenches look at four different paths of Japanese to English translation in the children’s book market. Translators Andrew Wong (The World’s Poorest President Speaks Out, Enchanted Lion, 2020), Holly Thompson (Grow, Grow, Grow Tome Sweet Potatoes and The Puppets Are Back, Miyoshimachi Library, 2020), Avery Udagawa (Temple Alley Summer, Restless Books, 2021), and Deborah Stuhr Iwabuchi (1945←2015: Reflections on Stolen Youth, Koro Color, 2020) each described a recent project from inception through publication. From translator’s rights to projects changing mid-course, their stories showed that there is certainly more than one route to successful children’s literature translation, and their work gives hope to those aspiring to follow their lead.

Clockwise from top left: Andrew Wong, Holly Thompson, Deborah Iwabuchi, Avery Fischer Udagawa

One of the highlights for many people who attend Translation Day is the opportunity to meet other members in “water cooler” moments. In a more organized version of that idea, time was allotted for a Speed Share session in which every participant introduced themselves and their current project in thirty seconds. It was a wonderful way to connect with every participant. Instead of repeating the same session on day two, a special Translator Opportunities session (for participants only) provided a wealth of information about who is currently accepting submissions and proposals—indispensable information for those pursuing publication of their work.

The online format of Translation Day hardly seemed to be a hindrance; in fact, it was directly instrumental in allowing participation from people around the world who otherwise might not have been able to attend. All credit goes to the organizers’ impeccable planning and tireless efforts in achieving a fruitful experience for all.