World Kid Lit Month: Retranslating a Classic

Pinocchio. The Little Prince. The Little Mermaid. All of these stories have been translated into English not once, but many times (from Italian, French, and Danish, respectively). Children’s literature includes an array of classic works available in multiple translations, perfected at different times by different translators for different audiences. 

Multiple translations are a bounty for readers, who can explore and compare their favorite books in various forms. This translation might be quieter, that one more dramatic, another one set at a brisk tempo, and still another one more andante.

I have learned that actually performing a retranslation gets me a bit, well, nervosa. As I was translating Sachiko Kashiwaba’s Kiri no mukō no fushigi na machi as The Village Beyond the Mist for US release in 2025, I thought constantly about a predecessor: The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist, translated by Christopher Holmes and published in Japan in 1987. 

The Holmes translation published by Kodansha. Note the translator cover credit!

Though never distributed internationally before going out of print, this translation has become a collector's item available both abroad and at home. I owned a copy myself before giving it to an editor more than ten years ago, when I was pitching Kashiwaba’s work for publication in the US. The Marvelous Village Veiled in Mist was then the only full translation of a Kashiwaba novel from Japanese into English.

After my pitching succeeded and I translated two of the author's relatively recent novels, Restless Books asked me to retranslate Village, Kashiwaba-san's debut work from 1975. I was flattered and excited to work with the book that is easily her best-known in Japan; I had seen Japanese readers approach her at events in Washington, DC and Hong Kong, asking her to sign their childhood copies. This past summer, I saw the same scene unfold in New York.

With Sachiko Kashiwaba (left) and a reader holding her long-treasured copy of Kiri no mukō no fushigi na machi, Japan Society, New York, 27 June 2025

But as I translated, I felt wary of being compared to Holmes and found wanting—or worse, derivative. I loved the title of his translation, and I didn’t know if I dared reread the rest lest I be influenced. I completely missed that I was influenced already—for throughout my translation, I used the word mist for kiri 霧, when this could just as correctly be translated as fog.

The thought did not even strike me until months after publication, so strong was the Marvelous magic!

I do invite readers to compare the Holmes translation to mine now, partly to appreciate how no two human translations are alike. For seven iterations of a Translation Day event in SCBWI Japan, we also conveyed this through a workshop; the resulting translations show how a passage in the hands of six or nine or ten translators turns into as many faithful interpretations.

In this sense, translation is akin to illustration. Next week, I will share about the illustrators I have encountered along the path of translating Sachiko Kashiwaba.

Avery Fischer Udagawa’s translations include the 2022 Batchelder Award-winning novel Temple Alley Summer, the 2024 Batchelder Honor book The House of the Lost on the Cape, and new release The Village Beyond the Mist, all authored in Japanese by Sachiko Kashiwaba. Avery works in international education north of Bangkok and volunteers as SCBWI Global Translator Coordinator.