Translator Ginny Tapley Takemori: "On Whales, Blue Glass, War and Young People"
Translator Ginny Tapley Takemori spoke to SCBWI Japan on June 20, 2015, at an event titled "On Whales, Blue Glass, War and Young People."
In her talk, Takemori discussed two recent children's translations she has completed: The Whale That Fell in Love with a Submarine by Akiyuki Nosaka and The Secret of the Blue Glass by Tomiko Inui, both published by Pushkin Children's.
Major themes covered at the event included the importance of keeping war memory alive and the challenge of sharing war memory from authors in one culture with readers in another culture. Different cultures' story structures were discussed as well as the prevalent Western discomfort with unhappy endings. The need to handle war stories carefully in books for children came up, as did the imperative to translate freely in order to, ironically, preserve a text's spirit.
