In translation

The True Con­fes­sions of Char­lotte Doyle was pub­lished in 1990. This means that it has been around for twen­ty-five years. Over the years it has been trans­lat­ed into many lan­guages. Now I have got­ten word that it is about to be pub­lished in Roma­nia. When these trans­la­tions hap­pen, I’m nev­er told why, what brought on the inter­est, or how, if at all, it has some rel­e­vance to the world of children’s’ books in, say, Roma­nia. Not capa­ble of speak­ing Roman­ian, much less read­ing it, I will have no idea as to the qual­i­ty of its trans­la­tion, or how, if it at all, it changes the book. Per­haps it makes it better.

What I can see and eval­u­ate is the design of these trans­la­tions, and of course, the cov­ers. They vary enor­mous­ly. They can be quite ugly (the “what could they have been think­ing?” vari­ety) to quite beau­ti­ful. The South Kore­an edi­tion of Crispin is by far the best look­ing edi­tion (among many) of the book, with stun­ning illustrations.

Years ago I had a string of my books issued in Den­mark. It turned out a pub­lish­er hap­pened upon my books, liked them and pub­lished them. Short­ly there­after I was trav­el­ing to Europe, went to Den­mark, met the pub­lish­er, and spent a lit­tle time in Denmark.

When I was in Den­mark I was invit­ed to a school, and met with a class of stu­dents who were study­ing Eng­lish. They were com­pa­ra­ble to our 8th or 9th graders. At one point a girl stood up and in strug­gling Eng­lish, told me how mean­ing­ful my book Bright Shad­ow was to her. Her strug­gle to speak brought tears to her eyes, mak­ing it very clear that this book of mine spoke to her in some spe­cial way and she want­ed me to know it.

It was an equal­ly mov­ing moment for me that I, who lived so far away across the sea, had, in some degree of iso­la­tion, writ­ten some­thing that touched this stranger.

It was a reminder that for writ­ers our clos­est friends are often strangers.