Monday, May 17, 2010

Multilingual Publishing and translation

Uma Krishnaswami on her blog shared the following link from Tulika Books about multilingual publishing. (I look forward to Uma's upcoming posts about translation.)

"Multilingual Publishing - Walking the Tightrope" is a great slide show which discusses language, culture, translation and the importance of multilingual publishing in children's books.
I was so impressed with this slide show, that I wanted to share it.


I love reading translated books (or the books in the original language) that are published all over the world. I love browsing through the Frankfurt and Bologna Book Fairs and dreaming about buying and reading so many incredible books that are not available in English or in the US. A picture book or novel lets me explore and access a culture in wonderful ways. The only way I can have that experience in an even closer manner, is to live within that culture.

I believe it is essential to expand our reading to include books from other cultures and books that are written in other languages and to also share these books with children. We need greater cultural understanding and respect and peace and one way readers can gain shared experiences is within story, and in the pages of books.

3 comments:

Erin Hagar said...

Thanks for sharing this, Sarah. I'm working on my final critical essay, and it's about the art of translating children's books. I thought you might find this link interesting, if you haven't seen it already:
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

It's library of full text children's books in many different languages.

Sarah Blake Johnson said...

Erin, I bet your essay is interesting. I'll need to read it--maybe in July?
There are translating seminars and lectures at both Bologna Book Fair and the Frankfurt Fair. Translation is so important, it is an art.

Yes, I've seen that online library. It's great! Makes me wish I could read in more languages.

Tulika Publishers said...

Thank you for sharing this with your readers. "A picture book or novel lets me explore and access a culture in wonderful ways." We agree:)