Back in 2016, I posted on Facebook about a Mongolian lady working in a school in Bangkok who asked me whether I would agree to have my book ‘The Chameleon Who Couldn’t Change Colour’ translated into Mongolian.
“Of course,” I said, “that would be wonderful, but you know it’s in rhyme, don’t you? Will that be a problem?”
“Not at all,” she said, “it’s very easy to rhyme in Mongolian.”
So that was that. I sent her the files with no text and a few months later, a couple of copies of Chameleon turned up duly translated. And apparently it’s now on sale in Ulaanbaatar.
Since that post, the Shark Guardian charity, for whom ‘Sharks Our Ocean Guardians’ was written, have had that little book translated into Thai, and more recently, a friend in Italy, Irene Bernacchi has made a wonderful translation of the same book into Italian — ‘Gli Squali Custodi dei Nostri Oceani’.
A German version is also in the pipeline and over the last few months, a Dutch friend in Phuket, Pim Hoogeveen, has made a great job of translating three of my other books: Cosmos the Curious Whale (Cosmos de Nieuwsgierige Walvis), Mischief at the Waterhole (Onrust bij de Waterplaats) and The Chameleon Who Couldn’t Change Colour (De Kameleon die niet van kleur kon veranderen).
While the Thai version of ‘Shark’ is only available through SharkGuardian.org, and the Mongolian version of Chameleon is only in Ulaanbaatar, the Dutch and Italian translations of my books are now available as paperbacks on Amazon.
And that’s not all, Irene in Italy is currently translating the second shark book, Jed’s Big Adventure, so watch this space. (I’m hoping there will be some more Dutch versions too . . .)