[Repost] “I am the little black fish” — A discussion on Leo Lionni’s works

Orig­i­nal address:“I am the Lit­tle Black Fish”—A Review of the Sym­po­sium on Leo Lion­ni’s Works (Part 1)author:Giv­ing Tree Pic­ture Book Library  
On August 26, 2011, the New Clas­sic Cul­ture Love Tree Pic­ture Book Library, “Par­ents Must Read” mag­a­zine, and “Psy­chol­o­gy Month­ly” mag­a­zine co-orga­nized the
“I am the lit­tle black fish” — a sem­i­nar on Leo Lion­ni’s works was held in the audi­to­ri­um of the Bei­jing Pub­lish­ing Group Build­ing.

   Thank you very much to all our read­ers for your sup­port and love for the Love Tree Pic­ture Book Library. Mr. Nao Mat­sui once said, “Read­ers are the most impor­tant thing to him.” It is thanks to your sup­port that the Love Tree Pic­ture Book Library’s activ­i­ties can con­tin­ue to move for­ward. We also want to thank every guest who attend­ed our event. Each of your won­der­ful speech­es was tru­ly enrich­ing.
   
2011Year8moon26At two o’clock in the after­noon of the same day, the sem­i­nar on “I am the Lit­tle Black Fish” — Leo Lion­ni’s works began.

    

In a cor­ner of the ocean, there lived a group of hap­py lit­tle fish. They were all red, except for one, who was black, as black as a mus­sel shell. He swam faster than his broth­ers and sis­ters, and his name was Lit­tle Black Fish…

    
  
Chi­na Nation­al Radio’s renowned host, Li Jia, brought the sto­ry of Leo Lion­ni’s sem­i­nal work, “The Lit­tle Black Fish.” Li Jia’s sweet, emo­tion­al voice instant­ly trans­port­ed us into Leo Lion­ni’s vibrant world…

    

    
The host of the event is Ms. Jingzi, Deputy Edi­tor-in-Chief of New Clas­sic Cul­ture Co., Ltd.

Edi­tor-in-Chief of Par­ents Must Read Mag­a­zine
Teacher Xu Fan and Edi­tor-in-Chief of Psy­cho­log­i­cal Month­ly
Teacher Wang Hun also brought some of his own expe­ri­ences in pic­ture book read­ing to the sem­i­nar.


     

  
, offi­cial­ly enter­ing the top­ic, the title of Mr. Aji­a’s speech is:

Trans­lat­ing Lion­ni’s Impos­si­bil­i­ty and Pos­si­bil­i­ty…
                        
How I par­tic­i­pat­ed in the “mur­der” of Leo Lion­ni
【Expert Pro­file】
Ajia, founder of Hong­ni­ba web­site. He has trans­lat­ed13There are also many pic­ture books by oth­er authors.
He is a very famous pro­mot­er of chil­dren’s read­ing.

I’ve retained some of my per­son­al touch in the trans­la­tion, though it may not suit all read­ers. Some of my trans­la­tions do seem a bit halt­ing to moth­ers, but there’s real­ly no oth­er way. I can’t imi­tate a wom­an’s into­na­tion. It’s dif­fi­cult for me, and it feels arti­fi­cial, so I’ve had to trans­late things accord­ing to my nature. Please for­give me for that. I tried to use a calm and nat­ur­al approach, a mas­cu­line one, with­out any exces­sive bab­bling. At the same time, I want­ed to show­case the beau­ty of the Chi­nese lan­guage and strate­gi­cal­ly address cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences.

I think many of the peo­ple who read pic­ture books today are high­ly edu­cat­ed, so there’s no need to com­plete­ly local­ize them, turn­ing them into some­thing com­plete­ly unfash­ion­able. Peo­ple often talk about trans­la­tions being “faith­ful, expres­sive, and ele­gant,” but that’s a dif­fi­cult task. I think I need to clear­ly under­stand what I can and can­not achieve, ful­fill­ing my respon­si­bil­i­ties as a trans­la­tor. How does a trans­la­tor approach trans­lat­ing a fairy tale?

impos­si­ble!

Ful­ly pre­serve the orig­i­nal mean­ing

Com­plete­ly pre­serve the rela­tion­ship between image and text

Pre­serve the orig­i­nal author’s lan­guage style

The tone is suit­able for all read­ers

Ful­ly com­pat­i­ble with read-only objects

Show the beau­ty of Eng­lish

pos­si­ble!

Min­i­mize loss­es

Pay close atten­tion to the inte­gra­tion of pic­tures and texts

Pri­or­i­tize the author’s inter­ests with­out los­ing their indi­vid­u­al­i­ty

As peace­ful and nat­ur­al as pos­si­ble

Refer to the appro­pri­ate read­ers

Show­cas­ing the beau­ty of Chi­nese and strate­gi­cal­ly address­ing cul­tur­al dif­fer­ences

Here’s how I trans­lat­ed the poem: Who sprin­kles snowflakes from the sky, who melts the ice on the ground? Who makes the world bet­ter? Who changes the weath­er for the worse? Who makes April clover grow in June? Who extin­guish­es the sun? Who mea­sures the moon? There are four lit­tle field mice, they all live in the sky, four lit­tle field mice, just like you and me. One is the lit­tle Spring Mouse, open­ing the show­er of quo­ta­tions. The Sum­mer Mouse fol­lows, enjoy­ing draw­ing on the flow­ers. The Autumn Mouse fol­lows, bring­ing wheat and wal­nuts. The Win­ter Mouse arrives last, stamp­ing his feet in the cold. How lucky we are! The four sea­sons are just right, not one more, not one less.
 
 

By the way, I would like to rec­om­mend a book called “Girl Hold­ing Brown Cray­on”. New Clas­sics has already pur­chased the copy­right of this book.

In the process of trans­lat­ing Leo Lion­ni’s works, I have always been con­fused. As an adult, I am very obsessed with Leo Lion­ni, so I am wor­ried that I am bring­ing too much of an adult’s stuff into it. But after read­ing this book: The Girl with the Brown Cray­on, I know that a kinder­garten teacher once read the book with a group of chil­dren.14I’ve been read­ing Leo Lion­ni’s books. Dur­ing this process, I’ve dis­cov­ered that chil­dren are actu­al­ly quite recep­tive to and fas­ci­nat­ed by Leo Lion­ni’s work. Just like adults, they even con­sid­er the char­ac­ters in Leo Lion­ni’s works to be a form of per­son­al expres­sion, becom­ing part of their dai­ly lives. So, I think this book has giv­en me a lot of con­fi­dence.

In oth­er words, you can use words like Leo Lion­ni, express­ing your mean­ing for­mal­ly and rig­or­ous­ly, and of course clear­ly. But you don’t have to cater specif­i­cal­ly to chil­dren’s lan­guage habits, as they will inter­pret it their way. So, when trans­lat­ing Leo Lion­ni, I ulti­mate­ly chose to approach the prob­lem in a way that I felt was clos­est to his own, rather than in a way that was most child-friend­ly.