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.

Talking about COLORFUL

by Holly Thompson, Kamakura, Japan

I’m always eager to read middle-grade and young adult novels that present teen struggles and real-life challenges in fresh ways, so I was eagerly awaiting the English-language publication of Colorful. At last, another YA novel translated from Japanese into English! AND a timeless novel with complex characters that takes a probing look at universal issues of shifting relationships with family, peers and society at large through humor, fantasy and unforgettable voice.

Today I’m pleased to be in conversation with translator Jocelyne Allen about her recently published translation of the bestselling novel Colorful by Eto Mori (Counterpoint Press, 2021). Eto Mori is the acclaimed Japanese novelist of award-winning children’s and YA books, including the novels Rizumu (Rhythm), Tsuki no fune (Moon Ship), the four-book series Daibu!! (Dive!!), and Kaze ni maiagaru biniru shito (Plastic Sheet Soaring in the Wind), which won the Naoki Prize.

Holly: Colorful was first published in Japan in 1998 to great acclaim, making it the third novel of celebrated novelist Eto Mori to win a juvenile literature award. Three films and a musical have been created from this novel that has sold over a million copies in Japan. When did you first learn about Colorful and how? Had you read any Eto Mori novels before translating Colorful?

Jocelyne Allen

Jocelyne: I can’t remember the first time I heard of the novel. It seemed to be one of those things floating in the cultural air, especially since I moved to Japan not long after it was published. I hadn’t actually read any of Mori’s novels before translating Colorful, although I had read a number of her short stories, and I had her novel Mikazuki sitting on my shelf waiting to be read.

Holly: You keep such a busy schedule translating manga and light novels, including the translations of Onward Toward Your Noble Deaths by Shigeru Mizuki, many volumes of What did you Eat Yesterday by Fumi Yoshinaga, Akino Kondoh’s graphic shorts on Words Without Borders, to name just a few, and your publication list is many pages long. So how did you end up translating Colorful? Were you approached? Or did you approach the Japanese publisher (Bungeishunju)? And did you suggest this book to Counterpoint Press? Could you tell us about the path to translation for this novel and your involvement?

Jocelyne: I was actually approached by my editor at Counterpoint Press, Yukiko Tominaga. She’s a huge fan of the novel and was really the driving force behind this project. I’ve had a relationship with the Japanese publisher for a number of years, and when Counterpoint licensed the title from Bungeishunju, they suggested that Counterpoint get in touch with me and see if I was available to do the translation. Yukiko also liked my work on another Bungeishunju book, A Small Charred Face by Kazuki Sakuraba, so she emailed and asked if I’d be interested in doing a sample translation for them. I said yes, translated a sample of about thirty pages, sent that to Yukiko, she presented it to her editorial board, and they decided they liked my sample enough to go ahead with the translation.

Holly: The title of the novel is カラフル (Karafuru) in Japanese and Colorful in English. Sometimes titles are changed for English-language publications, yet this title would seem to be a given. Was there ever any question about the English-language title?

Jocelyne: I don’t think there was, actually. I never brought the question up, anyway, and in all my conversations with the publisher, there was an underlying assumption that the title of the book would also be Colorful in English.

Holly: Your name appears on the book’s cover—hooray for #NameTheTranslator! Did you request this or is this standard practice for Counterpoint?

Jocelyne: Hooray for #NameTheTranslator! I did in fact request this. The original contract Counterpoint sent stipulated that my name would appear on the title page and the copyright page, but there was nothing about it being on the cover. So I said that I’d like the cover to be added to the list of places where my name appears, and they agreed right away. I didn’t have to fight for it exactly, but I did have to ask.

Holly: The premise of the story is that the narrator has won a lottery of sorts. After a serious mistake in a previous life, the protagonist has been assigned to borrow ninth-grader Makoto Kobayashi’s body for a temporary “homestay” of several months. This novel manages to dive into serious topics of bullying, anxiety, family stress, betrayal and suicidality. Yet this is managed with the deft use of humor plus elements of fantasy via the wise-cracking angel Prapura who appears now and then to offer background hints about the life of Makoto whose body the protagonist inhabits, and to chide and guide him. The story builds in unexpected ways and the ending absolutely resonates. I certainly hope this book will reach many English-speaking readers worldwide. What in particular do you think/hope will appeal to readers outside Japan?

Jocelyne: The themes of the book are so universal, even if a lot of the details aren’t. I think readers around the world can relate to being that age, to trying so hard to figure things out and yet messing up spectacularly. My hope is that readers will leave the book with a feeling of forgiveness toward themselves. They might be a mess, but we all are, even if we don’t look it. I think that’s a lesson that resonates wherever you are in the world and whatever language you grew up speaking.

"Cleanly translated by @brainvsbook, [COLORFUL’s] charm grows with each page . . . The satisfying conclusion offers an important lesson for those struggling with despair: Tomorrow will always bring new hope."—Kris Kosaka, @japantimeshttps://t.co/r5cjgbiYqe

— Counterpoint Press (@CounterpointLLC) October 2, 2021

Holly: Many scenes of Colorful take place in a Japanese middle school where Makoto is a 3^rd year student (grade 9). Scenes are set in classrooms, the art room, soccer, on the school roof, and there are entrance exams—were there any translation challenges? Did you need to sneak in some context for English-speaking readers, and if so, can you offer some examples?

Jocelyne: So many translation challenges! I think the most difficult one was the entrance exams and that whole system. I tend to translate relying on the reader’s intelligence, so I don’t gloss all that much. I think for the most part, readers can figure out what something is and don’t need to be coddled. So the fact of entrance exams themselves wasn’t all that hard. Just make it clear that there are exams students need to take to get into high school and that these exams are a big deal, and readers will take that as part of this world they’re walking into. But implicit in the idea of entrance exams for a Japanese reader is the whole “shingaku” system. The difference between public and private schools is also well known and doesn’t need to be explained in a novel like this for a Japanese reader. But English readers have no idea about this system of education, so I had to massage a lot of the school references to include information about cost and the like, so that English readers could understand Makoto’s dilemma about exams and schools in a similar way as Japanese readers. Everything related to Makoto going to high school was a definite challenge.

Holly: For a book about teens that was published over twenty years ago, Colorful feels timeless. Granted, no cell phones appear in the novel, and there is a moment when the Heisei Era is mentioned, but otherwise, the story feels quite contemporary. As you translated did you aim to contemporize language or content in any way?

Jocelyne: I honestly didn’t. The book Mori wrote is really that timeless. That said, I wasn’t particularly conscious about avoiding anachronistic language like I would be with a novel that was more a product of its time. I tried to keep the same neutrality in terms of slang and other things that the original Japanese has. I think the only thing I updated slightly was the boots that Makoto ordered. In the original, he “mail” orders them, but I translated that as he “ordered” them to leave the where and the how of the ordering ambiguous. Deliberately insisting on the “mail” part would only raise questions in the reader’s mind that weren’t intended by Mori, especially given that we use the same word to refer to ordering things online now.

Eto Mori

Holly: The voices of the various characters—Makoto, his family members, the unpredictable Prapura, classmates Hiroka, Shoko and Saotome—are all distinct and add to the richness of the novel. Which of the voices were the most challenging or interesting to translate and why?

Jocelyne: Hiroka was the most challenging without a doubt. Instead of using the personal pronoun “I”, she speaks in this cutesy way of referring to herself by her first name. So “Hiroka wants” or “Hiroka thinks”, etc. It’s a thing that little kids do, and sometimes young women do it to sound cute and flirtatious. But obviously, it’s weird to refer to yourself by your own name in English, so I had to figure out how to capture the cutesy flirtatiousness of this in other ways.

Prapura was also a fun voice to try and sort out. He talks pretty casually on earth but very polite up in the heavens. Makoto even remarks on this change in register, so it was important to actually convey it in the translation. But English is less obvious about register, so it was a bit of a trick to make the difference obvious without hitting readers over the head with it.

Holly: Interestingly, Counterpoint Press states on their website that they do not publish YA or children’s literature, yet Colorful won the Sankei Children’s Book Award in 1999, and Colorful is solidly YA according to standard English-language publisher categorizations. I hope that this translation of Colorful will reach both YA and adult audiences, don’t you? I imagine that publishers in the U.S. would suggest this book for readers age 14 and up. Do you know if or how Counterpoint is marketing Colorful to the YA audience? to readers in North America? And, if you could share a few words to recommend this novel to teen readers and YA librarians, what would you say?

Jocelyne: I do hope the book reaches audiences of all ages. Right from the start, we were thinking of Colorful as an all-ages kind of thing because it really does have the power to speak to both YA and adult audiences. As I mentioned earlier, the themes really are universal, and you don’t have to be a teenager to relate to Makoto and his struggle. From what I understand, Counterpoint is marketing it to both YA and adult audiences, sending the book out for review to places like School Library Journal and similar publications geared toward librarians and educators.

If I were to recommend the book to anyone, I think I would quote the conversation between Makoto and Hiroka:

“Everyone’s messed up. We’re all normal and messed up.”

“It’s not just me?”

“It’s not just you.”

Colorful is funny and hopeful in a way that doesn’t deny or reject the idea that life can be and often is really hard. But it reassures readers that they’re not alone. And honestly, I think that’s a great thing for a book to be able to do.

Holly: Have you had the chance to meet or read side by side with author Eto Mori?

Jocelyne: I have! Of course with the pandemic, everything is virtual, but I met with Mori and her editor when we were getting ready to release the book, and we’ve done a few events together as well. I interpreted for her appearance at the International Festival of Authors here in Toronto, as well as a launch event this summer hosted by the Japan Foundation Los Angeles, and we’ll be doing a couple other events toward the end of the year.

Holly: The Counterpoint edition of the novel includes a beautiful afterword by author Eto Mori in which she states that “Teenagers in Japan have such difficult lives both now and then,” meaning when the book was first published in 1998. She writes: “I chose to write about a serious subject with a comical touch, I chose to depict it lightly. I wanted kids who liked reading and those who didn’t to have fun with it to start. I wanted them to laugh and roll their eyes at and relate to everything the characters did. I wanted them to enter the world of the book and be free of their everyday lives. And then, when they closed the book at the end, I wanted the weight on their hearts to be just a little lighter.” This is such a moving afterword, and this book feels like a hug to teens everywhere. Did Counterpoint reach out to Eto Mori for this afterword? Did you? Was this planned from the beginning?

Jocelyne: It really is such a moving and thoughtful afterword! Counterpoint reached out to her for it, and as far as I know, it was planned from the beginning.

Holly: There are so few Japanese middle-grade and YA novels translated into English. Are you planning to translate more Japanese MG or YA literature? (We hope so!)

Jocelyne: I would love to translate more YA into English! But it’s a hard sell for publishers. Light novels are similarly YA (albeit fantasy for the most part), and these are a lot easier to sell right now with manga and anime tie-ins and adaptations. A YA novel without that anime connection faces a hard battle toward translation into English.

Holly: Thank you so much and I hope that Colorful reaches many readers around the world!

Jocelyne: Thank you! I’m so happy Colorful has already found its way into the hearts of so many readers. It’s honestly so gratifying.