Cornelia Funke Founds Breathing Books

This is not new news, I'm afraid – I'm working too hard at the moment to keep up – but I do find it interesting.

German writer and illustrator Cornelia Funke, asked to make significant changes to the the structure of the third Reckless book, The Golden Garn, by her US/UK publishers, said no. Her books are edited in the German original, she told the press (two different but similar interview pieces were published in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and Publishers Weekly has the full scoop in English).

So they gave her the rights back and she didn't even have to pay for the finished translation, and she has set up her own publishing house, Breathing Books, to bring out the book on her own terms. No one's really saying why the Americans and British wanted the changes, although Funke suspects they wanted to market the novel at younger readers – they didn't want it to open with a birth scene or close with an open ending. I'm impressed with Cornelia Funke. The internet would say Cornelia Funke gives zero fucks.

The plan now is to bring out the novel with a title closer to the German original than the planned "Heartless", as an e-book and a limited print edition to begin with in November, and see how things go. The new company will also do book-related apps and new editions of Funke's books with her own illustrations, plus re-releases of out-of-print titles like the fabulous Pirate Girl (tr. Chantal Wright) – which coined the phrase "you piratical nincompoop", much beloved in my household. The website looks exciting but doesn't credit Funke's usual translator Oliver Latsch, who is also her agent. And her cousin, I believe. So maybe he's OK with that.

I like the idea of a writer gaining greater command over her work in translation. I have to say I was surprised an editor would suggest structural changes to a translated and thus already edited book, but perhaps it really is the done thing in children's and young adult publishing, which seems to be rather concerned about putting readers off. And what makes me particularly happy about the whole story is the tiny spark of hope that Breathing Books might one day publish writers other than Cornelia Funke. Maybe they could offer a gateway to young Anglophone readers' hearts and devices for translated fiction. If they're reckless enough, maybe.

German Children's and Young Adults' Literature Prize to Translated Works?

The Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis is Germany's big prize for picture books, children's books, YA books and children's/YA non-fiction books. Most of the biggies have won it over the years, including two of my friends. The unusual thing about it is that it can be awarded to books written originally in German or published in translation, all within a particular year. There has been some annoyance about that on the part of some German writers of children's and young adults' literature. In fact they went as far as to write an open letter to the family minister calling for an end to the practice (original formatting):

An alteration to the award guidelines for the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis is indispensible and overdue in the following two points:

 

1)      The evaluation by the critics' and young people's juries should apply to  German-language original works in the categories picture book, children's book, young adults' book and non-fiction.

2)      German translations of foreign-language works should be honoured  separately, i.e. in their own category/categories.

 

After almost sixty years of the award's existence, may German-language children's and young adults' literature finally be adequately acknowledged and valued by the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, as other countries deal with their own literary production.

In case you're wondering why they wrote to the family minister, it's because her ministry is officially in charge of the prize.

Anyway, the open letter did the rounds of the social media, making me feel a little uncomfortable but not enough to keep me up at night. And then today the German literary translators issued a response in a press release containing a long and combative statement by Heike Brandt. Unfortunately, you're going to have to click the link above and then go to "Pressemitteilungen" to get there. I do apologise. A soundbite from the VDÜ's chairman Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel to make up for it:

It is good and important that the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis covers the entire range of children's and young adults' literature published in Germany, originals and translations into German. A national limitation of the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreises would be an untimely and fatal signal. Setting up a prize category for translations would not balance that out.

Now you can imagine I'm torn. On the one hand, I want my German writer friends to win prizes for their books. On the other hand I want my German translator friends to win prizes for their books - on a par with all the other books. Because that's precisely what makes this award special: the fact that it's a prize for all children's and young adult's books and doesn't make a false distinction between books written in German and books written in Swedish, English or Hebrew. The upset authors claim it's not a level playing field, however, because translated books have had longer to establish themselves on the market (abroad) and gain attention. They say it's more difficult for books written by German authors to win the prize. I'm not sure about that. A brief glance at the previous winners shows it's a fairly even distribution. In fact in 2011 no translated books won anything, although last year was back to half and half. I suspect this year's nominations might be the straw that broke the camel's back, with only three originals in the running for any of the critics' fiction prizes.

Nevertheless I shall come down from the fence and say that yes, I think it's marvellous that this award treats originals and translations as exactly the same things: great books. On the anecdotal level, my daughter reads German originals, German translations and English originals of all her confusing YA fantasy series, depending on what she gets her hands on. And to back that up, there's the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis young people's jury, who fairly consistently nominate a mix of translated and original titles. I think Germany could be proud not to make a distinction like all those other countries with their narrow-minded national book awards. But then of course I could just be saying that because I'm a translator.

Update: As the very clever writer, translator and YA-lit expert Danny Hahn pointed out, this is exactly how the Dublin IMPAC prize works, and is something to be applauded. And as with the IMPAC prize, the award money either goes to the writer (of a German-language original) or is shared equally between the writer and translator.