- ChLA International Committee
Children’s Literature in Translation: Beyond Three Percent
Please join Mia Spangenberg, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, Daniel Hahn, and David Jacobson on Monday, October 12, 2020 from 2:00-2:45 PM EST for a special panel on Children's Literature in Translations as part of the American Literary Translators Association Conference. This event is free and open to the public.
Children’s literature all too often falls through the cracks in discussions about literature in translation, even though children’s book sales have remained stable, and growing numbers of children’s books are translated. Daniel Hahn, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, and David Jacobson will discuss efforts to promote the translation of children’s literature, as well as the challenges that remain. Who are the central players promoting literature in translation, and how can translators help them? Would publishers and translators benefit from attending the Bologna Children’s Book Fair? What other routes are there for those in the book industry to find out about the best new children's books from around the world? This aims to be a discussion-oriented session, with ample time for audience questions.
Moderator: Mia Spangenberg
Presenter(s): Daniel Hahn, Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp, David Jacobson
Mia Spangenberg is an emerging translator from Finnish whose work includes many sample translations of children's books. Her first published translation is a nonfiction title, Secrets and Siblings: The Vanished Lives of China’s One Child Policy (Zed Books, 2019).
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and translator, with about seventy books to his name. These include The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature and translations of many children's books from Portuguese, Spanish, and French.
Ruth Ahmedzai Kemp translates books from German, Russian, and Arabic into English. Her translations include children’s and YA books from Germany, Morocco, Palestine, Russia, and Syria. Ruth is coeditor of World Kid Lit blog and reviews Arabic books for young people at ArabKidLitNow and Russian ones at Russian Kid Lit.
David Jacobson is a journalist, author, and Japanese translator. A member of the Board of the Global Literature in Libraries initiative, he is also Chair of the 2021 GLLI Translated YA Book Prize committee.
To attend other ALTA43 events through Crowdcast, please register for the conference at https://www.literarytranslators.org/conference/alta43-between/registration to receive the event password on September 21.