As a lifelong bookworm, World Book Day is probably right up near the top of my list of days to celebrate (preferably from the comfort of an armchair, with a cup of tea and, of course, a book), and I’m especially lucky, because it’s actually celebrated twice in the UK!
World Book Day was actually established by UNESCO as 23 April, chosen to mark the anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare and prominent Spanish chronicler Inca Garcilaso de la Vega.
However, in the UK we also celebrate the charity event called World Book Day on the first Thursday of March. This year, children around the country will be given a £1 book token courtesy of booksellers, who fully fund the cost of the tokens. A total of 15 million books will be available to entice children into bookshops and encourage them to choose something to read.
As a child growing up in the ‘70s and ‘80s, my access to books revolved around the library and our local Saturday market, which had a stall where you could trade in the book you’d finished for another you’d never read. This need for a steady stream of fiction has followed me into adulthood, except that now I live in a Spanish-speaking country and face the choice of buying expensive English-language books or reading in Spanish. And an e-book is just not an option for me – it’s got to be paper.
It’s an amazing feeling when you suddenly realise that you’re totally immersed in a novel not written in your mother tongue, and it opens up a whole new panorama of books that haven’t been translated into English. Such is the pleasure it gives me that when my children were younger, I used to buy them both the English and Spanish versions of Roald Dahl classics and Harry Potter… and although it does seem a bit much now, they used to love comparing the versions!
At Knockhundred we have a carefully selected team of linguists specialised in book translations. For more information on our professional book translation services, please get in touch. We look forward to hearing from you!
