Credit (pictures): Amarin Publishing
A new picture book I translated has just been published and reviewed by one of the most famous/influential book reviewers in Thailand 😊 (Not me though lol)
As simple as it is, this book is very challenging to translate from English to Thai because of the word: "-ish".
That's right, the title itself and all the "-ish" words throughout the story until the very end. How fun!
It is quite convenient to use "-ish" in the original language as it can be attached to both nouns and adjectives. On the contrary, Thai language does not have that kind of suffix (except for words that derive from Pali-Sansakrit, which are understandably for more mature readers).
Instead, we can use many words to convey the "-ish" expression. Each comes with different tones: supportive, judgy, teasing, or somewhat neutral. So some words may sound right in one situation but not in the other. And some just don't work because we cannot make them look good on the cover due to their length!
We had to try 3-4 translation options to find the fittest one, and the end result is really satisfying 😌
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