[Forward] Grateful for the Encounter: Afterword to the Translation of “Why Picture Books Matter”

Author: Dong Haiya

 
 
For a trans­la­tor, encoun­ter­ing a beloved book and spend­ing time with the mas­ters of its sub­ject dur­ing the trans­la­tion process is a bless­ing. Meet­ing a group of like-mind­ed chil­dren’s book enthu­si­asts and col­lab­o­rat­ing on the trans­la­tion is anoth­er. And meet­ing the orig­i­nal author and expe­ri­enc­ing his charis­ma and pro­found knowl­edge up close is even more of a bless­ing.

 
 
I am the one who has expe­ri­enced all three of these bless­ings simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. And the book that brought me these three bless­ings is “Why Pic­ture Books Mat­ter.” There­fore, in my heart, this book is unique. Not every trans­la­tor has such good for­tune. At least in my rel­a­tive­ly short trans­la­tion career over the past decade or so, I have expe­ri­enced the pain and exhaus­tion of trans­la­tion far more than the joy. Some­times, halfway through a lengthy book, I feel regret­ful. It’s not just because of the phys­i­cal strain, but more impor­tant­ly, the per­va­sive sad­ness of the book can immerse me for long peri­ods of time, mak­ing it dif­fi­cult for me to clear my mind, yet I have to per­se­vere. This book is dif­fer­ent. Long before I began trans­lat­ing, I had already encoun­tered count­less renowned illus­tra­tors while read­ing pic­ture books to my son. Quentin Blake, the Burn­ing­hams, Kevin Han­ks, William Stark, Sendak, and many oth­ers, their works have cap­ti­vat­ed me. Ever since my son was born, I’ve been chas­ing after these beloved pic­ture book mas­ters like a school­boy, col­lect­ing their works with an almost obses­sive pas­sion, both in Chi­nese and Eng­lish. It’s not so much my son’s love for them as it is my own self­ish desire to sat­is­fy my own read­ing urges under the guise of stock­pil­ing books for him. Their works, as a child of the 1970s, have allowed me to relive my child­hood, like a door sud­den­ly opened, allow­ing me to enter a rich world I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced before. My love and curios­i­ty for their works have also intrigued me about the illus­tra­tors them­selves, and I’m eager to learn more about the sto­ries behind these books and their per­son­al jour­neys. This col­lec­tion of inter­views with Mar­cus has sat­is­fied all my curios­i­ty.

 
 
There­fore, on March 21, 2015, when a group email from the Argen­tine Primera División appeared in my mail­box with the sub­ject line “A new round of genius team assembling——Show Me a
When they received the email “We can begin work on Sto­ry,” one can imag­ine their excite­ment. The oth­er sis­ters were also filled with antic­i­pa­tion, eager to try, just wait­ing for Aji­a’s order. The very night the call was issued, the mem­bers of the genius team began to eager­ly reply to emails, vying for their favorite illus­tra­tors. In the first round, each per­son could only get one, so con­flicts were inevitable. What should they do? Ajia, an expe­ri­enced, orga­nized, and effi­cient leader, urged every­one to care­ful­ly con­sid­er and choose the most suit­able illus­tra­tor for their trans­la­tion based on the length of the inter­view, the dif­fi­cul­ty of the text, and the time they had avail­able.

 
 
Because of this book, I became con­nect­ed with the Red Mud team at Ajia. I was hon­ored to be a “sub­sti­tute team mem­ber” and had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to meet sev­er­al tal­ent­ed sis­ters who had worked with Ajia on trans­lat­ing “Dear Genius” and writ­ing “The Pow­er of Child­hood.” Although we are in dif­fer­ent places and have dif­fer­ent careers, our shared love for chil­dren’s books has brought us togeth­er with­out any bar­ri­ers.

 
 
Unlike my pre­vi­ous solo trans­la­tion expe­ri­ences, this book gave me a real glimpse into the unique­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive, inten­sive trans­la­tion mod­el employed by the A‑Jia team. Hon­est­ly, I’ve always dread­ed col­lab­o­ra­tive trans­la­tions, as the more peo­ple involved, the more effort required to coor­di­nate the final draft. For­tu­nate­ly, this book is a col­lec­tion of inter­views, and each inter­view with a tal­ent­ed illus­tra­tor is inde­pen­dent and not close­ly relat­ed to the oth­ers. The only com­mon ele­ments that need­ed to be stan­dard­ized were com­mon paint­ing terms, names, and book titles. For this book, the col­lab­o­ra­tive nature of the trans­la­tion process was actu­al­ly an advan­tage, allow­ing us to focus on a sin­gle or spe­cif­ic illus­tra­tor, con­duct­ing metic­u­lous research and trans­la­tion. As agreed with A‑Jia, for each tal­ent­ed illus­tra­tor we trans­lat­ed, we would research as much Eng­lish infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble about them, locate all the works men­tioned in the inter­views, thor­ough­ly research them, and com­pile a resume. After com­plet­ing the trans­la­tion, we would review the man­u­scripts togeth­er, dis­cuss and revise them, and then pro­ceed to the next round of selec­tion. Some­times, the time spent on pre-trans­la­tion prepa­ra­tion far exceed­ed the time spent on trans­la­tion. After revis­ing the two drafts, A‑Jia would then con­duct the final proof­read­ing, align­ing ter­mi­nol­o­gy and pol­ish­ing the text. He is tru­ly an ency­clo­pe­dia of Chi­nese chil­dren’s books. Not only is he incred­i­bly knowl­edge­able about the 21 genius­es and their works, but he is also incred­i­bly metic­u­lous and metic­u­lous in proof­read­ing the trans­la­tions. Each of our trans­la­tions bears the dense marks of his revi­sions. Some­times, to find the cor­rect trans­la­tion for a sin­gle word, we would exchange mul­ti­ple emails, and he would also con­sult with his friends in the illus­tra­tion indus­try. What I admire most is that Ajia approach­es these genius­es in the chil­dren’s book world with a child­like curios­i­ty and detec­tive-like insight, nev­er miss­ing a sin­gle detail. I still remem­ber when I was trans­lat­ing Vera B.
In an inter­view with Williams, I rarely men­tioned her sis­ter in many mate­ri­als about her, so when this word appeared in the text, I trans­lat­ed it as “sis­ter” based on my super­fi­cial judg­ment. Unex­pect­ed­ly, Ajia con­duct­ed a detailed inves­ti­ga­tion dur­ing the proof­read­ing process and con­sult­ed many arti­cles on the Inter­net. He actu­al­ly found the full name of this sis­ter from Ver­a’s obit­u­ary, which was Nao­mi.
Rosen­blum, after many twists and turns, final­ly deter­mined that Nao­mi was Ver­a’s old­er sis­ter, not her younger sis­ter.
Trans­lat­ed as “Nao­mi Rosen­blum,” her mono­graph, “A His­to­ry of World Pho­tog­ra­phy,” is avail­able in Chi­nese. Per­haps read­ers won’t notice or care about this while read­ing, and even the author, Mar­cus, might not be aware of it. But Ajia has a per­fec­tion­ist obses­sion with detail. Hav­ing him over­see the final review gave us all a sense of peace of mind.

 
 
The process of trans­lat­ing the six genius­es was like an adven­ture, which some­times sur­prised me and some­times filled me with deep emo­tion. Many genius­es in the book acci­den­tal­ly embarked on the path of pic­ture books. They nev­er expect­ed that they would achieve what they would achieve in the future. For exam­ple, Helen Oxen­bury, who was orig­i­nal­ly a stage design­er, start­ed to cre­ate card­board books for babies aged 1–2 because her youngest daugh­ter suf­fered from eczema since child­hood. She pio­neered pic­ture books for infants and young chil­dren in the UK. Vera, who has always been con­cerned about social issues, ener­getic and cheer­ful,
B.
After a long career, Williams was struck by chance at the age of 48 and cre­at­ed his first pic­ture book. My favorite, William Stark, was once a renowned car­toon­ist for The New York­er mag­a­zine. In his six­ties, he turned his pen to pic­ture books and became obsessed with it, pub­lish­ing over a dozen pic­ture books and humor­ous nov­els. They had no inten­tion of ven­tur­ing into chil­dren’s books, but chance struck them. Their long-cul­ti­vat­ed tal­ent for draw­ing and their unique under­stand­ing of chil­dren and child­hood led them to this field, cre­at­ing mas­ter­pieces beloved by chil­dren world­wide. What also struck me dur­ing the trans­la­tion process was each prodi­gy’s child­hood love of draw­ing and the con­stant encour­age­ment of their par­ents.

 
 
Speak­ing of chance encoun­ters in life, isn’t this also true of Mar­cus, the author of this book? A rec­og­nized his­to­ri­an of chil­dren’s books in the Unit­ed States today, if he had­n’t stum­bled into a book­store in his twen­ties and been instant­ly cap­ti­vat­ed by Good­night Moon, and sub­se­quent­ly became obsessed with study­ing Mar­garet Wise Brown, per­haps the Amer­i­can chil­dren’s book crit­i­cism com­mu­ni­ty would have been with­out such a broad-mind­ed and rig­or­ous his­to­ri­an and crit­ic, and we would­n’t have been able to access this remark­able col­lec­tion of inter­views. Each inter­view took months of prepa­ra­tion, and his rich vocab­u­lary, metic­u­lous Eng­lish writ­ing, and the bril­liant and clever ques­tions he pos­es to his inter­vie­wees all demon­strate his supreme pro­fes­sion­al­ism and metic­u­lous crafts­man­ship. Trans­lat­ing his writ­ing is no easy task; some­times a sen­tence stretch­es across sev­er­al lines, rich in mean­ing, rig­or­ous­ly log­i­cal, and with­out a sin­gle word of utter­ance or super­flu­ous expres­sion, it tru­ly qual­i­fies as a mas­ter­piece of Eng­lish writ­ing.

 
 
In real life, Mar­cus is affa­ble and approach­able, with­out a trace of the airs of an expert or schol­ar. I had the priv­i­lege of attend­ing two of his lec­tures in Shang­hai, last year and this year. I also exchanged let­ters with him and received his self­less help. This man, now over six­ty, has a child­like twin­kle in his eyes when he talks about chil­dren’s books. Sit­ting in the audi­ence, lis­ten­ing to him unwind for an hour on the his­to­ry of pic­ture books, was like step­ping into a time warp, unwill­ing to emerge.

 
 
I hope this inter­view with 21 of the world’s top illus­tra­tors can bring the same sur­prise and touch­ing moments to you who love pic­ture books.

Writ­ten in Shang­hai on August 28, 2017

    (This arti­cle is writ­ten by Dong Haiya,
An asso­ciate pro­fes­sor and PhD in Eng­lish Lan­guage and Lit­er­a­ture from Shang­hai Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies Uni­ver­si­ty, he has taught at the School of Inter­na­tion­al Edu­ca­tion for many years, engag­ing in trans­la­tion teach­ing and research. In addi­tion to teach­ing, he con­stant­ly trans­lates, expe­ri­enc­ing both the joys and pains of trans­la­tion. After grad­u­at­ing with a mas­ter’s degree in 2001, he inde­pen­dent­ly com­piled the “Eng­lish-Chi­nese Clas­sic Read­ing Series — Fairy Tales,” thus begin­ning his jour­ney into trans­lat­ing chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. In 2008, with the birth of his son, he began to pay atten­tion to and read exten­sive­ly excel­lent pic­ture books from Chi­na and abroad. Count­less days of read­ing with his son inspired him to appre­ci­ate the beau­ty of chil­dren’s books, and his focus grad­u­al­ly shift­ed to chil­dren’s lit­er­a­ture. Trans­lat­ing for chil­dren is a joy, and one he wish­es to pur­sue. He is the author of “A Study of Humor­ous Trans­la­tion in Sit­u­a­tion Come­dies,” and has trans­lat­ed numer­ous works, includ­ing “Let­ters to Har­ry Pot­ter,” “Still Grow­ing: The Auto­bi­og­ra­phy of Kirk Cameron,” “I Want to Live,” “A Jour­ney of Dis­cov­er­ing the Beau­ti­ful Tree,” “Explor­ing Trans­porta­tion,” “Rekla Ruined It,” “Imag­i­na­tion,” “Fan­ta­sy Island,” and the “Eloise” series.