Oops! Funny things happen on the way to translation...

When a book is translated into a foreign language, the greatest challenge is to convey the style and the voice of the original. Professional translators labour long and hard to get that indefinable something that will lift the story above the bones of the translated manuscript and make it fly.

But let's not forget the significance of individual words! A literal translation may give the reader the wrong impression and induce hilarity or, perhaps worse, disbelief. In the French version of The Housemaid's Daughter published as Une Chanson pour Ada, we were searching for a word to describe a traditional headscarf or doek, an item worn by older, often rural, women. It would be inappropriate to call this headcovering a foulard (as in foulard en soie - a silk scarf) or an echarpe (also similarly associated) and so we had to dig further until we settled on a fichu, which describes a simpler kerchief, in this case to be knotted about the head.

When it came to recording the English audiobook, the "translation" required was to introduce the African phrases and colloquialisms to the narrator, a well known English actress. To help her with pronunciation, I wrote and then recorded a phonetic guide.
So... hadeda (an ibis with a raucous cry) is pronounced like blah - di - blah.
Voetsak! (an insulting way to shout Go! Get out!) became Foot-sack!
Groot Vis (the Great Fish River) became - tortuously - Ggh-roowt Fis, (as in fist).
Perhaps the most amusing - and we're trying to keep our spirits up here - came with a grasshopper known as a langasem (literally, long breath). This little creature chirps when rain is imminent and makes a single appearance in the book.
My guide to pronouncing its name is (and I apologise to those of a sensitive nature):
lung - arse - em.
Anything for a chuckle...
Stay safe.