Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin Transcript

Listen to Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin's talk

Welcome to the Dublin City Public Libraries and Archive Podcast. In this episode, Tadhg Mac Dhonnagáin talks about his career publishing high quality translated books for the Irish market, while working in co-operation with international publishers.  Recorded at the Central Library on 24 November 2010, as part of the series series 'In Other Words . . .Irish Literature in Translation in Your Library'.

Go raibh míle maith agaibh.  Tá sé go hálainn stóir mór a fheiceáil. This is what I consider a big crowd so I’m delighted that so many of you came out when the country is falling on our heads to talk about publishing.  I know that this series of talks has been about Irish writers kind of reaching out into the world and in a way I kind of think that’s what we do as well but in a different way.  But just to explain where Futa Fata came from as Sinead mentioned I was involved in television for many years and before that I worked as a primary school teacher.  I worked in a Gaelscoil in an Irish medium school and my first book was published during those years which was a re-telling of a story about Cuchulain called 'Flea Bhricriu' and then I moved gradually into the world of television.  I began on a part-time basis presenting a children’s preschool television called Dilín ó Deamhas and then I went and worked in RTE for 13 years full-time as a presenter on a programme it was kind of a catch-all magazine programme called Cúrsaí and I was always dealing with kind of the cultural end of it and then it became its own sort of Arts show.  It was in the Irish language but kind of de facto bilingual Arts show called Cúrsaí Ealaíona and that ran for 5 years and that was a great education really, it was a great chance to kind of meet all sorts of interesting artists and so forth. But parallel to this I also had this kind of moonlighting career as a Gaelic rock star. I was writing songs in the Irish language and I was recording music and then when my children started to arrive I started writing songs for them and I had kind of come up with a bunch of songs in a kind of an organic way making them up with my kids as we went around in the car and that sort of thing and I decided to record them.  So I did the first children’s record in 1997 and that’s where the Futa Fata label as it were were born.

Then in the year 2000 I left RTE and I went to live in Spiddal in County Galway, Connemara, where I still live, and I began to kind of freelance and I began to kind of explore various ways to keep my children fed and I was doing some television work which I still do but I began developing more the children’s music and one of the most successful ones that I’ve done is this collection of traditional rhymes from Connemara called Gugalaí Gug and it’s a CD and book illustrated by Cartoon Saloon who were nominated for an Oscar this year for their film The Secret of Kells and the book has been also successful, it’s sold 8,000 copies which isn’t Harry Potter but in an Irish language context is Harry Potter. (Laughter) It’s a significant success. So I realised then that I had access to funding to do this kind of work and it was the work I loved and it was kind of work which was related to all sorts of things I’d done in my life up to that – teaching and working kind of with the visual and working with children and all that sort of stuff. So I decided that this was something I could pursue. I could probably dip in and out of the television world now and again but this is something I could pursue and that it would be kind of a regular income.

 

So I realised very quickly that I couldn’t really live on making one kind of quite complex production like Gugalaí Gug which would almost be a year’s work so I would have to find titles to kind of build a catalogue fairly quickly. So I began going to the Bologna Book Fair in 2006 and I began meeting publishers from other parts of the world and the first kind of fruits of that kind of adventure was two books we did that were originally published by a small publisher in Los Angeles called Kidwick Books and this was called in English ‘Frog Thing’ and we called it in Irish Frog sa Spéir and you would kind of know to read the book that it’s about a Californian frog because it’s the story of Frank Frog and when he was little his parents said Frank when you grow up you’ll be able to do anything.  So then Frank kind of became older and he decided what he really wanted to do in the world was to fly and he went back to his parents and they said well, you know, when we said, you know, you could do anything we really meant you could do anything as good as any other frog but that wasn’t good enough for Frank.

So it was kind of a halfway house for me I suppose in terms of the way I’d worked up until that point was that there was a CD with the book and the thing that I liked about it was that there were children actually on the CD there were various children, different voices playing the roles of the characters in the book and I thought that it was a lovely natural kind of production and I felt that I could kind of re-create that in Irish because I already worked with a whole cast of young talent in Connemara and I could find children who could do that sort of acting and indeed I did. So we published Frog sa Spéir and we published another title from Kidwick at the same time called Eileanór an Eilifint Éagsúil, and they went down very well.

So I began kind of looking further afield to find other books and I found other books.  This one, for example, was on the short list for the book of the year this year, this was originally published in French in Belgian ‘Le Loup Magicien’ and in Irish it’s ‘Mac Tíre na Draíochta’, the Magic Wolf and it’s the story of a wolf who in Irish his name is Maidhceo which is a nice Connemara name and he kind of discovers his kind of more vulnerable side.  He comes home from a walk in the woods one day and he smells a strange smell and this isn’t the first time it’s happened so he decides the next day that he will go and he will hide and see what intruder is coming into his house and when he does that he finds that the interloper is a rabbit and a very tasty looking rabbit at that and he decides to jump out and eat the rabbit for dinner.  But the rabbit persuades him not to that and persuades him to check out the magic tricks he can do and he does card tricks and so forth and they become very friendly and he really shortens the winter for Maidhceo because he’s able to do all sorts of very entertaining tricks and then when the spring comes his new friend the rabbit Coinín becomes quite lonely because as you know rabbits are a very amorous species and he feels that it’s time to settle down and get married which indeed he does with quick results (laughter), they have loads of babies, and Maidhceo becomes very involved in this new family because he’s feeding them and he tells them stories and they change his life and he becomes, you know, ...

Person1 That’s very Californian too... (laughter) it is Californian in a certain way but then the other wolves find out and they’re not too impressed with Maidhceo’s new direction and so they approach him and Maidhceo of course is devastated that all the wolves will find out what’s going on.  So the ending is really good.  (laughter)  So that’s Mac Tíre na Draíochta.

We’ve also worked with the same company Mijade in France, I think this was actually the first one we did with them is ‘Nina et le Chat’ which became ‘Neilín agus an Cat’.  The lovely thing about doing these versions is that you can make up whatever, any name you want, in the translation.  That’s a chance to make a kind of an important point about story book or picture book translation is that it’s generally and I think this happens in every language really is that it’s generally kind of an adaptation that you’re trying to achieve because just the way the whole thing works is that when you go to an international fair like Bologna or Frankfurt you will be presented with an English version of the book because English is the international language of trade. It doesn’t matter where the publisher comes from if the publisher is from Germany and they’re discussing a book with a publisher from Korea they will be showing them an English version of them book and the meeting will be in English and that’s generally how it works.  So then you’re really free to kind of adapt the book to your own kind of country and your own culture so it’s quite a creative business actually because when I tell translators who work with kind of adult literature they’re absolutely horrified that, you know, we’ve had such freedom but that generally is the way it is with picture books.

But anyway this one I think is one of my favourite books of all the ones we’ve translated in from other languages. This is the story of an elephant family and they have a little baby Nellie who is the absolute apple of their eye and she is so cute and she can do so many really clever things but then the day comes when the maternity leave is over and mother elephant and father elephant have to go back and work in the woods and there is nobody to look after Nellie and they’re obviously very worried. But a kindly cat comes along and says well I’ll do the job, I’ll look after Nellie, so they decide to give it a go. So the cat actually turns out to be a great success and Nellie completely bonds with this new childminder and is very happy and she also learns lots of interesting new skills from the cat.  She learns how to creep up on birds and she learns how to do all sorts of stuff. So when the parents come home they think things are actually going really well but then at the weekend they are going to a birthday party and mom is brushing Nellie’s hair there, you see, but when they get to the party Nellie completely lets them down by not taking part in the fun and by doing all sorts of strange things that elephants shouldn’t do like washing herself with her tongue (laughter) and climbing up in a tree and doing all sorts of stuff and the elephant community as you would expect are absolutely horrified that this has happened and mom and dad decide that the cat has to go and Nellie is absolutely bereft and mom says I’m going to take a day off and I’m going to re-bond with you and she brings her down to the waterhole but Nellie won’t go in because she’s afraid of the water (laughter). And then she won’t walk in line as she used to do and then she won’t eat with her trunk like she used to do and the parents are reaching for Dr. Spock at this stage they are so horrified and they don’t know how they’re going to get this poor child back on track.  But then that night when they’re all asleep they hear a strange noise and mom elephant is terrified and dad elephant is terrified by this little visitor, it was a mouse, but Nellie isn’t terrified, she’s well on top of the situation (laughter).  She takes the mouse outside and then she comes in and she gives those irresistible elephant eyes and says the cat taught me how to do that, can he stay? And of course he can and they make friends. So I finished that story myself.

Anyway that’s Neilín agus an Cat, and the lovely thing about this work is that well I believe that, you know, in time to come I think there will be children who will look back on those books and will have a real kind of a, you know, special memory of those books and I think that’s really important work and I know I have four children myself and sadly they’re all beyond the picture book stage at this point but the other thing I really feel strongly about picture books is that there’s much more to a picture book than reading the book it’s actually this wonderful opportunity to bond with your child over a book and it’s a whole kind of a ritual at bed time.  I mean my eldest son Marcus is now 19, I remember there was one book that he was kind of fixated on for about 2 months, every night for about 2 months we had to read this book and he still remembers it (laughter).  This is another one we did with Mijade ‘Béiríní ag Troid’ about Anna.  For her birthday she gets a present of two little bears, two little teddies, but then they begin to fight over her so she has to figure that out.  And we also did one with another Belgian publisher but from the Dutch speaking area of Belgium and that was the Dutch version ‘Mauw En Mol Mol Is Jarig’ and it’s about this little character called Méig agus Cóilín, an lá breithe who was trying to figure out what sort of a birthday present she would get for her best friend.

The other thing we do in terms of translation in words is ... yeah, before I move on to that I’ll just show you these new ones and we have noticed as well that even though we were doing quite well in terms of picture books which would be generally 3 to 6 that there was a bit of a kind of a lull in terms of the amount of just the range of material that was available for children from 0 to 3 so this year we have kind of tackled that and we found a series in Quebec in French Canada which was called in French Caillou and in Irish Cathal.  And these are different because generally picture books and it’s the reason why a picture book would work internationally is that they’re generally about animal characters and they are written deliberately in that way.  The reason for that is that when you write something about animal characters you are immediately taking out all the kind of cultural references or references to a race or all those kind of things that would make a book possibly less attractive to be bought, for example, by a Chinese publisher or by a South African publisher.  But these are slightly different because they are definitely about human characters and they are just kind of very well done because even though they look very simple it’s very difficult to write a book that is as well targeted as these books.  This is one about Cathal, and this is little Cathal here, and it’s about his friend Liam coming to play with him and it’s about Cathal struggling with dealing with Liam playing with his toys and just kind of having to get it around his head that, you know, he has to share and I think it’s done very well.  I think the artwork is simple but I think it’s really stylishly done. This book has been hugely successful, this series.  There are ... I don’t know how many titles there are in this series but there are a lot and it is has sold in 40 countries worldwide so it’s a big success for a publisher from a relatively small base, I mean there are about 5 million French speakers in French Canada so it has a worldwide reach and I think it’s going to work very well for us.  We’re just launching them now this winter in Ireland and they have this sort of thing as well which is a kind of like a dictionary picture book, you know, first words book and also a nice features is that as well as seeing the pictures individually you can kind of relate them to the picture and so there’s a slight interaction.

There have been books that I initially thought would work or initially was kind of attracted to but when I looked at them in more detail I felt that they wouldn’t work in an Irish market and they are ... well that happens for a number of reasons but this book when I saw the cover and I’ll you’ll agree that that is quite a stunning cover and I saw that in Bologna and it’s a Korean book and I was just so curious like who is this girl, what has happened to her because it’s just I think that cover is just so full of character. So I was sent a copy of the book and I was sent a translation and when I went through the translation I felt that it was probably a book that would work very well in its kind of traditional context in the same way as the Children Of Lir, for example, is part of our culture. It’s a very dark story when you look at it objectively and there is very little kind of redemption or kind of hope in it but it’s kind of part of our culture and it’s a story that is kind of passed on but no more than this book I’m not sure that the Children Of Lir would travel very well when it’s taken out of it’s kind of original context. But anyway when I went through it I just found that it was a very dark story about this princess who was ... it’s a bit like Moses she was thrown out into the weeds and she had to kind of fend for herself and like a lot of kind of traditional stories that have evolved over hundreds of years it’s quite a kind of a rambling affair.  So I decided not to go for it.

I found this book as well, this is by an Italian publisher, and again the artwork I think the artwork is really important in terms of when you’re looking for a book because it’s the first thing that would draw your attention and it’s quite a kind of a poetic ... when you look at it it’s quite beautiful, aesthetically it’s a beautiful book, it’s quite a poetic kind of a story but I think it would be difficult, I think it would be hard to sell in Ireland to be honest and it’s pitched at a kind of an older age group and we don’t have much of that here in Ireland.  I mean that’s not a good reason not to do it but it has to work commercially at some sort of level and I think it would be difficult.  It’s kind of a love story and I think it would be difficult to sell it even though I would love maybe to work with the illustrator at some point but that’s a book I didn’t go ahead with.

The other thing we do which again is sort of just to kind of a reach a critical mass because I mean you see I just gave out those catalogues you go through the catalogue and you see we have built up since 2006 quite a few titles and that has been done mainly if not nearly all through translation but as well as doing this kind of fiction stuff which is supported by Clár na Gaeilge / Foras na Gaeilge we also do stuff which is a bit more educational but at the same time we’re trying to find stuff which we feel would work for families and would work in book shops and would work for the general community as well as being ... we don’t want to go kind of too schooly as it were.

This book was very successful for us this year and again it was shortlisted for the book of the year and it sold very well and this is a book about a garden and it’s about things that children can do in the garden and it’s kind of like a ... it’s nearly like a cookbook in a way, it kind of presents you with all sorts of projects, gives you information about food chain and about the interconnectedness of all living things in a very practical way and then it suggests things that you can do.  To make a little pond, for example, and all the various steps you can take.  It talks about the seasons in the garden and how to plant a tree, how to plant a natural hedge, how to make compost and so forth, and sunflowers.  So it’s a very practical interactive book and myself and my youngest daughter Róise have done a few of these projects in the garden and again it’s just a lovely thing to do and I know they’re using it at school because she had me pestered to finish a carton of milk because she had to bring it into school to make teach ui féileacáin. So it’s a very useful book but it has sold very well for us. So there’s that sort of thing.

These are kind of for younger children and they are about the circle of life and about various animals grow and the photography is beautiful, it’s beautifully illustrated, and it’s a lovely insight into the cycle of life and so forth.  So we have the panda and we have one about apes, ápaí, féileacán, butterfly and frog, frog.  And we have four more of those in the pipeline for next year.  This is a book ... I mean this is kind of in a way it’s very ... I really like this book because I think in a way that there is this kind of image of the Irish language that it’s very insular and very inward looking and very kind of nationalist Catholic, you know, play Irish music, play Hurley, that sort of thing and there’s actually a lot more than that and this book is about religions of the world.  It’s about introducing children to the religions of the world and through the eyes of children and this is like the last few books I’ve shown you was originated by Dorling Kindersley which is one of the biggest publishers in the world of non-fiction books and it goes through various religions and faiths from traditional beliefs and gives you maps of where the religions are, how many of them are there, for example.  I mean I was surprised to find out that whereas there are 1 billion Catholics in the world, not Christians Catholics, that there are only 5 million Jews.  I was quite surprised to find that out.  There’s Hinduism and again it introduces the material from the point of view of a child who explains, you know, what’s going on in her life and so forth.  I remember I showed it to my son who is 11, well he’s just 12 now, and it’s an area he’s very interested in himself but I remember he said “tá rudaí ag eiteann liom chomh haisteach agus tá meas acu faoi na rudaí ... a bhfuil tá sé sin chomh haisteach céanna” which means the things they believe in are so strange and if they heard about the things that we believe in they’d think they were strange which I thought was a great comment.  It’s about Buddhism and so forth.  It was very interesting to work on this book because in a way we were kind of really at the coalface of kind of stretching the kind of borders, the outer borders of the Irish language, we had to work with the Coiste Tearmaíochta the Terminology Committee of the Department of Education because there were certain words that there was no Irish for but there’s a lovely glossary at the end so you can ... Martin Luther did the same thing with the German language didn’t he?  He invented words.  So there’s Sikhs and so forth and I translated this book myself and I just learned so much from it, I really did.  So that’s that one.

We did another big one this year as well, it’s a history of visual arts from the cave paintings of Lascaux in France, that’s where it starts right through the whole story of art right through to Damien Hirst and it’s actually a very inclusive book because it includes things like aboriginal art and all sorts so it’s not just Western art it’s quite wide and again we have a nice big glossary.  So those are the more ... they are kind of slightly more even kind of slightly  more educational books.  This book in English when it was originated by Dorling Kindersley was called the Children’s Book of Art but I took out the world children in the title because I really felt that there was loads of adult Irish speakers would be interested in this book.  That it did definitely have a crossover theme and that’s the kind of feedback we’re getting, people are very taken with it.

 

So the final thing I want to say is what Sinead mentioned at the beginning of the talk is that what we are trying to do now with Futa Fata is to kind of go to the next level and that is to see if we could begin to originate books and we’re starting in the area of picture book and if we could originate books here in Ireland, work with Irish writers, Irish language writers and Irish illustrators, and originate those and develop them here in Ireland and then bring them to the international market.  And that’s what we’ve done this year for the first time and we have more in the pipeline for next year and we did this in an unusual way because I felt that getting the story right is key in a picture book.  If the story is strong and if it works well, the story is kind of like a little engine, if it works well and everything is kind of, all the pistons are kind of working in the right order it’s going to really work as a piece.  So what I did was I had worked in the past in children’s animation and television animation and I had worked quite extensively with a woman called Barbara Slade who is from Los Angeles and writes mainly in animation and she’s written like feature films based on the Winnie the Pooh character for Disney, for example, she created the television series of books called Angelina Ballerina so she’s very experienced and she does a lot of teaching and I met her actually through a course that was run about writing for animation and we’ve become very friendly.  So I got her to come and we advertised that we were going to have this workshop and we were looking for six writers and well I’d say nearly twenty people applied and they had to apply with story ideas and we went through the story ideas and we picked six people and from those six people then we developed the stories in the workshop, jointly – myself and Barbara, it was a bilingual workshop which we did in Connemara.  So between the two of us we developed the stories and then we published three this year and we brought them to Frankfurt and so far I have to say the results are very encouraging.  We will soon be signing a contract with a publisher in Beijing to publish this book which is a new original Futa Fata picture book in Chinese it is written by Bridget Bhreathnach from Rosmuc and maybe the first time a Rosmuc writer has been published in Chinese.  We’re proud of that.  And also this morning I got a very strong email of interest in another one of our titles from a publisher who publishes in Afrikaans in South Africa and we are also going to be publishing three of the new feature books that we’ve done this year in Scots Gaelic so that’s an interesting geographical spread if nothing else.  (Laughter)  So we hope to work and we hope to kind of build on that for the next few years I think that we’re going to be originating our own picture books.  We’ve identified some fiction for older children that we will be translating and we have identified a series originally published in French by Bayard who are a very well respected publishing house in France and we are going to kind of work on that basis and I think it’s a very good way for us to work because when you translate a book and when you put it out there and when you kind of get feedback from it you really get a really good picture of the genre and of the age group and so forth, you get a really kind of good feel for it and we’re going to do that with various different age groups in different segments.  We’ll publish, we’ll translate, we’ll publish the translations and we’ll work with children because the important thing about this and one of the nicest parts of it is actually getting out there and reading the stories for children and working with children in that kind of group basis and just getting their reaction.  So it started with music and sort of that’s the journey it has taken since 2006 and that’s all I have to say.

So we want to thank you very much Tadhg.  (Clapping)

 

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