August is celebrated annually as Women In Translation Month. This is the time when we turn specific attention—and give gratitude—to the women writers and the women translators who make possible access to stories from many languages to readers who can access them only in their own home languages. Professional translation is an art, just as writing, illustration, and acting are arts—each of these must be thoughtful as well as creative, considered as well as inspired. We see lots of kids’ books year around that work in English only because great translation bridges the author’s work and ours. Many are translated by women fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Japanese, Korean, Swedish, Dutch, Arabic, and, of course, English.
Who are the women who are among these translators? Let’s look at a half dozen kids’ books women translators have brought to English for 2024 publication. Some of these books have simple publication routes, the translators moving them from the original language of publication, in the 21st century, to English within just a year or two. Others have led more complicated journeys from the original author, in the original language, through many decades, and sometimes adaptation to new formats or for a different audience age group, before a contemporary translator has made them accessible to today’s English-reading kids. Travel into their worlds of translation and discover where each translator fits into an author’s story to a new audience.
New Zealander Julia Marshall is multilingual and has a fine eye as well as ear for identifying titles that some call unconventional while many child readers recognize as genuine and funny. Founder, and until recently, publisher, of Gecko Press, she translates kids’ books from Swedish. How did she come to the art of translation? “I was a magazine journalist, because I liked the combination of words, pictures, and people… I worked in Sweden for 12 years making international magazines translated in up to 22 languages, and that taught me about the art of translation, and the difference between a good translation and a bad one,” she told the UK’s educator resource Cast of Thousands. Among her newest translation projects at Gecko Press is a middle grade series from Sweden about the only honest member of a felonious family. The Pinchers and the Diamond Heist, by Sparring Anders and illustrated by Per Gustavsson, shows off the seemingly invisible work of a fine translator by giving English language readers an immediate entrée into a morally topsy turvy home and a unique hero’s adventures.
Sawad Hussain is dedicated to bringing English reading audiences of a span of ages and interests to Arabic language writing from the African continent. Her resume includes translator recognition by such eminent literary bodies as English PEN and the Palestine Book Awards. She has taught Arabic literature and led translation workshops at the university level in the UK and South Africa, among other places. Neem Tree Press employed her skills to make young adult novel The Djinn’s Apple by Djamila Morani as lyrical and engrossing for English reading teens as it is for the original Algerian audience. Just as the author has blended a mystery and history through flowing prose that delivers much information economically, Ms Hussain casts it into a translation that brings along the original cadence of Morani’s style. Of note, too, is that the novel itself “pays homage to translators. A mysterious manuscript and its translation are at the heart of the story, propelling the narrative onward and reflecting the historical truth that it was often the work of translators that influenced shifts in society and led to discoveries and advances that perhaps were right under a person’s nose the whole time,” says Sumaiyya Naseem in a review published in The New Arab.
Translator Rosalind Harvey also brings an impressive resume of work with authors recognized by English language critics as literary luminaries. A Teaching Fellow in both Spanish and in Translation Studies in the UK, she is co-founder of the Emerging Translators Network and was elected as a Fellow to the Royal Society of Literature in 2018. For The Most Delicious Soup and Other Stories, written and illustrated by Mariana Ruiz Johnson, Australian publisher Berbay Books employed her skillful work with Spanish to share this collection of interconnected tales thematizing community, friendship, and celebration from its Latin American roots to North America’s children.
Also working with a Latin American text, this one a children’s modern classic from Brazil and thus originally in Portuguese, Tal Goldfajn was selected by publisher Tapioca Stories to make Marcelo, Martello, Marshmallow by Ruth Rocha the delight for English readers that it has been at home. (Tapioca Stories’ translation also features illustrations by Brazilian graphic artist Ana Matsusaki). Professor Goldfajn has translation experience in Spanish, English, Portuguese, French, and Hebrew, and has lived and worked in Brazil, Israel, and now the US. Her particular interests include language and emotion, making her an ideal choice for a story that Kirkus Reviews describes as “clever encouragement to think outside the linguistic box.” Of course, she also transports the fun with rhyming words from Portuguese to English so American kids can enjoy every beat and turn.
While the four translators above each performed linguistic magic by bringing a children’s book from one language to readers of another, the final two we meet worked with books that had already led more complex journeys from writer to reader.
Ilana Kurshan is an American-Israeli translator and a frequent contributor to the Jewish feminist Lilith Magazine. She brought her experience with translating children’s picture books to Seven Good Years: A Yiddish Folktale, written by Shoham Smith in Hebrew (and illustrated by Eitan Eloa for this Kalaniot Books edition), to English language readers. The tale itself is derived from a short story by the acclaimed modern Yiddish author I. L. Peretz and appeared in an early 20th century collection. So, here we have a translation of a picture book from Hebrew, drawn from a short story written in Yiddish. Both Smith (herself a multilingual translator) and Kurshan retain Peretz’s gentle storytelling for a tale of kindness that has moved from Poland to Israel to American children.
Translator Michelle Bailat-Jones provides us with the English translation of a story with a dissimilar—but equally peripatetic—publishing history. Helvetiq’s The Great Turkey Walk was written by American children’s author Kathleen Karr, who, unsurprisingly, wrote and published it in English. So why is a translator required for American readers less than 30 years later? Because this version is an adaptation by French speaking Swiss cartoonist Léonie Bischoff as a graphic novel. Translator Bailat-Jones, herself now a Swiss citizen, began life in Japan and grew up mostly in the US Pacific Northwest before returning to live outside the US, in France, back to Japan, and then on to Switzerland. She handles the graphic novel interpretation of what was originally a middle grade novel with aplomb, giving this European spin on what is an original American tall tale—fittingly, of a wandering turkey herder—back to American readers with translated dialog unique to Léonie Bischoff’s reconception of Karr’s storytelling.
Every one of these women brings to their craft deep knowledge of language, culture, and—importantly!—the heart of great children’s reading. You can find our suggestions for great Kids’ books translated to English by them, and other skilled translators, regularly featured on our Bluesky account. We post reviews of Translated titles–and more–every day of the week and you can be sure that each Tuesday you’ll find our specific #TranslationTuesday kids’ book reviews featuring the latest to arrive in North America.