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How I Became an American
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From: jomalley at caruspub.com <jomalley>
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 11:00:55 -0600
From Marc Aronson:
It has been awhile since I?ve been on this list, but I am pleased that you
are discussing the Batchelder winners, and that gives those of us who
worked on Karin Gundisch?s How I Became an American a chance to talk about
the interesting, and also challenging, process of bringing that book to
American readers.
I first noticed a description of the book entitled Paradise in America
in the rights catalog of Beltz & Gelberg, a German publisher whose books
I?d translated and published at Holt. Based on the rather brief pr?cis
there I sent it to Jim Skofield for a reader?s report. Jim, as you all may
know, is both an author and a translator and has a very good eye. His
report was an intriguing ?no.? He thought the author was talented, the
story interesting, the book promising, but he did not think it delivered on
the promise. But if the author were willing to work on the book, to develop
it further, he thought it worth publishing here. We?ve asked Jim to join in
this on-line discussion and he can discuss in more detail the revisions he
suggested to Karin. The good news is that she agreed. She added a new
section to the book, which extended the story of the Bonfert family in
America.
So our first good fortune was finding a translator who could see not
only what the book was, but what it could be. Our second was having an
author who agreed to do the work.
After Karin completed her revisions, Jim gave us a complete
translation, and it presented two new challenges. The book is in the voice
of young boy who is mastering English even as he writes in that language.
The text could not be a smooth easy read and still be true to that voice.
Carol Saller, an editor at Cricket Books, did a great deal to preserve
Johann?s voice, and she can comment on how she did that. The first
challenge was to make sure the book sounded like Johann. The second was to
make sure it would be appealing to young American readers. I thought that
one way to accomplish this second goal was through design.
Tony Jacobson, our art director, came up with a visual symbol for each
chapter that would provide an extra note of interest on each chapter
opener. Without changing anything in the words, we wanted the reader to
feel that this was an interesting book, and inviting book, one he or she
would want to keep reading. Our first effort to accomplish this was too
design heavy, for the images where overwhelming the words, so we cut back
to just a single image each chapter.
With the text and design more or less set, we had the problem that
always comes up in translation ? notes versus glossary versus ?let them
look it up.? In this case it seemed smoothest to just gloss the few terms
and place names that would not be obvious to someone reading along. One of
those notes that I particularly enjoyed was Jim?s idea, he explained that
when a bitter neighbor talks about how difficult life is in the Ohio steel
mills by calling his new home ?murderous America? he was actually making a
pun, because the German for NordAmerica, or North America, sounds very much
like MordAmerica.
It is very hard to retain the play of language in translation, and in
books for young people you can almost never stop a story to explain
something about the original. I was pleased that we had this chance to do
that.
That?s a brief overview of How We Published This Book. I?d be happy to
respond to any questions or comments.
Received on Tue 26 Mar 2002 11:00:55 AM CST
Date: Tue, 26 Mar 2002 11:00:55 -0600
From Marc Aronson:
It has been awhile since I?ve been on this list, but I am pleased that you
are discussing the Batchelder winners, and that gives those of us who
worked on Karin Gundisch?s How I Became an American a chance to talk about
the interesting, and also challenging, process of bringing that book to
American readers.
I first noticed a description of the book entitled Paradise in America
in the rights catalog of Beltz & Gelberg, a German publisher whose books
I?d translated and published at Holt. Based on the rather brief pr?cis
there I sent it to Jim Skofield for a reader?s report. Jim, as you all may
know, is both an author and a translator and has a very good eye. His
report was an intriguing ?no.? He thought the author was talented, the
story interesting, the book promising, but he did not think it delivered on
the promise. But if the author were willing to work on the book, to develop
it further, he thought it worth publishing here. We?ve asked Jim to join in
this on-line discussion and he can discuss in more detail the revisions he
suggested to Karin. The good news is that she agreed. She added a new
section to the book, which extended the story of the Bonfert family in
America.
So our first good fortune was finding a translator who could see not
only what the book was, but what it could be. Our second was having an
author who agreed to do the work.
After Karin completed her revisions, Jim gave us a complete
translation, and it presented two new challenges. The book is in the voice
of young boy who is mastering English even as he writes in that language.
The text could not be a smooth easy read and still be true to that voice.
Carol Saller, an editor at Cricket Books, did a great deal to preserve
Johann?s voice, and she can comment on how she did that. The first
challenge was to make sure the book sounded like Johann. The second was to
make sure it would be appealing to young American readers. I thought that
one way to accomplish this second goal was through design.
Tony Jacobson, our art director, came up with a visual symbol for each
chapter that would provide an extra note of interest on each chapter
opener. Without changing anything in the words, we wanted the reader to
feel that this was an interesting book, and inviting book, one he or she
would want to keep reading. Our first effort to accomplish this was too
design heavy, for the images where overwhelming the words, so we cut back
to just a single image each chapter.
With the text and design more or less set, we had the problem that
always comes up in translation ? notes versus glossary versus ?let them
look it up.? In this case it seemed smoothest to just gloss the few terms
and place names that would not be obvious to someone reading along. One of
those notes that I particularly enjoyed was Jim?s idea, he explained that
when a bitter neighbor talks about how difficult life is in the Ohio steel
mills by calling his new home ?murderous America? he was actually making a
pun, because the German for NordAmerica, or North America, sounds very much
like MordAmerica.
It is very hard to retain the play of language in translation, and in
books for young people you can almost never stop a story to explain
something about the original. I was pleased that we had this chance to do
that.
That?s a brief overview of How We Published This Book. I?d be happy to
respond to any questions or comments.
Received on Tue 26 Mar 2002 11:00:55 AM CST
