Welcome to Talking Translation, where we go behind the scenes and between the lines to learn more about the process of translating Australian children’s books. Today we meet Johanna Ruhl, the German translator of Before You Were Born, by Katrina Germein and Hélène Magisson.

Why talk about translation?

Children’s and YA books make up over 54% of the international rights sales of Australian literature. They are vibrant agents of cross-cultural exchange and exciting contributors to the arts economy. And Aussies love an international success story! So, by all means, praise the authors! Praise the illustrators! But do remember that none of this success happens without exceptional translators, who deftly manipulate words to ensure new audiences can enjoy the same reading experience as the book’s first readers. In the age of AI it’s never been more important to celebrate these gifted creators who do SO much more than swap one word for another. Let’s make our translators visible!  

Talking Translation with German translator Johanna Ruhl

Johanna Ruhl is a multilingual early career translator. This is her second picture book translation and her first interaction with Australian children’s literature. 

 Q: How many Australian picture books have you translated in your career?

A: Before You Were Born was my second picture book and my first Australian book, picture book or other. Before this project, I have translated a gardening book by a British author and another wonderful picture book called Yoshi and the Ocean by American author Lindsay Moore, which is the true story of Yoshi the sea turtle that is released back into the ocean and travels all the way from South Africa to her native Western Australia, so it’s at least a little bit about Australia! At the moment I’m working on my fourth translation, a self-help book for women in their menopause-transition.

Q: Do you notice similarities across the Australian books you’ve worked on that pose challenges to translation?

A: Before You Were Born was my first Australian book, so I can’t really compare, but it was for sure a different project from my other picture book which had more text, especially with the info pages in the back, and wasn’t rhymed.

Q: For Before You Were Born, specifically, can you identify some of the challenges you faced? Are there particular pages or lines of text that were hard to render into German?

A: The biggest challenge of Before You Were Born was definitely the rhymes. It takes a very different approach to how I normally translate because it’s more like solving a puzzle than empathising with the characters and voice of a story to recreate it in another language.

For me, when I translate prose, I often end up in some kind of flow-state, where the words and sentences almost write themselves. For Before You Were Born that didn’t work because I had to think more about patterns and rhymes and rhythm, had to consult rhyme dictionaries and read the translation out loud to see if it fitted. I remember some instances where it was quite easy to find a close and direct translation, for example the lines:

Soon we unwrapped / some wee baby clothes — / a hat for your head / and socks for your toes

were a no-brainer and quickly became:

Es gab viele Geschenke, / ganz unfassbar süße, / eine Mütze für den Kopf / und Socken für die Füße“ (literal translation would be something like: There were many gifts / very cute ones / a hat for the head / and socks for the feet.).

Other lines were very hard to render and I remember quite a few discussions with my editors; partly because of different interpretations of the words and illustrations, partly because it was really hard to find a good equivalent with the same message that also rhymed and worked rhythm-wise. Especially the last four lines were a struggle because they are paired off and have such a sweet and profound message, and I just couldn’t find a good rhyming pair that transported this feeling. I think the final solution turned out okay, but it wasn’t easy and took a lot of time to tweak until all of us were happy with it.

Q: What are some of the challenges involved in translating picture books, in general? For example, how do the illustrations impact the way you translate the words? How do you adjust rhyming texts?

A: I think I already answered a lot of these question above. But just let me add that, for me, the illustrations add to the feeling of the text and can inspire the translation by giving the words a context and more details. On the first pages of Before You Were Born for example I added details from the picture to achieve a good rhyme. In English it says:

Before you were born / and while you grew, / there was a party / just for you.

In German I wrote: Vor deiner Geburt, / du warst noch im Bauch, / gab’s ein Fest nur für dich / und Kuchen gab’s auch (literal translation: Before you were born, / you were still in the belly, / there was a party just for you / and there was cake as well.)

In that case I added the cake from the picture into the text to add a line and achieve the rhyme of Bauch – auch. I did the same on the page where they are sitting around the barbecue, where I focused not on the people gathering but rather on all the things in the air at the party, namely love, laughter, conversations and the smell of all the yummy food. I mean, looking at the picture, I could practically smell the barbecue! Similarly, the special occasion from the beach picture became a sonniger Ausflug (sunny outing) and so on.

Q: Finally, please tell us a bit about your career as a translator (background, education, experience, languages).

A: I already mentioned my previous translations above and as you can see I’m still at the beginning of my career. I’ve always loved books (my mom still loves to tell the story of how I fell asleep with my nose buried in a book before I even learned to read). And reading, or stories in general, was an escape throughout my whole childhood and youth. When I had to decide what I wanted to study, I first landed on theatre sciences and English as a second subject, but it soon became clear that I loved English a lot more, so I ditched the theatre stuff and focused on languages.

When looking for a suitable master’s degree (because I didn’t want to take the obvious path and become a teacher), I found this degree in literary translation and immediately felt drawn to it. Back then it required a second foreign language, so I laboured my way through a bachelor’s degree in not only English but Italian as well (including several stays and one semester abroad in both the UK and Italy), only to ditch it when I began my master’s because a second language was no longer required. Well, maybe I will pick it up again one day!

Along the way I started learning a lot of other languages (Latin and French in school, later Swedish and Irish (Gaelic that is)) but apart from English and a little Italian, none of them stuck. At the moment I’m working part time as an assistant editor at a publisher’s and part-time as a freelance translator from English. Being a translator is wonderfully rewarding and a lot of fun, but getting started is pretty difficult and establishing yourself so that it’s your sole income even more so, so this model works well for me (and many of my colleagues).

AI and the increasing pace of the publishing industry are unfortunately really endangering our careers, leading to ever shorter deadlines and terrible translations due to low payment and time stress, so thank you for giving us some of the visibility we need! It was fun to revisit the process of translation and visualise my thought process and solution finding!

Quality translation is a skilled blend of art and science. I hope this interview series helps elevate our respect for the creative efforts of translators, as well as the sophisticated (misunderstood!) work of children’s writers and illustrators.