Apart from a select few such as Ann Goldstein—English translator of Elena Ferrante and other acclaimed Italian writers—literary translators often go unsung and unappreciated in the publishing world. The recent #NameTheTranslator movement, which calls for translators to be credited either on a book’s cover or in the frontmatter, has shined a light on their efforts, but more can be done to support this vital artform. In celebration of World Kid Lit Month this September, we spoke with a dozen literary translators about the joys and tribulations of working with U.S. publishers—including issues of visibility and recognition and the rise of AI—and their forecast for the future of their profession.
Marcia Lynx Qualey, who focuses on Arabic literature, believes that the market for children’s books in translation is even tougher than that of adult books. “With literature for adult readers, I have found it easier to review books, cultivate an audience, and make connections with publishers,” she said. “I started a now-defunct website reviewing Arabic children’s literature around the time I started ArabLit [a crowd-funded collective focused on Arabic literature in translation], but it didn’t find an audience beyond Arab publishers. It seems as though, among most Anglophone publishers, literary translation is considered an ‘adult’ thing. I’ve found making connections with children's publishers and editors much harder.” On a hopeful note, she shared that Ruth Ahmedzai of WorldKidLit is starting to take on more of ArabKidLitNow,” a collective of translators and children’s book consultants committed to raising the profile of Arabic writing for young people. “The group of people interested in Arabic children’s literature in translation is small, but it’s dedicated and supportive, and I’d love to shift more of my energy in that direction, too,” Lynx Qualey said.
Describing the financial barriers that translators must overcome, Japanese translator Avery Fischer Udagawa—whose translation of Temple Alley Summer by Sachiko Kashiwaba, illustrated by Miho Satake (Restless/Yonder), earned the 2022 Mildred L. Batchelder Award—said, “I find myself turning down fascinating jobs not because they don’t interest me, but because even if I took them all and translated around the clock, I could not earn what my family needs. Translating children’s books for publication in the U.S. is both an unalloyed pleasure and something one must be able to afford to do.” Doing her part to champion her colleagues, she said, “I agitate for translator visibility in order for this to change, not only so more of us who love it can do it more, but also and especially so the field can become more inclusive. I also argue that visible translators and translations matter for multilingual young people—who need to see their languages represented and their multilingualism as a key that opens vocational doors.”
Sara Khalili—translator of the 2022 Batchelder Honor-winning In the Meadow of Fantasies, written by Hadi Mohammadi, illustrated by Nooshin Safakhoo (Elsewhere)—outlined some of the obstacles she faces in translating from Persian. “My greatest challenge is finding and purchasing books published in Iran,” she said. Given the U.S. embargo, bookstores and publishers there cannot ship to the U.S. I must go through complicated and costly roundabout ways to have books mailed to friends and family around the world and then have them sent to me. The process usually takes several months, and that is if the packages don’t get lost somewhere enroute.”
Adam Cullen is one of only a handful of Estonian-English literary translators. Originally from Minesota and based in Estonia since 2007, he said, “I unfortunately lack the time to network with U.S. publishers, submit excerpts, or make pitches that might lead to more full-length translations being published.” He credited Ulla Saar at the Estonian Children’s Literature Center for doing “an incredible job fostering relationships at the bigger European book fairs and getting Estonian books known internationally. Very few Estonian authors have literary agents, so the Estonian Children’s Literature Center and the Estonian Literature Center are essentially tasked with promoting the best and most translatable books abroad.” Although Estonian is spoken by only about 1.2 million people, he noted, “Our representation in translated literature is impressive and our illustrators are very popular internationally. I wish I could do more to boost the annual number of Estonian books published in English, but making a living as I do is challenging enough and likely unsustainable.”
Antony Shugaar, who translates from Italian, commented on the “long and slow” process of bringing books in other languages to the U.S.. Although he doesn’t specialize in children’s book translation, he’s worked with Enchanted Lion and Gecko Press on several books for young readers. His translation of Telephone Tales, illustrated by Valerio Vidali (Enchanted Lion), received the 2021 Batchelder Award. “Children’s publishing is a niche within a niche for me, as a translator, and I’m lucky enough that people seem to seek me out,” he said. “But with my work on Gianni Rodari, it was decades of fairly futile and scattershot pitch efforts that met with blank looks. Only when I pitched Rodari to someone who was prepared and informed, namely Claudia Bedrick of Enchanted Lion, did the project really catch fire. I first pitched his work to Enchanted Lion in 2013, but our discussions slowly built steam.” His patience has paid off. Following Telephone Tales, the publisher has since put out the Book of Whys, with Lamberto, Lamberto, Lamberto and The Adventures of Cipollino due out in 2025.
A Chinese/English translator and member of the PEN America Translation Committee, Kelly Zhang emphasized how threats to the freedom to read further complicate her work. “The recent rise in book bans and censorship in the U.S. directly impacts children’s access to books that feature diverse voices and perspectives, which also includes translated literature,” she explained. But books in translation spark young people’s imaginations. “Reading translated books opens their minds to the experiences and perspectives of people from other parts of world,” she said. “It fosters cross-cultural dialogue, understanding, and empathy; it encourages children to become world citizens who build bridges and break down barriers rather than put up more walls.”
Zhang urges her colleagues in the publishing world, “As adult gatekeepers, we hold the great responsibility of giving, or denying, our children access to world literature—and gatekeepers include but are not limited to parents, educators, librarians, book creators, translators, publishers and promoters. We should all reflect on what kind of role each of us can and should play in this process.”
Artless Intelligence
On the threat of AI replacing literary translators, Cullen said, “I’m not too concerned at this juncture, because AI has, often comically, been unable to tap the vein of genuine human emotion and behavior. Just as I believe that literature should always be translated by a native speaker, human literature should only be translated by humans.” He pointed out that while a few colleagues have accepted projects editing AI-translated books, he’s told “it’s still quite a headache.”
Shugaar emphasized the element of fun that defines his work. “I’ve always thought of translation as a game I play professionally, and I think that what’s missing in machine translation is playfulness. Until playfulness—and I don’t mean the ability to win games but the ability to make games fun—is part of machine translation, then it remains just that: machinery.”
Invoking the ethical problems posed by AI, David Bowles, author, Spanish/English translator, and co-founder of #DignidadLiteraria— a coalition of Latinx members of the literary, publishing, and academic communities—said, “The mindless, brute-force large language models are trained on stolen texts, do not understand the nuances of particular phrases and their best equivalents in the target language, and waste huge amounts of energy.” The result is lifeless: “AI cannot replace the rich, specific voice that a human translator can craft, instead producing dull, middle-of-the-road, uninspired texts.”
Elisabeth Lauffer, who translates from German, feels that AI is unequal to the challenge of translating literature for young people, in particular. “In a children’s book, where word choice, rhythm, register, and tone are central, as is the interplay between text and image, I can’t imagine a machine meeting those demands.” She went on to say, “To lose the sparkle of a creative human mind—minds, really, given all the people involved in publishing a book—would be a terrible disservice to young readers.”
For her part, Jan Mitsuko Cash—translator of the 2024 Batchelder winner Houses with a Story: A Dragon’s Den, a Ghostly Mansion, a Library of Lost Books, and 30 More Amazing Places to Explore, originally written in Japanese by Seiji Yoshida, illustrated by Seiji Yoshida (Abrams/Amulet)—said she isn’t concerned about job security. “I’ve had enough time to establish a reputation for working with tricky wordplay and visual puns, which AI isn’t capable of mimicking.” Cash is more concerned about the dwindling opportunities for emerging translators who are still honing their skills.
Fellow Japanese translator Fischer Udagawa agreed with the soullessness of AI. “Machine translation and AI enforce the misconception that translation is a mechanical process with one right answer. It feels like using a currency converter. But what comes out, in the case of a machine translation, is never an exact conversion—it is gist and approximation, if not flat wrong.” Invoking a simile used by the late translator Edith Grossman, Fischer Udagawa said, “A translator translating an author’s prose to move an audience is doing something fundamentally creative and artistic, like a musician playing a composer’s piece or an actor speaking the lines of a playwright.”
D.P. Snyder, who focuses on literary fiction and children’s books from Mexico and Colombia, isn’t fearful of the encroachment of AI, agreeing that “language is an art. Anyone who thinks that AI will replace or even compete with genuine literary writing or translation also believes that AI-generated images will replace graphic arts like photography and painting. I don’t know what to do with people like that. No matter how much more sophisticated AI gets, it can only spit back at us what humans have already fed into it. It cannot respond to Ezra Pound’s imperative to make it new; it cannot innovate.” Snyder serves in an advocacy role as co-chair of the PEN America Translation Committee and a member of ALTA, the American Literary Translators Association.
The Way Forward
The translators we spoke with said they take heart in the number of groups that are rallying in support of their work. Zhang, who is active with the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, said that the organization is “increasingly embracing translators as an important creative group within its membership. It’s offering more resources and support to translators through translation-focused workshops, networking opportunities, and grants. This year, the SCBWI inaugurated the Pitch-Perfect Translation Grant to help children’s book translators develop and pitch their project to publishers.” Zhang gave a shout-out to SCBWI’s global translator coordinator Fischer Udagawa, “whose tireless advocacy has greatly increased the visibility of translators within kid-lit publishing, and whose effort has been instrumental in the creation of the new translation grant.”
Helen Wang, translator of the 2023 Batchelder Honor-winning Dragonfly Eyes by Chinese author Cao Wenxuan (the first Chinese author to receive the prestigious Hans Christian Andersen Award), highlighted several ongoing projects that were initiated a few years ago by volunteers, or on very small budgets, and that have grown to make a significant impact in the field of children’s book translation. “The Global Literature in Libraries Initiative has a very informative blog and started the Translated Young Adult Book Prize—this prize has been going for more than five years now!” she said. Wang also commended The Leeds Centre for New Chinese Writing at the University of Leeds, which does a lot of work with schools, periodically opening its annual translation competition only to students. “These projects are inclusive and welcoming, have an international reach, and generate a lot of goodwill and positive energy,” she said.
Laura Watkinson, translator from Dutch of When I’m Big, written by Bette Westera and illustrated by Mattias De Leeuw, among other titles awarded by the Batchelder committee, reflected on the sweetness to be found in exploring other cultures through books in translation: “It’s important for us to see that some things are done differently in other places, which can only be an enrichment and a fun learning experience for everyone.” Currently based in Amsterdam, Watkinson grew up in the U.K. and developed an appetite for stories from other places. She said, “I remember reading books from North America as a child and being fascinated by the different candies—or, as we’d say in the U.K., sweets. I had no idea who Mike & Ike were or what exactly a Lifesaver might be, and we didn’t have the internet back then, so I couldn’t do a quick search, but the context made it clear enough and such items only added to the flavor of the text. As a bonus, it was great fun doing field research for myself when I finally got to visit the U.S. as an adult. The PayDay bar did not disappoint.” She concluded with a promise for voracious readers of all ages. “Translated books introduce us to new countries, new cultures—and new candy!”
