Read all about the unintentionally humourous side of a Tulika editor’s
first experience of sending a book to press, in her own words.
After a couple of ‘settling-in’ weeks at Tulika, I was told
that I would be taking over the editing process of a bilingual picture book. I
was excited and mildly anxious but still didn’t know exactly what that meant. I
had some idea but what I wasn’t prepared for was the multilingual factor
because Tulika publishes in nine languages, so a bilingual book has English with
Hindi or Tamil or Bengali… basically eight times over. Let me give you a peep
into it.
Before I begin, I have to say this: I got clear directions
from experienced editors and everyone has been the most helpful, kind and
generous. As they say in the foreword, all the mistakes are mine.
The whole process started off quietly. I had gone through the
all-important editorial workflow guide but I needed practical experience.
The bilingual book layout
The text, which had already gone through a few rounds of edits
and was paginated, was ready for the layout. Here’s what our bilingual books
look like.
The position of the text in each language has to be the same
and has to be visually accurate since line lengths differ across languages. Any
change in English, like a small edit in the illustrator’s bio, has to be
reflected in the translations — all EIGHT of them! I came across this delightful
fact exactly when tensions were rising.
Translation
challenges
Since this was a picture book, the words were few but those
that were there had to be accurate, free of biases and easily translatable. This
fine-tuning is an ongoing process. Even the day before the book went to press,
we (the editors) were debating on a word in Tamil, its connotations and
denotations. With layers of meaning, a word had to be carefully considered till
we were sure of the word. For example, in this particular book, the word in the
Hindi original was ‘kurta’. For many languages including English, ‘kurta’ was
used as it is. However, ‘kurta’ is not a Tamil word. The equivalent that was
chosen, ‘chattai’, translates as ‘shirt’ as well as ‘an upper body garment’. However,
one of our reviewers pointed out that chattai is a short garment whereas a
kurta isn’t. We discussed this point with the translator. She explained that
she used ‘chattai’ instead of ‘kurta’ since in rural areas ‘kurta’ is only associated
with women whereas, in this case, the visual was of a boy so ‘kurta’ couldn’t be
used. So ‘chattai’ it was!
Cover story
Next were the covers. Juggling the front cover,
the back cover, inside covers and the title page was like playing football with
four balls. I never knew which one was headed for me and which one could be
tackled with a foot or the head. I wished I could just step aside and let the
footballs go right past me. That was clearly not an option.
Typography
So by the penultimate day everything including fonts and
type sizes was final. It needed one more round to iron out any problems — such
as if a font was too fussy or too heavy or too small. You see, being
perfectionists nothing was passed even if it was something that only we would
notice. The cover, title page and inside pages of each translation had been printed
out earlier and compared to check that their look matched across languages.
However, it was done again now for a final time.
The Going-To-Press day
The
next morning as GTP (Going To Press) day rolled along, I felt lost. In fact, I
was told that "I am lost" was my constant refrain through the day.
The fine-tuning was still being done. Translations were all
done, but done is not really done, I was finding out. If one thing was changed
in one translation, it had a domino effect on all others.
Then came the fine art of replacing those pages that had minor tweaks: this I could handle of course but… all
translations were merging into one. No, this is not a metaphor. I found some
pages of different languages mixed up.
After sorting it out and putting all the items that the
printer needs in an envelope, I could see that the process was coming to a
close.
Wrapping up!
As I heaved a sigh of relief, I couldn’t shake off the
feeling that I had just babysat eight babies (read books) who were crawling
away from me in different directions. As soon as I got control of one baby,
another slipped away. Controlling all eight of them was a Herculean task. Or so
it seemed at that time. But as the wise say, this too shall pass. So it did.
Today, while I wait for the book to get back from press, and
have got some distance between me and that day, I feel that it’s not so bad, I
can survive this.
If you thought editing for children’s books was easy, think
again!
***
To buy our bilingual picture books, head to:
http://www.tulikabooks.com/bilingual-books/general-bilingual-picture-books/
http://www.tulikabooks.com/bilingual-books/general-bilingual-picture-books/
