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THE BLOG AT THE CROSSROADS
The Little Prince Revisited: Found in Translation
Posted: November 26, 2010
Last night, Thursday 25, at a Comica 2010 Festival event in association with the French Institute, South Kensington, I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing two exceptional translators, Sarah Ardizonne and Ros Schwartz, who have both worked on brand-new English versions of The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s deceptively profound book for the child in all of us. It was delightful discussion in the beautiful Bibliotheque revealing the careful considerations by both translators of every word and phrase and their sometimes contrasting solutions to make these fresh readings sing.
Ros has crafted hers with her daughter Chloe for the Collector’s Library, a compact, palm-sized, dust-jacketed hardback, which cleverly incorporates some passages within the outlines of de Saint-Exupéry’s delicate drawings, while Sarah has brought Joann Sfar‘s daring, best-selling graphic novelisation into English for Walker Books. I have read them both and commend them both highly. My good friend Ariel Kahn has written an excellent, insightful review of the graphic novel here.
Translation is an underappreciated art and, having done a few comics translations myself for Escape Magazine, I know these sensitive wordsmiths deepened my admiration greatly. The evening was recorded, both audio and video, and I’ll let you know when these go online. As an added bonus, Ros and Chloe Schwartz turned out to be the very same translators of Julien Neel‘s warm and witty Lou!, available in English from Highland Books and which I rave-reviewed here. The great news is that the next, fourth volume of Lou! is coming next year.
Coming back to The Little Prince, the biggest-selling French book of all time, be sure to discover or re-discover this life-enhancing miniature in one or both of these latest editions. We were trying to bring Sfar back over from Paris for this Comica event but he had to bow out due to being too busy. Still, plans are afoot to whisk him to London by next Spring.
Read The Blog At The Crossroads here.
