20 years with ITI

I have been a qualified member of ITI for 20 years. My first thought when I received this logo was "You could raise a child in that time." And, in fact, I did. I went freelance and joined ITI the year my son was born. If businesses and boys grew at the same rate, my translation business would now be 6 foot 3.

A poem

Having been writing poetry for several years, and translating for two decades, I have finally had a go at translating a poem:

Ärgerlich 

Aus der Mühle schaut der Müller,
Der so gerne mahlen will.
Stiller wird der Wind und stiller,
Und die Mühle stehet still. 

So gehts immer, wie ich finde,
Rief der Müller voller Zorn.
Hat man Korn, so fehlts am Winde,
Hat man Wind, so fehlt das Korn. 

Wilhelm Busch

Sod’s Law 

(translation of ‘Ärgerlich’ by Wilhelm Busch) 

In his mill the miller’s fretting.
He’s got forty sacks to fill.
Outside though, the wind’s abating –
the sails stop turning, all is still.

Typical! the miller cries,
this is driving me insane.
When there’s grain to grind, the wind dies,
when it’s windy, there’s no grain. 

Ros Mendy

New bilingual children's book ready for Leipzig Book Fair

The next exciting bilingual children's book from Schlauberger Verlag will be on display at the Leipzig Book Fair this week. Vulkan - Die Macht des Feuerrings (Volcano - Fury in the Ring of Fire) by Vera Trachmann takes young readers on a thrilling adventure, while teaching them all about volcanoes and tectonic plates. It also includes fun insights into the worlds of the Klickitat tribe, British explorers and a pocket gopher called Thomomy. As with other bilingual Schlauberger books, children will be able to see my English translation alongside the original German text. The book will be on display at the Schlauberger Verlag stand at the Leipzig Book Fair from 17 to 20 March 2016 (Stand D203 in Hall 2). It will also be available from the Schlauberger website.

The Book Fair

Harald and Vera Trachmann
of Schlauberger Verlag

All seven of the Schlauberger bilingual children's books were on display at the Frankfurt Book Fair last week. I spent some time at the stand, watching as people's attention was caught first by the striking yellow covers and then by the bilingual presentation. Each page has the German text on the left and my English translation on the right.

With Vera Trachmann (right) at the
Schlauberger stand

Also on display was the new bilingual audio book of "Hallo! Wir sind die Amselkinder"/"The Little Blackbirds".

Buzz finds her way to the bee observatory

Buzz and the Honeybees, the first children’s book I translated for Schlauberger-Verlag, is being promoted by HOBOS, an online bee observatory. The site provides live videos and data from a specially designed beehive equipped with sensors, measuring devices and cameras, including a thermographic camera, yielding new insights into the fascinating goings-on inside a honeybee colony.

New bilingual children's books

In this book, a gang of pills travels back in time to Lochfield Farm in Scotland, where they find a young boy called Alex Fleming and follow him through the years until he makes his groundbreaking discovery: penicillin. My English translation appears alongside the German text.

The latest bilingual children's book from Schlauberger Verlag tells the true story of a leopard cub and the family in Namibia who adopted her. This is the first Schlauberger book to be written in English and translated into German. I had the pleasure of editing the English text before it was translated.

You can find out more about these books and other bilingual German-English children's books at Schlauberger-Verlag.

New edition of Buzz and the Honeybees

This was the first children's non-fiction book I translated for Schlauberger Verlag. First published in 2008, it has had a makeover in time for the Leipzig Book Fair.