Anthea Bell finds that, initially, translating a work is a slow process because she
has to set the style, try to put herself into the skin of the author, and try not to let
her natural writing style show through. When translating she often feels that she
gets to know an author and their writing better than they do themselves. ‘When I
am translating, I go over something so many times that I have actually picked up a
name which got changed in the course of a story, something the editor should have
picked up.’
Jobe 1990:433–434Illustrations in a picture book provide an additional challenge to the translator. Noted
Finnish translator, Riita Oittinen, observes that ‘when the translator sees the original
text with certain illustrations, the pictures influence solutions. This affects not only the
choice of words, but also the style of writing throughout the book’ (1991:15).
The process of translation is as unique as the style of the individual translator.
However, all translators would agree that they work from Bell’s basic premise: ‘what
would the author have said if he or she had been writing English in the first place?’
The History of TranslationTranslations into English for children was sparse up to the nineteenth century: John
Comenius’ Orbis Pictus or The World Illustrated was translated in 1658; Charles
Perrault’s fairy tales, Stories or Tales of Times Past, with Morals, in 1697; The Arabian
Nights in 1706; and Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose in 1729. During this time only tales
found in chapbooks, primers, good godly books, didactic novels, and adventure books
were considered appropriate and published.
A significant turning point in children’s literature came about with the arrival of the
Grimm’s Popular Stories from German (1823). Together with Andersen’s fairy tales (in
various translations) from Danish (1846) they established a greater awareness of the
importance of translations in children’s literature. Notable translations that followed
were of Heinrich Hoffmann’s Struwwelpeter from German (1848), by Jules Verne’s
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) and Around the World in Eighty Days
from French (1872), Johanna Spyri’s Heidi from German (1894), and C. Collodi’s (Carlo
Lorenzini) The Adventures of Pinocchio from Italian (1891).
The new century started with several titles which still form part of any set of classics
today. These include: Selma Lagerlohff’s The Wonderful Adventures of Nils from Swedish
(1907), Felix Salten’s Bambi from German (1929), Erich Kastner’s Emile and the
Detectives from German (1930), and Jean de Brunhoff’s The Story of Babar from French
(1935).
The years following the Second World War marked a period of intense upheaval,
international frustration, inward-focused reconstruction policies, and a general lack of
literary communication. The raising of the Berlin wall as a symbol of the Iron Curtain
halted the sharing of information about life in many Eastern European countries as well
as consideration of their viewpoints regarding the struggles during the war years. The
continuing effects of the war brought a need for titles that related to the concerns of the
people. Undoubtedly the English translation of Anne Frank’s The Diary of A Young Girl in
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