Pondering Poop

When I first began organizing my materials, plotting out categories and sifting out books to highlight over the summer, I knew for certain I’d have a post on poop. That’s right, poop. Mostly because I was baffled by the number of translated titles that I came across featuring excrement. It became a running gag around my house that even internationally “shit sells.”

I had every intention of writing a silly little tongue in cheek blog highlighting some of the titles and speculating why exactly so many of the books I found featured feces. For every beautifully illustrated, thought-provoking, funny, whimsical, innovative book I would come across I couldn’t rationalize the myriad of titles that focused on bodily functions that actually saw better overall sales than an average translated title. Were they funny? Absolutely. Would kids love them? They’re among my kids favorites and the ones they most request to share with their friends. Could they possibly serve an educational purpose? Yes, at least some of them. And I’d venture to say they’d be better received than most textbook lessons.

I’ve been looking forward to writing this one. After all that death, devastation, and destruction from a few weeks ago and the tricky quagmire of “lost in translation” looming, I’d settled it square in the middle as a bit of light-hearted fun for all of you and a bit of a breather for me. “Everybody Poops” as Japanese author Taro Gomi first wrote in 1977. (Yes, it’s a translated title!) And if we write what we know, well I suppose that makes me just as capable as anyone else to discuss defecation in picture book format.

So, like usual, I dove in a little deeper to the titles I had picked to decide how I wanted to weave my post together. Normally this is my favorite part because I often come across insight about an author/illustrator, the culture, the language it was written in, reviews, commentary, and other connections I hadn’t previously considered. But somewhere along the way this time, the poop stopped me up. (I’m sorry, I honestly couldn’t help myself. I’ve been mentally drafting that line for days!)

Joking aside, I really did get stuck. Three of the books that I intended to include turned up oddities. They are by no means the first books to do so, and I’ve discussed or at least noted some of those problems in previous posts. But three all in one category? It really bothered me. In fact, I knew my easy breezy poop pun-filled post was out the window. This was going to take some digging and some deeper thinking.

Well, crap.

All of this started with a long journey. The Long Journey of Mr. Poop, that is. Or if you prefer, El Gran Viaje del Señor Caca, as I learned from this dual language title. Back when I was researching the intro for my controversy category I came across this little gem and made it my mission to track it down (A huge thank you to Kathy for borrowing Oakland University’s copy for me!). 

But other than reading through it a few times (to the delight of my twosome) I hadn’t had much time to consider the “why” behind my decision to include it here. I was thrown a bit of a curve ball when I realized that even though the book is dual language English/Spanish the author, Angèle Delaunois and the illustrator Marie Lafrance are French Canadian. My sleuthing skills uncovered that the book was originally published in French, by Canadian publisher Les 400 Coups back in 2003. My question became then what language was translator Daniel Zolinsky being credited for on the title page of the 2007 bilingual edition published in the US by Cinco Puntos Press?

At that point, I’m not sure why all of this bothered me so much, but I needed answers. I sent an email off to the publisher, briefly explaining my project and asking for clarification. A few days later, I received a message explaining that Zolinsky had translated the French from English, but the Spanish translation had actually been purchased from a publisher in Venezuela. Huh? The kind soul at Cinco Puntos Press had also included a portion of the contract with LOS LIBROS DE "EL NACIONAL" which stated that Cinco Puntos Press was purchasing the Spanish rights for the United States of America and Canada of the original French text. It turns out Los Libros De “El Nacional” had published a Spanish language version of the French text in Venezuela in 2004 and this is the Spanish text that then appears in the bilingual edition from Cinco Puntos Press.

Make sense? Don’t worry, I struggled to wrap my brain around it, too. Let me sum it up for you – Mr. Poop, Señor Caca, Monsieur Caca – whatever you want to call him, he’s been on one long journey. A global one it seems. The whole thing didn’t sit quite right still - if Zolinsky was credited, why not the translator from Venezuela? Why no mention anywhere that the book was originally in French? But did it matter? I wasn’t sure yet so I set it aside to tackle some more turds.

Author Stephanie Blake, who was born in the US but now lives in France, wrote Caca boudin in 2002. I had stumbled across it as Poop-di-Doop! a 2015 publication by North South books. 

This isn’t the first book that I’ve come across with such a large gap between publication in the source language and publication of the translation, so that wasn’t what bothered me. What I struggled with was when I found Poo Bum, a 2011 edition by the New Zealand publisher Gecko Press. 

If there was already an English translation (with an actual person, Linda Burgess, being credited) why wouldn’t North South just purchase the rights to distribute that text here in the US? Why translate a completely different version without giving any credit to a specific translator? Is English in New Zealand so different that it requires a completely different text? What did that say about the accuracy of either version? Was one closer to the original? After taking a closer look at some of the information about different editions on goodreads why was there such a large discrepancy in the numbers of pages that comprised the book? If Stephanie Blake spent a good portion of her life speaking English, why didn’t she handle the translation? Wouldn’t she, as the author, be the best person to know what she had meant when she had written the French text? And again, did it really matter?

You can see how problematic poop was becoming for me. I thought perhaps it was time to pass to some gas…

Farley Farts, like Poop-di-Doop!, would probably not be titles I would choose to share here if I wasn’t dabbling in dung. They’re not bad books by any means, they’re just probably not what I would hold up as a shining beacon of the quality literature from around the world that deserves to find its way to American readers. I’m not the only one, as Publisher’s Weekly said “there's not a lot of substance to the airy plot.” about Farley. 

In fact, my intention was to mention it in a list of other books at the end of the post that fell into the category that if poop was your thing, you may want to check out. But when I started looking for links to the book by Brite Muller I hit a major wall. Check out amazon’s listing of the title here and see if you can figure it out.

No? How about this one at Barnes and Nobel? Or what about Simon & Schuster’s listing? Still nothing? Go back and check out that link from Publisher’s Weekly – notice anything different? Like the AUTHOR????

(Kristi’s interesting side note – I point out the Simon & Schuster listing specifically because they are the actual distributors of North South books. How could they have it wrong?)

How in the world had all those major sellers missed the very obvious cover page sporting the name of Brite Muller who authored AND illustrated the book? And who the heck was Bruno Hachler? I combed the text again as a few times I’ve come across a listing where the translator of the text has been credited as the author (Equally problematic). Nope, no such luck as there is no named translator in the 2003 publication by North South. The jacket flap of the book only contained information about Muller, noting a few other titles she had served as only the illustrator. On a hunch, I checked out one of them, Snow Ravens, which was written by (have you guessed?) Bruno Hachler. I scanned the list of books on his website to confirm; no Farley. I headed back to Muller’s and found Farley. What the heck?

Of the three oddities, this one disturbed me the most. This isn’t some small typo or oversight – this is giving credit for the writing of a text to the completely wrong person when it is blatantly obvious if you even look at the cover of the book. How is it that no one has caught this? I could see if one place had it listed wrong but we’re talking about the distributer of the book not even having the correct author listed! Why hasn’t North South done anything about this? If this was an American author would such a blatant mistake gone unnoticed? My writer’s soul ached for Muller, but my practical brain countered with ‘she’s probably never going to know, so does it really matter?’

Frustrated with how backed up my research was getting with all this poop I scheduled some time to meet with my advisor to conference on caca. I babbled incoherently about the three titles and my roadblocks. She listened patiently as always and explained a little about translation rights which answered some of my questions. (Remember, I’m still learning, too!) I did a little more research and it seems that a publisher can buy “world English rights,” which means they have means they have sole permission to print and distribute their English language translation anywhere in the world. Sometimes though, the rights can be divided into regions or even countries, which would explain the Gecko Press and North South variations of the Blake book. It would also explain (at least I’m assuming) how Mr. Poop’s journey went down. My assumption is that Los Libros De “El Nacional” purchased the world Spanish language rights from Les 400 Coup and then Cinco Puntos Press was given the regional rights to use that Spanish translation for their bilingual edition in the US and Canada only.

I can even speculate that the mislabeled author on Farley is probably what my wise husband referred to as a propagation error. When the information was entered incorrectly in one place (my guess is we may be able to point a finger at Simon & Schuster) other distributors ran with it. It’s an explanation of how it got started but it doesn’t explain why it hasn’t been corrected, which was the bigger source of my frustration. Why in all of these books and in many of the others I’ve come across isn’t credit being given where credit is due? Not just in authorship as in Muller’s case, but credit for the translator as well? Aren’t they in some ways another author?

As I continued to discuss all this with my professor, she countered with “OK, so what? Why does it matter?” Oh, those sneaky educators encouraging critical thinking! This was supposed to be about poop, I wasn’t supposed to have to think! Somewhere though the roadblocks that I had encountered became about more than just a few poop books. They were representative of much of what I’d been finding and my frustrations with the respect given to translated titles as a whole.

There are many philosophical arguments surrounding the nature of authorship and let’s just leave that at “another blog, another day.” I recognize though, that my personal feelings on this are part of the source of my frustrations. I believe the person that puts the words on the page is just as important as the reader that takes them in. I don’t think that an author is separate from the text, I believe they put themselves on the page with the stories they chose to write and the words they use to tell those stories. For me, it comes back to authenticity and accuracy; who is telling the story and are they able to do so in a way that is truthful? Personally, that includes the translator in these books. They are, in a way, re-writing these stories for the target audience. No two people are going to do so exactly the same way. We’re going to get back to this a little more when we get to “lost in translation” but the fact that it keeps showing up, again and again, is worth mentioning here.

But what does it mean big picture? What does it say about translated texts as a whole? For me, it just furthers the lack of respect that these titles receive. If I, who has an interest, has to go on such a crusade to track down the origins of Mr. Poop, what does that mean for the average reader? Do they just not care? Are they even aware? Do publishers of translated texts shy away from including the source language, translator and other details to avoid that “strange” label often hung on translated materials? If so, is that OK?

I’m still working through my thoughts and feelings on many of these questions, something that I know will continue over the next few months. Some I have strong opinions about and some questions I know will probably go unanswered until I’m willing to venture further down those specific rabbit holes. It’s worth noting that the issues that I’ve stumbled across are not unique to pun-filled parodies on poo, but it’s interesting that I came across so many at one time. Right now, I can sum it up with a nod to all this poop; “I feel the way that translated texts are being treated is pretty shitty.”

This definitely wasn’t the post I thought I was going to be writing when I started all this – and that’s OK. As promised earlier, I do have a couple other texts to check out if gross-out humor is your thing. In addition to Everybody Poops, which I noted above, Kane Miller produced a series of six Body Science books originally written by three Japanese authors, all translated by Amanda Mayer Stinchecum. My Bean recommends The Gas We Pass: The Story of Farts by Shinta Cho specifically. 

My personal favorite is a German title from author Werner Holzwarth and was illustrated by Wolf Erlbruch who you may remember from Death, Duck and the Tulip. The Story of the Little Mole Who Knew It Was None of His Business, is a far departure from the philosophical Death. I don’t want to give it away, this is a book you have to experience on your own. Fortunately, you’re in luck! As my gift today for wading through all this poo, turn up your speakers and enjoy!

After you’ve been thoroughly entertained, I’ll see you back here on Tuesday when we dive into the next category looking at Wordless picture books. I’ll offer up my thoughts on why they deserve to be recognized as translated texts and we’ll go from there!