Oct 12, 2020
Online
Children’s Literature in Translation: Beyond Three Percent
Children’s Literature in Translation: Beyond Three Percent
Children’s literature all too often falls through the cracks in discussions about literature in translation, even though children’s book sales have remained stable, and growing numbers of children’s books are translated.
Daniel Hahn, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, and David Jacobson will discuss efforts to promote the translation of children’s literature, as well as the challenges that remain. Who are the central players promoting literature in translation, and how can translators help them? Would publishers and translators benefit from attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair? What other routes are there for those in the book industry to find out about the best new children’s books from around the world? This aims to be a discussion-oriented session, with ample time for audience questions.
…
Moderator
Mia Spangenberg is an emerging translator from Finnish whose work includes many sample translations of children’s books. Her first published translation is a nonfiction title, Secrets and Siblings: The Vanished Lives of China’s One Child Policy (Zed Books, 2019).
Presenters
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, with about seventy books to his name. These include The Oxford Companion to Children’s Literature and translations of many children’s books from Portuguese, Spanish, and French. Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp translates books from German, Russian, and Arabic into English. Her translations include children’s and YA books from Germany, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, and Syria. Ruth is coeditor of World Kid Lit blog and reviews Arabic books for young people at ArabKidLitNow and Russian ones at Russian Kid Lit. David Jacobson is a journalist, author, and Japanese translator. A member of the Board of the Global Literature in Libraries initiative, he is also Chair of the 2021 GLLI Translated YA Book Prize committee.