Heartsinger by Karlijn Stoffels, originally published in the Netherlands as Koningsdochter, Zeemanslief ("King's Daughter, Sailor's Sweetheart"), has everything to do with music, so it was important to Stoffels that the translation preserve the musicality of the language. At a panel moderated by Marianne Martens in Chicago at the ALA convention last month ("USBBY Mixing It Up: The Process of Bringing International Children's Books to the United States"), Stoffels, as well as her book's translator, her U.S. editor and her U.S. publisher gave a rare opportunity to hear about the process of bringing a foreign book to American shores.
Stoffels called Laura Watkinson's translation "magical. . . . What's funny stays funny. When I read her translation, it was like reading a new book, but it was also true to the book." Stoffels, who speaks French, German and Spanish, and who translates from those languages into Dutch, knows how challenging that can be. It quickly became apparent how collaborative this process was between Stoffels, translator Watkinson and U.S. editor Cheryl Klein.
Heartsinger centers on Mee, a boy born to deaf parents, with a gift for singing other people's sorrows and helping them to heal, and Mitou, a girl merrymaker born to quarreling parents. The novel follows Mitou after she learns about Mee, her search for him, a prince's quest to find them both in the hope that they can help him win the hand of the King's daughter, and how the two music makers affect others' lives in their travels. Publisher Arthur Levine, who has long been committed to bringing books from other countries to the U.S., said that he looks for a high quality of writing in the original language: "It's not just the plot. What is the language like? What does the reader take away?" he said.
Watkinson, who grew up in England and makes her home in the Netherlands, said that the Dutch government, which funds the translation of 12-15 children's books annually to markets abroad, asked her to translate into English a synopsis for Heartsinger. "I loved it straightaway," she said. "It was a joy to work on." Klein explained why the translator's work is so important: "They're not just someone to tell you what's going on." The translator must also convey the lilt of the original text.
An example of very specific translation challenges was a Dutch word that means both "womb" and "lap" and is much more colloquial than "womb." This word occurs in the chapter about a wool-dyer and his seven sons ("The Lieutenant with the Flute"). Watkinson explained that the wool-dyer had been able to work through his frustrations with his wife, sexually, in the past. But after the wife develops an illness that estranges her from him, the man takes his frustrations out on his children by beating them. Stoffels said, "Eventually the 'womb/lap' turned into a shoulder, I think." (The wife says to her husband, "Let out your sorrows. . . . Cry on my shoulder. Just let it all flow"; then "a new little wool-dyer would see the light of day.") The mutation of the wool-dyer's sexual energy into a violent energy is subtle, especially given the book's fairytale quality, which serves the more open-ended aura Stoffels had originally intended with the novel.
Speaking of open-endedness, Stoffels said that her novel in Dutch originally concluded more ambiguously. Klein, however, urged the author to create a more explicit sense of hope at the end. So Stoffels wrote a new last line in which Mee "sang his heart out." The author felt this brought a "roundness" to the text, with its direct reference to the title.
Dutch and American cultural differences were apparent in the two cover images. The Dutch cover of the book shows the sensual mermaid figurehead, carved by the sailor's sweetheart, naked above her finned torso. The American cover depicts the king's daughter, who looks at herself in the mirror because she believes no one else will look at her. Stoffels said of the more sensual original, "In the Netherlands it's acceptable, but not here. For youth, it's a little different."
Stoffels is grateful to have this book available in the U.S., her first to be translated into English. "The important things were there. That's why I was so happy with this process," the author said. "The music of the text is the same, maybe sometimes different but beautiful music."--Jennifer M. Brown
