as: Christina Bjork’s Linnea in Monet’s Garden (Swedish, 1987) and Linnea’s Almanac
(Swedish, 1989); Wolfgang Epple’s Barn Owls (German, 1992); Heiderose and Andreas
Fischer-Nagel’s Birth of Hamsters (German, 1985), Life of the Ladybug (German, 1986),
and The Housefly (German, 1990); Elig Hansen’s Guinea Pig (German, 1992); Hans-
Heinrich Isenbart’s Birth of a Foal (German, 1986); and Rosabianca Skira-Venturi’s A
Weekend with Leonardo da Vinci (French, 1993).
A sign of this period is that fiction titles did not sell well, even in English. Despite this
a few novels are being translated, such as Tamar Bergman’s Along the Tracks (Hebrew,
1991), showing the desperation of a young boy as he searches for his family in the
Soviet Union; the changing friendships of a Dutch Jewish girl are described in Ida Vos’s
Hide and Seek (Dutch, 1991); the care of a crippled war veteran for a young refugee boy
in Peter Hartling’s Crutches; the upheavals of a young Romanian girl being evacuated to
Palestine in Uri Orlev’s Lydia, Queen of Palestine (Hebrew, 1993); a nuclear attack in
Gudrun Pausewang’s The Last Children of Schevenborn (German, 1988); and life in
South Africa in Maretha Maartens’ Paper Bird (Afrikaan, 1991).
Picture books in translation provide new insights. Some of these are Annemie Margriet
Heymans’ The Princess in the Kitchen Garden (Dutch, 1993); two Japanese views in
Takaaki Nomura’s Grandpa’s Town (Japanese, 1991), and Harutaka Nakawatari’s The
Sea and I (Japanese, 1992); Max Velthuijs’ Frog in Love (Dutch, 1989), and Monica Zak’s
Save My Rain Forest (Spanish, 1992). A gradual trend, one which follows the interests of
English-speaking publishers is the increase in interest in poetry. Until the 1990s it was
limited, with Cricket magazine being one of the few strong supporters. Recently, Michio
Mado’s book, The Animals: Selected Poems (Japanese, 1992), translated by the Empress
Michiko, has caused much interest.
The history of books translated into English although never having a major impact in
the publishing trade, nevertheless continues to produce a steady stream of titles; quality
translations are available if we look for them. Maureen White in her study of more than
58,000 entries in Children’s Books in Print 1989–1990 found that there were 572
translated children’s books in print yet of these she counted only 131 to be successful
(that is, they had been in print for more than four years or had had a positive review),
while 25 of these were classics and 42 were folklore.
Issues in Translating for ChildrenThere is a prevailing attitude among amateur enthusiasts and commodity-driven
publishers that anyone who speaks and reads another language can effectively translate
children’s books from that language into English. This is a myth. For example, picture
books, although short by novel standards, require an especially accomplished translator
to glean the essence of the writer’s and illustrator’s intent. Words are at a premium and
each must be precise to convey the nuances of story and meaning. An example is the work
of the German illustrator Helme Heine. His earlier works, recognised for exciting
illustrations were widely criticised for the flatness of their English text. Initially an editor
just ‘cleaned up’ raw translations provided by the German publisher, but later titles
were done with a professional translator to much greater acclaim.
518 THE CONTEXT OF CHILDREN’S LITERATURE