Reflections of my time as an Intern by Rosalba Hojer

My introduction to children’s literature really started by attending Sophie Heywood’s seminar on French Children’s Books at the Centre for Book Cultures and Publishing (CBCP), University of Reading, where we studied all types of books from Charles Perrault’s classic fairy tales to modern-day comic books. This is also how I learned about a Webinar by CBCP on the recently published translation of a Five go to France graphic novel adaptation by the father-and-son duo Bèja and Nataël, translated back into English by Emma Page, which I decided to attend on a whim.

I was immediately hooked by the intricate discussions about certain details of translation, for instance, the question of how to culturally adapt the illustration of a typical French breakfast of coffee and brioche to a British audience (it was magically transformed into cereal and toast, I believe). This opened up a whole new world of literature for me, translated children’s books to be precise, which is a true treasure because you can find almost anything you’ve imagined in your wildest dreams within this limitless genre.

After talking with Sophie, she came up with this brilliant idea for an internship over the summer where I would interview translators and publishers in the industry for the Action Lab, a project by CBCP and Outside In World (OIW). Really immersing myself into that world, talking to key figures in the publishing industry and also meeting the wonderful people at OIW has been truly inspiring and got me really excited about translated children’s books and all the thought and care that goes into each and everyone that is being published. Visiting the OIW collection, which is available to the public at the library of the University of Portsmouth, was an absolute highlight of the internship, mainly because I could sit and read all day and admire the variety of beautiful books at hand.

There is a common idea which sums up my experience doing this internship and what I have learned from it, and that is the answer everyone offered to my question “Why is it so important to have translated children’s books?”. The consensus was that we need translated children’s literature in our lives because of its sheer variety and the beauty we can find in immersing ourselves in a unique story that would not be available without translation.

Rosalba Hojer (November 2022)