NM: Congratulations on the upcoming release on August 1 of your translation of Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup from Russian into English. It’s a wonderful coming-of-age magical adventure and was a bestseller in Kazakhstan. How did the book find its way to you and then to Amazon Publishing? Was it an easy journey or one with many twists and turns?

SFV: Thank you! I fell in love with this book at first glance, so it’s thrilling to know that many, many other people will soon be able to read it in English. Batu… came to me the same way as many of the other books I’ve translated: through a hopeful author. I had been translating short stories and essays for adults by each of the co-authors, Zira Nauryzbai and Lilya Kalaus, which were published in English in Words Without Borders, the 2022 anthology Amanat, and elsewhere, and I ended up taking on larger projects for both of them as well. When I learned they were co-writing a whole adventure series for kids based on Kazakh myths and legends, I knew it would be great, so I started translating samples. But it was years until I received my first favorable response from a publisher, thanks to a meeting with Amazon Crossing Kids editor Marilyn Brigham, scheduled through the American Literary Translators Association. She responded quickly and asked some smart questions; soon enough, she sent the authors a contract and hired me to translate the rest of the book. After that, it was smooth sailing. I don’t think I’ve ever translated a novel so quickly as I translated the last two-thirds of Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup. The story just flies along, and I find the faster the plot, the faster I can translate.

NM: How many books are in the series in the original language? Are there any plans to bring more of the series to young English-language readers?

SFV: Three books have been published in Kazakhstan, in both Russian and Kazakh. They’ve come out in multiple printings and there’s talk of a movie version. I’d love to translate the rest of the series into English, but that decision will have to be made based on how well this first book does commercially. Naturally, I’m hoping for a smash hit!

NM: One of the fascinating aspects of Batu… is the glimpse it gives readers of Kazakh mythology and culture, which is greatly aided by the excellent glossary in the back, as well as a diagram of a Kazakh musical instrument and explanatory comments along the way.  Are these explanations in the original text? If not, can you tell us about the process of choosing what to insert and how much? 

SFV: Any time we translate a story from a place that will be mostly unfamiliar to our readers, translators have to grapple with these questions. In this case, I had the advantage of working with a book that was originally designed to introduce a number of cultural concepts to its own first readers. Kazakhstan is a country where Russian and then Soviet power dominated, politically and culturally, for several generations. Kazakh stories and Kazakh experiences, as well as the Kazakh language, were pushed into the background that whole time. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, and now accelerating in the wake of Russian aggression in Ukraine, there have been more attempts in Kazakhstan to reinvigorate the Kazakh language and ensure that younger generations no longer see the culture of their grandparents and great-grandparents as second-rate. Nauryzbai and Kalaus’s contribution to this effort is the “Batu” series. Batu’s grandmother only speaks to him in Kazakh, and he only half understands. But between his more culturally savvy friends Dana and Hadisha, and Aspara, the ancient Golden Warrior who sends them on their adventures, Batu learns a lot about the language, the mythology, the music, and the whole cultural heritage which is his birthright. English-language readers can learn all those things right along with Batu (although, of course, the stakes will be less personal for most of them).

I didn’t insert a lot of explanation in the translation, because the authors provided that for their own intended readers. The Russian version of this book even had a glossary, in one edition, and then footnotes in a later edition; we returned to the glossary idea and added some terms that would have been more familiar to Kazakhstani kids than to English speakers. We also decided to leave quite a lot unexplained. Aspara tells Batu he has a real warrior’s name, which is true—but I thought we could leave it up to readers to investigate the history of that other, historical Batu, if they’re interested.

Adding the dombyra diagram was the publisher’s idea, and I was enthusiastic about that, as well. The Kazakh dombyra is an instrument like a guitar, but with only two strings, and the frets have names based on the emotions they convey in a tune. The dombyra is as familiar a sight in Kazakhstan as the guitar is in the United States, but we knew readers here would need a picture to help them imagine it. Batu and his friends travel through time and space by playing just the right notes on his great-grandfather’s old dombyra.

NM: Did the original bestseller need any other adaptations or editing to successfully make the transition to the U.S. English-language market?

SFV: Nothing major, no! Nauryzbai and Kalaus have the skills to create a book that’s just right for the English-language kidlit audience in terms of pacing and length, so the book didn’t require any cuts or rewriting at all. I did have to fight a little to keep one of my favorite scenes, in which a character that’s very scary up to that point snatches a crying baby… and begins to breastfeed her. It’s an incredibly tender moment and a powerful way to adjust readers’ perceptions of who’s who in the story. Less obviously, the scene is also vital from the point of view of the myths the book references; milk is a central symbol in Kazakh mythology. But the publisher’s first response was that we can’t have a breastfeeding scene in an American book for this age group. In the end, we agreed to keep the scene, but we removed some phrases that were more anatomically explicit.

NM: In the afterword, the two authors thank their grandmothers for having “resisted ideological pressure during Soviet times to expose their granddaughters to their own native cultures.” Can you talk about how that pressure has affected books for young readers in Kazakhstan today? I remember reading that Kazakhstan is in a decade-long process of converting their alphabet from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet. Is that affecting Kazakh children’s books written in Russian? Are children’s books in Kazakhstan being written today in other languages–such as Kazakh, for example? And is the change affecting them?

SFV: Yes, the series really is on a mission to create children’s literature that will make kids proud of (or at least more familiar with!) their Kazakh heritage. As Zira Nauryzbai tells the story, her pre-teen daughter was once obsessed with Harry Potter, which she and all her friends read in Russian. Zira is an expert in world mythology, and when she finally picked up a copy, she immediately saw how much of J.K. Rowling’s story was based on the myths, monsters, and magic of Northern Europe. “We have stories just as good as this! Shouldn’t our kids be reading those?” she thought, and she recruited Kalaus, also the mother of young readers, to help her craft the Kazakhstani answer to Harry Potter. Batu is the result.

There are a couple of publishing houses in Kazakhstan now that are doing a great job publishing nice-looking books for kids and teens. Many of those are translations of English-language best sellers, but they’re also publishing work in both Kazakh and Russian by local authors, and more all the time. Naturally, Kazakhstani parents desperately want their kids to have fun and educational things to read that feature kids who are just like them. But it’s a slow process; they’ve first had to move beyond the children’s literature that was a required part of the national Soviet school curriculum, and now they’re trying to look beyond imported bestsellers.

NM: You’re an accomplished translator of Russian and Uzbek into English, with numerous published books and stories translated from both languages to your credit. What drew you to each of those languages? What was your path to becoming a translator? Are there challenges working in Uzbek vs. Russian?

SFV: My degree is in international relations, and I chose to study Russian as a tool for work in that field. I still planned to eventually start a career in international affairs or international development when I had the opportunity to study Uzbek in graduate school. But then I began taking more classes in linguistics, literature, and film than in economics or politics, and my first job out of graduate school was selecting and buying Russian-language books for a public library. The freelance translation I was doing on the side, from both languages, grew into a full-time job, and my first published translation for an author was actually from Uzbek, an essay Mamadali Mahmudov wrote from prison.

Uzbek and Kazakh, as well as most other Central Asian languages, are Turkic languages, so they’re completely different in terms of grammar, syntax, vocabulary, and literary history from anything written in Russian. I find it takes a different mindset to translate well from Uzbek. And it’s more of a challenge for me, because I’ve never lived in Uzbekistan or been immersed in the language. So I simply don’t know it as well as I know Russian, and there are drastically fewer resources online or in print to help with linguistic puzzles. When I translate from Uzbek, or occasionally from Kazakh, I rely on help from native speakers, the authors themselves if I’m lucky.

NM: Do you have another favorite project or book for children you’ve translated?  What are you currently working on? Are there any books from Kazakh, Uzbek, or Russian that you’d really like to see translated for English-speaking children?  

SFV: I’d spend all my time in the kid-lit world if I could, but I’ve had more success finding publishers for translated books intended for grownups. Right now, I’m translating an Uzbek novel by Hamid Ismailov, about an AI that writes poetry, which will be out with Yale University Press in a year or two. I’d love to find a publisher for Batu co-author Lilya Kalaus’s hilarious, moving novel, The Last Hope Foundation, and for the darkly funny young-adult romances by Kristina Stark, a Ukrainian author who is trying to break into the English-language market.

Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup is the only children’s book I’ve translated for a major publisher so far. Most of my previous work translating for children has been for Russian-language movies and cartoon series, but I’ve been doing less of that lately and concentrating on books. I’d love to do more, especially from Central Asia. There are so many stories there that have hardly been heard outside the region, both for adults and for kids, and so many authors eager to be read. Maybe Batu will stir people’s curiosity, and I’ll be able to help more kids explore more places soon.

Thank you for joining us, Shelley Fairweather-Vega! Watch this space for a review of Batu and the Search for the Golden Cup, coming soon.

Award-winning opera singer Nanette McGuinness is the translator of over 100 books and graphic novels for children and adults from French, Italian, German and Spanish into English, including the well-known Geronimo Stilton Graphic Novels, as well as Tiki: A Very Ruff Year, which was nominated for a 2023 Will Eisner Comics Industry Award. Her translation of Alice on the Run: One Child’s Journey Through the Rwandan Civil War. was a 2023 GLLI YA Translated Book Prize Honor Book, won the 2023 Mosaic Prize, and was a 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalist; and her translations of Magical History Tour: Vikings and of Magical History Tour: Gandhi were also 2023 Excellence in Graphic Literature Finalists. Two more of her translations have received high accolades: Luisa: Now and Then (2019 Stonewall Honor Book; 2020 GLLI YA Translated Honor Book; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2019) and California Dreamin’: Cass Elliot Before the Mamas & the Papas (2018 Harvey Awards; YALSA’s Great Graphic Novels for Teens in 2018). Recent translations include YA dystopian SF GN Gurvan: A Dream of Earth; Dagfrid, Viking Girl: No More Ear Buns; Dagrid: Viking Girl: Secret Viking Wishes; Magical History Tour: Samurai, Magical History Tour: Slavery; fantasy manga Bibi & Miyu #3, and LGBTQ manga Just Friends.