A B C Alison O’Dornan . Diglot Books (Nederlands / English) 2010
Like others reviewed on this site, this is a book produced by someone working to create a book that can't be found. Wishing to teach her young bilingual child to read in Dutch and in English, a parent discovered that her child found ABC books confusing because the translation of a word used to illustrate the sound of a letter often started with a different letter.
And so the author produced a bilingual alphabet book carefully planned so that all pairs of words begin with the same letter. The word pairs have been thoughtfully matched: some traditional pairs work well in both languages, such Apple/Appel , Table/Tafel and Shoe/Schoen; the author has also found words less commonly used in such books, like Waterfall/Waterval and Rainbow/Regenboog, which offer opportunities for attractive illustrations. Each page has a sentence in both languages to illustrate the use of the word. The book includes numbers. The book will be attractive and helpful to young learners. Other European languages are planned using the same principles. The book can be obtained from www.diglotbooks.com .
ABC Alison O’Dornan. Diglot Books (French/English) 2010
French/English Flash Cards – Going Shopping
The French/English alphabet book is now available from Diglot Books. Like with the Dutch/English version that preceded it, great care has been taken to match words that begin with the same letter: juggler/jongleur and gloves/gant feature alongside a number of pairs that differ in pronunciation only.
Flash cards on the theme of shopping are also available. In a pack of 50, the attractively illustrated and strong cards are accompanied with suggestions for games.
If you are unsure about your French pronunciation you can find audio files for these resources on the publisher’s website.
The stories have been reviewed by Jaffar Jama in April 2011.
Gabadhii Boqorka / The King's Daughter
The story is one that Somali children and adults can relate to for the following reasons;
Firstly, bravery is a quality which is highly appreciated in Somali culture especially amongst men because about 50% of Somali lead a nomadic life which needs bravery to defend your livestock from wild animal such as lions, foxes and hyenas as well as opposing tribesmen.
Secondly, a father does not easily give the hand of his daughter in marriage. He ensures that the potential husband is from a family with equal family status. Making conditions which may rule out a potential husband is common and brave men are highly respected in Somali culture because there’s always the possibility of tribal conflict. This is something that is still happening. Thus, the king realises this young man will defend his kingdom from opposing tribes trying to overthrow him.
Finally, the food, names, animals and musical instruments mentioned in the story are common in Somalia. Furthermore, Mogishu epitomizes the pride of Somalia as it has always been the capital of Somalia for both the colonial masters and independent Somalia. Thus, there is a historical significance for the setting of the story.
Awoodda Waxbarashada / The Power of Education
The story focuses on the significance of education and parents tell such stories to their children to emphasize the importance of education. There is also a general cultural significance behind the story for the following reasons.
Firstly, cousins travelling together to gain knowledge: this shows the importance of kinship. Having close relationships with your extended family members is still part of Somali culture. Some family members are also close friends because one is not supposed to betray one’s family.
Secondly, travelling on foot from city to city to gain education, especially religious education, was common in Somalia prior to independence in 1960 because there was no transport infrastructure and most Somalis were nomads. Gaining secular education is deemed empowering, this enables one to be reasonable, intellectual and bright and usually respected in the community.
Finally, being wise and clever is viewed a gift from God in Somali culture. Being brave is a highly respected attribute but being wise is deemed a quality that requires knowledge, quick thinking and being well spoken which can lead one to solve tribal conflicts and family disputes. On the other hand bravery is often deemed to require physical strength, skills to use traditional and modern weaponry and can lead to a violent reputation.
Waraabihii iyo Dawacadii / The Hyena and the Fox
This is an interesting and common story in Somali culture which many parents and children are familiar with and still tell their children. The cultural significances of the story are as follows;
Firstly, Elder men of a tribe represent their constituency and discuss all social issues regarding the tribe in nomadic society. Women and children are not included in the consultation process. Clever young boys often eavesdrop on tribesmen’s discussions and act accordingly. This leads a young boy who listens to discussions and protects their livestock from danger to be respected and recommended to become a tribal leader when he grows older.
Secondly, Fox and Hyena are considered common enemies of livestock in Somalia up to the present. Foxes are deemed clever animals in Somali culture. They often steals goats and sheep without being noticed. On the other hand, the hyena is considered greedy and stupid. Greedy men, in terms of over eating food and asking people for a lot of material things such as money and clothes, are often metaphorically called hyenas in Central Somalian regions. Finally, clever and brave boys add respect, honour and status to their families and tribes.
Maroogigii iyo Dabagaalihii / The Elephant and the Squirrel
The significance of this story for a Somali context is as follows.
People who are physically gigantic are often associated with lack of consideration in the nomadic culture. Due to their physical strength, people are scared to challenge their ideas and suggestions. Hence, gigantic people may often resolve matters through physical action in the nomadic cultural settings rather than engaging in discussion to resolve issues.
Cumar iyo Waraabihii / Omar and the Hyena
This story is straight forward as the moral of the story indicates ‘don’t tell lies or no one will believe anything you say in the future’. It’s common that boys look after the family’s livestock in the nomadic way of life instead of going to school. There are no schools in the nomadic culture because families are always on the move searching for grass land and water for their cattle.
Gris comme un Loup! Grey like a Wolf! (Jana and Milena Synek) Bramhall Publishing, 2010.
A new title from Bramhall to join the three earlier ones reviewed below. This beautifully illustrated book in English and French picks up the appealing character of the Little Wolf, this time to introduce colours. Two sisters walk through a delicate winter landscape in the snow. In the course of their journey they pick berries, make a snow man and follow tracks until they eventually find their friend the little wolf. The language of the book, while simple, is elegant and appropriate for young learners. This is an imaginative and attractive way to introduce colour names.
The book is accompanied by a range of teaching resources that include larger format books for class use, lesson plans that offer detailed guidance for use in the classroom, extension activities, posters and even a wolf puppet.
Wycieczka do Indii Misiaczki Rosalia / Rouzanna Bear’s Trip to India (2009)
Misiaczka Rozalia na afrykanskim safari / Rouzanna Bear Goes on an African safari (2010)
Iwona Macalka. (Polish/English)
Early Years’ educator Iwona Macalka is concerned about the shortage of non-fiction books in dual language format. She has put her love of travelling to good use and produced two picture books in Polish and English illustrated with her own photographs.
The storyline follows a teddy bear called Rouzanna who narrates her journey as she travels with the author to a village in Gujarat. The photographs offer young children an introduction to village life and include a food stall, a bakery, a classroom, street scenes, a laundry and barber’s shop, a Hindu temple and costumes. In the second narrative Rouzanna travels to the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania. The photographs offer children an introduction to East African wildlife and the names of the animals in Swahili as well as glimpses of life on a Masai village.
If used to introduce children to life in India or Africa, the books would need to be used alongside other resources that show different aspects of life in these very rich and varied countries, but they are a welcome addition to the Early Years classroom and offer opportunities to explore both language and rural culture.
Both the above authors are currently studying the use and impact of their books in the classroom and evaluations will appear shortly in a new section of this website entitled Student and Practitioner Action Research Network. This will include appreciation from young readers.
Radio Franglais (2007). Nancy Boucicault. Published by Middlesex University Press
Radio Franglais (2007) Nancy Boucicault. Published by Middlesex University Press
This book is published with alternate chapters in French and in English.
If books for young people have been published in this format before, they have not come my way. I read the three chapters available free online and waited impatiently for my review copy to arrive.
Radio Franglais presents an exciting adventure story about London teenagers who attend a French Lycée and a local comprehensive school. The young people run a bilingual radio station and, in the process of trying to win a European prize, they get deeper than they expect into London teenage gang culture.
The book is aimed at learners of French at GCSE and AS level and it is, of course, equally helpful to French speakers learning English. It requires a fair level of competence in French/English and is supported by a glossary of contemporary teenage language. The story is indeed a page-turner and the excitement of the plot should motivate students to read it right through.
I feel this book would be ideal for all the not-so-balanced French/English bilinguals who need some encouragement to read in their least developed language. This is an exciting story and an innovative concept and I hope there will be sequels.
Raymonde Sneddon – November 2010
N.B. MU Press closed in 2009 and the book is now available from www.radiofranglais.com.
Making the book you can’t buy
Several books reviewed in this section originated because their author looked in vain for the right book for themselves, their pupils or their own children. These include the books featured below published by Bramhall and Chadpur Press.
When publisher Kiran Lyall had her own child she looked for a book she could use to introduce her baby to Panjabi. While Kieran herself learned to read Panjabi, she was aware that many British born Panjabi speakers had not had the opportunity to learn to read the language, written in the Gurmukhi script. Kieran has used her skills and experience to produce a brightly illustrated and suitably robust book for young children that introduces them to some key Panjabi words. It includes sections on counting, colours, fruit and vegetables, drinks and days of the week. The Panjabi words have been represented in a Roman alphabet transliteration. The author has extensively tested her transliterations to ensure as close a match as possible between the Panjabi words and their representation for English speakers. As well as enabling parents like Kiran to teach new words to their child, the book is particularly valuable to teachers who wish to introduce children in their class to Panjabi. Practising teacher Catherine Coop has commented that “this is an excellent resource for the school library and classroom.” I wish I had had such a book when I was a teacher myself.
This title is available from major bookshops and online from www,sweetlyall.com
Raymonde Sneddon - August 2010
The Book of the Animals is a planned series of illustrated books for young children.
The first two in the series have been published in French/English and in Brazilian Portuguese/ English.
These delightful books tell the story of what happens when the animals in the stories, like many young children, don’t want to eat and don’t want to wash. The books are very suitable both for reading to young children and for older children to use to learn to read in both languages. They might even persuade them to wash and eat their dinner!
The repetitive structure is supportive of children learning new words and the illustrations work well alongside the text to help understanding of unfamiliar words. I can easily imagine young children demanding repeat readings and enjoying learning the text by heart as many children do with favourite stories.
Children learning to make up and write their own stories might well want to write a personalised version, using the structure as a prop. I think the stories would work well both in the home and in the classroom.
The books are available from the website www.thebookoftheanimals.com.
Fluffy the Vulture offers a simple sequence that tracks a vulture across different activities in nine different languages. Unusually for books written for children this one carries all 9 languages on the same page.
This text is particularly useful for language awareness activities in the classroom. The nine languages include 6 different scripts, two of them read from right to left. The languages are Chinese, English, Spanish, Hindi, Hebrew, Arabic, French, Russian and Japanese. The value of this less usual format enables a teacher to explore very different languages and scripts. The colour coding of parts of speech provides lots of discussion points for the classroom for spotting similarities and differences (for example in word order) between the nine languages. It would be easier to use the book with a group of children if the fonts were a little larger. There is room on the page for this.
The repetitive nature of the text helps children to learn new vocabulary, but it does not provide a storyline and would be less suitable for reading aloud. While illustrations are attractive and graceful, on some pages the stylisation of the animals represented means that they can be difficult to identify and therefore do not fully support understanding of the text. However a glossary clarifies the match of words to pictures.
The text is also available online where it accompanied by a recorded reading in each of the nine languages represented. This can be found at www.FluffytheVulture.com . A list of bookshops stocking the two texts as well as e-book versions can be downloaded from the site.
Count Ten A counting book that features numbers 1 to 10 in seven different numbering systems: European, binary, Mayan, Chinese, Roman, Arabic and Hindi. The illustrations show the stylised giraffe encountered in the earlier text eating the leaves of a tree one by one, page by page and then new leaves growing back on the tree. Like the earlier text it offered opportunities to compare the representation of numbers in different systems.
New title in Yoruba and English from Lolipops Publications.
The story in this dual language Yoruba and English book The Tortoise and The Dog in the ‘African Languages Made Easy’ Series is well know among Yoruba people and I was first introduced to it as Owner’s Day. My mother wrote down the story ‘Owner’s Day’ during a visit to London in 1988, recalling it from her childhood when, on moonlight evenings, members of her immediate community would sit outside telling each other stories. Adults would tell children the stories and children would practice retelling the same stories over and over again. As ‘Owners Day the story has a somewhat more subtle, more complex and more challenging moral than the story presented in this version titled The Tortoise and The Dog.
Although the book looks attractive and durable, clearly produced to a high standard with attractive fonts used creatively for the wording on the cover, the cartoon illustrations may be a bit simplistic and somewhat patronising to the older child. The book seems to be targeted at children aged 6 or 7 and upwards who are able to read the fairly wordy, quite small, text inside the book.
Most children will be familiar with the book’s aesthetic which is similar to the ubiquitous Disney cartoon books with which most children, these days, have grown up. Although the story told in this book seems rather bare bones and lacks some of the drama with which the story is told in other versions (spoken and written), interest and character are provided in the illustration.
Unfortunately, the text inside the book is very disorganised and confusing. The arrangement of text in relation to the illustrations is particularly poor and text often runs across the illustration so that words are lost. Line spacing is inconsistent. Font colour and size varies haphazardly and the overall effect is of an annoying distraction from the quality of the illustrations, paper and cover.
This pattern of high quality in some areas being undermined by very poor presentation in others is repeated on the audio CD that comes with the book. The Yoruba version of the story is told by a warm friendly voice in a way that is very pleasant to listen to. The English introduction and the English version of the story on the other hand are so poor that they might easily be mistaken as an offensive against the English language! But I doubt if the authoritarian cold and distant voice and very plain English in which the story is told is intended to be as unattractive as it comes across on the audio CD. Fortunately the audio CD is divided into tracks so it should be possible to ignore the these should you become an owner of this book, which, on balance I would include in a collection of books for a child growing up bilingual in Yoruba and English. The accompanying songs in Yoruba on the CD are a significant attraction of this book. They are sung simply but very pleasantly by first language Yoruba speakers with accompanying percussion. These songs are a valuable learning resource and aid to the pronunciation of Yoruba which is a tonal language. Dr Abiola Ogunsola.
The latest attractively illustrated brook from Bramhall for young children continues with the wolf theme, using the traditional game as a framework to teach the time in French . As the children, originally frightened, get used to having Monsieur Loup as a teacher, they ask the time. The wolf's responses take them through the high points of the school day . The book offers many opportunities for games, drama and development. There is an extensive vocabulary list. Visit the website for activities and lesson plans (www.bramhallbooks.co.uk)
Poscig Smierci / Chase of Death - Wyspa Rekiniej Pletwy / Shark's Fin Island - Potworna planeta / Monster Planet - Wielki Brat w szkole / Big Brother at School.
A selection of action-packed titles from Badger's reading resources for 11 to 14 year olds, published in May 2008.. The fantasy action stories, all featuring young male heroes, include: a new telephone as gateway to entering a deadly car racing computer game, a shipwreck and a young hero rescuing his grandfather, the Minotaur myth for the digital age (with a location device in lieu of a ball of string) and Aliens behind the surveyance cameras in school.
The stories are particularly welcome as there is a great shortage of material beyond the picture book for pupils who benefit from the support offered by a dual language text.
These titles and other similar ones form part of a resource collection aimed at supporting Polish pupils in U.K. Schools. Polish translations (in single text versions) of popular teenage fiction are also available. Authors featured include Philip Pullman, Jacqueline Wilson and Sue Townsend.
Available from Badger Publishing www.badger-publishing.co.uk
Où es-tu, Petit Loup / Where are you, Little Wolf? (Jana and Milena Synek) Bramhall Publishing, 2008.
English and French
Produced by a small family based publisher, this is an attractively illustrated book designed to introduce young children to French. Two girls are looking for Little Wolf who is hiding in the forest. As they call out to him, he responds with increasingly detailed directions. The book introduces children to questions and answers that become increasingly sophisticated as the story develops. A vocabulary list is included at the back. Lesson plans which suggest ways of introducing the book to children as well as extension activities are available free to download from the website at www.bramhallbooks.co.uk .
Quand je serai grand / When I grow up...(Jana and Milena Synek). Bramhall Publishing, 2008.
A new title from the same collection as above. This is also attractively presented and illustrated A small boy fantasises about what he will do when he grows up. As he explores a range of options he realises that he is not really in great hurry to grow. This text provides opportunities to introduce talking about the future in French. Like its predecessor it includes a vocabulary list. The associated lesson plans available on the website are extensive and provide for a range of extension activities.
A B D YORUBA. Bolaji Ladipo. LAL Press, 2008.
A very welcome addition to the very small number of books available in Yoruba in the UK, this alphabet book in hardback introduces the letters used to spell Yoruba. Available from www.yorubabooks.com
Review by Dr Abiola Ogunsola - March 2009.
At first glance, Bolaji Ladipo’s ABD Yoruba for children and beginners makes a good impression. The paper and cover of this alphabet primer in Yoruba appear to be of good quality. The bright and cheerful cover of the little book seems hard and sturdy and the paper is thick and glossy in deeply saturated and pleasing colour.
With a diaspora on 3 continents and so many native Yoruba speakers in several West African countries, there is a great deal of interest in the Yoruba language and a huge market for a Yoruba alphabet primer. UCLA estimates that there are 20, million native speakers and about another 2 million second language speakers. This is likely to be an underestimate however, given the spread of the language, in recent years, within Nigeria where the largest group of first language speakers is. In the United States, Brazil and Cuba among the African diaspora, the Yoruba language also has a significant and growing following likely to be interested in a Yoruba alphabet primer.
With the huge interest in the Yoruba language and the general dearth of colourful, visually attractive, durable learning materials this book probably faces little competition and several people here in the diaspora as well as in Africa will probably buy it if they are fortunate to find it being offered for sale, or take it out of libraries where it is available.
What this book has to offer those who come across it, is a stimulant to conversation about the Yoruba language. And since talking is a way into learning, the author’s effort in producing this book will be appreciated by many. Purchasers can get value for their money if they use the book for talking to learners about the Yoruba language in general terms as well as for learning its alphabet. In particular the inclusion, in the primer of some unusual words, that first language speakers of Yoruba only know the English for, is a welcome celebration of the capacities of the language to discuss the modern world without recourse to English. Native Yoruba speakers will enjoy these dimensions of the text which are a testimony to the ‘sweetness’ of Yoruba referred to in the sub title. Hopefully Ladipo’s Abd will, at least, stimulate native speakers in the diaspora to share their joy of Yoruba with the large numbers of people who are eager to learn.
The main problems with the book however, is that insufficient thought seems to have been given to the words and images used to introduce speaking, reading and writing Yoruba. Shouldn’t an alphabet primer for children and people starting to learn the language be based on every day words and images with which children and beginners are likely to be familiar or at least easily recognise? Chairs, tables, cups and spoons are the usual focus of alphabet primers but in this case the author has selected a strange combination of items to introduce Yoruba so that there is a general lack of coherence in the visual presentation.
Traditional items that are unlikely to be familiar to a young child or somebody starting to learn Yoruba march alongside some of the usual primer items, but most problematic is the fact that some rather ugly and confusing cartoon drawings, as well as complex compound photographic images, are included along with items with cultural significance in only African, or only Western, contexts. Indeed, it is often difficult to work out what the items pictured are. Some of the most difficult to ‘read’ items include a photograph of a root vegetable that might be cassava; a photograph of a window with shutters and a flowers box; a cartoon drawing of a white man with no mouth wearing a suit and glasses carrying a sack; a photograph of a fire fighter standing beside a fire engine and a cartoon drawing of garden gnome to represent a dwarf. The photograph of ‘horobo’ looks like herbs and spices but it could equally well be a picture of ‘traditional medicines’. These items all seem more likely to confuse rather than enlighten the child or indeed the beginner learning Yoruba as a second language.
The eclectic nature of the items included suggests a confusion or carelessness about the target audience. On the other hand, perhaps, in the recognising huge diversity of the people with an interest in learning a Yoruba alphabet and, desiring to please all, the author has ended up with a text that is likely to leave most of these audiences eventually feeling somewhat unsatisfied.
Positive initial impressions are eventually dispelled by the fact that the hard cover has already started to crumble as a result of its journey through the post, and the somewhat curious pictures of an Alsatian dog and a grand piano that are on the cover of the book.. Like the pictures inside the book, the relevance of these pictures for children and beginners learning Yoruba as a second language is unclear and they seem to sum up the problems with this alphabet primer in Yoruba.
The Boy with the Empty Pot / Djecak s praznom saksijom. A Folk Story from Bosnia. Translated by Dina Mehmedbegovic, illustrated by Guy Pilavsky. 1998. Refugee Council.
English and Bosnian
A recent addition to the UEL research collection, and the first in Bosnian. In his attempt to adopt the most honest child in the land as his heir, the King distributed seeds to all the children to plant and grow into beautiful flowers. But he played a trick ... A well told and attractively illustrated illustrated story with a section at the end of the book on the context in which refugees from Bosnia came to live in the U.K.
Around the World at CBeebies : Stories in other languages from countries around the world.
Most of the stories in this collection are available in the original language. the language is printed at the bottom of each page as part of the image and a translation in English is available at the side. While I have some reservations about the legibility of the text in some of the original languages (compared to the clarity of the English), a great strength of this collection is that it introduceschildren to famous traditional stories in their original language. The books are attractively illustrated and eye-catching. An audio option would be a welcome addition to the dual language texts.
The books are in Arabic, Bengali, Cantonese, Danish, Gaelic, Hindi, Jamaican, Portuguese, Russian, Somali, Turkish, Welsh and Yoruba. Available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/drilldown/stories/2/6/1/
Reviews by Raymonde Sneddon - July 2008 (with apologies for errors that appeared last week)
Fisherman and the Cat (Keya Ashraf / Bhadra Patel), Chadpur Press, 2007
In English and Gujarati
Bilingual books for children are becoming more readily available and this well- produced book with an accompanying audio CD is a welcome addition. The story is well told and carries a very relevant message about environmental exploitation motivated by greed.
The book has a very useful short section on basic script and pronunciation of Gujarati language, particularly as the story is written in English, Gujarati transliteration in Roman script and Gujarati translation in Gujarati script. It thus allows non-Gujaratis to have a go at pronouncing Gujarati as well as providing reading and listening opportunities for both bilinguals and monolinguals. Very usefully, also, each page has a table of vocabulary in English with Gujarati translations, accommodating what I presume are key words for each double page spread. It therefore permits the building up of vocabulary in both languages. Literacy and oracy are both well served by this arrangement.
I am not sure what age range the book is designed for, but presumably it is primarily for Key Stages 1 and 2 in junior schools. Parents, too, can use this book at home to read (and listen) with their young children. Whilst the book may be aimed at mainstream schools, it can also be a useful resource for complementary or community run schools. However, the price (£17.99) is well out of reach for these poorly funded schools. I wonder if it is possible to produce a similar book in paperback, without the transliteration, for such schools at a much lower price.
Bilingual books in translation are always prone to the pitfalls of following the original English too closely either in almost literal translation or in sentences structures. Something is always lost in translation. This book has tried to avoid such pitfalls but has fallen victim to stylistics and choice of vocabulary. Whereas the English is accessible and appropriate to the age range in mind, the Gujarati has a more literary flavour and has vocabulary more suitable for more mature and literate Gujaratis. The translator seems more mindful of presenting the ‘correct’ Gujarati than of engaging young minds - this may put many parents off, let alone the children. It is far better to ‘tell’ the story than to be too rigid about exact correspondence (which, I think, may have been imposed by the publisher in order to justify the education market ). It is as if a Gujarati teacher assistant has to follow exactly the main, monolingual class teacher. Errors, too, have crept in - for example, on P9, the Gujarati translation for ‘glitter’ is incorrect; monsters translated as ‘rakshso’ in Gujarati is transliterated as ‘raksasho’ which is confusing (P8-9). There are similar mistranslations on p13 (‘set’ as sun set). The long Gujarati sentence (item 7 on page 15) could have been better as two interlocked sentences instead of following the English construction. The choice of the Gujarati word ‘mohini’ for sorcerer (P30-31) is peculiar as it gives a gender to the sorcerer as well as giving a rather sexual twist to the meaning. Would it not have been better to choose ‘jaduger’ (magician) which the children (and parents) may be more familiar with and avoids both gender and sex traps?
I point out these weaknesses not as criticisms but as a guide to improving the bilinguality of the story, which on the whole is worthy and lyrical if a trifle too long. The translator must be free to ‘render’ rather than translate to make the texts in both languages equally accessible and appropriate without loss of overall meaning. It should be more a collaboration between equals rather than leader-follower relationship.
Arvind Bhatt
University of East London
September, 2007
As teachers in multilingual schools, many of us have been guilty of asking a bilingual colleague, parent or pupil to translate a letter or a short children’s story, blissfully unaware of the great complexity of the task. We might have wondered why the translator agonized for an entire day over the precise wording and the exact register expected by the target audience... and then puzzled again to find others arguing over the choice of words.
For all teachers who may have underestimated the demands of translation, the book by Gillian Lathey is a revelation. It presents a wonderful journey of discovery through the rich and complex world of children’s literature in translation and what this reveals about our conceptions of childhood and the shared values of our cultures.
“... the transposition of children’s text from one language and culture to another reflects differing expectations and interpretations of childhood”
Gillian Lathey’s collection of key texts is drawn from a range of disciplines and scholarly traditions that bear on the translation of children’s literature. The individual authors present models that enable the reader to explore and understand the many choices and dilemmas faced by the translator of children’s books. Critical interest has developed in this very under-researched field over the last 30 years. The collection includes articles and book chapters which address theoretical perspectives, outline models and explore the dilemmas and choices faced by the translator.
Themes explored in the book include definitions and status of children’s literature, the choices made by publishers and translators and the complex adaptations that are made when a text travels from one context to another with different cultural as well as linguistic expectations.
In the first section of the book O’Connell, Shavit, Fernandez Lopez and Puurtinen introduce theoretical models and use them to explore issues of definition, cultural norms, adaptations and modifications. For example, Shavit’s model posits two complementary principles that govern the translation of texts: “translators adjust the text for what is considered ‘good for the child’” and “translators adjust the text to a child’s ability to read and comprehend”. These are reflected in the linguistic and cultural choices that are made by translators.
Such choices are explored in detail in further chapters, many of which are written by experienced translators. These sections introduce the reader to the pleasure of exploring the transformations of iconic narratives such as Robinson Cruse, Alice in Wonderland, Pippi Longstocking, as they more across linguistic and cultural barriers. They reveal the ingenuity, as well as the extensive cultural knowledge, of translators who approach the seemingly untranslatable (complex intertextual narratives like The Jolly Postman and the culturally grounded linguistic and visual jokes typical of the Astérix cartoon strips) and can turn it into literature that could have been written directly in the target language.
While the translation of dual language books is not directly addressed in this collection, many of the issues raised apply equally to such texts, with the additional constraint of the need to present two very closely related texts on the same or opposing pages. This rich collection of insights from researchers and translators should stimulate a welcome and open debate about the intended audience and purpose of dual language texts and the choices and challenges faced by their translators.
Review by Raymonde Sneddon - November 2007
Ceren’ in Kitap Sevgisi - Ceren’s Love for Books (Hamiyet Asan, Heyamola, 2007)
This sturdy, glossy, attractively illustrated book in Turkish and English was written to encourage families to read to young children. As Ceren asks for bedtime stories, calls in at the library on her way home from nursery, explores the market, experiences snow for the first time, her mother uses books, storytelling and rhymes to enhance her everyday experiences.
The book has been widely distributed to schools in Hackney and Islington, used in family learning and parenting classes and as part of a reading campaign in Turkey.
Review by Raymonde Sneddon - April 2008
© 2008
The Cass School of Education and Communities is a highly successful
provider of teacher training and educational programmes, playing
a key role in the provision of education services throughout
East London and beyond.
>> Cass School of Education and Communities website
Can't find what you're looking for? Use our feedback form to let us know.
For a general description of these pages and an explanation of how they should work with screenreading equipment please follow this link: Link to general description
For further information on this web site's accessibility features please follow this link: Link to accessibility information
The following message does not apply to screenreader users:
You will still be able to access all the essential content of this web site, but it will not look, or function, exactly as intended.
