Alex Hallatt 9/25/20 Alex Hallatt 9/25/20

How my kids books about bullying came to be translated into Basque

In 2015 we went to live in the Basque country to learn Spanish because it was a region of Spain where English wasn’t widely spoken. Our planned year turned into two and we learned a lot of Spanish and a tiny amount of Basque. It is a very difficult language to learn as it has no relation to any of the Latin languages (or any language anywhere). But what an amazing place and culture.

I adored the small town we lived in (Hondarribia) and collected my sketches of life there into a book, A Basque Diary.

Whilst we were living there I started work on my trilogy of books about bullying aimed at kids 8 to 12 years old: FAB (Friends Against Bullying) Club. I shared the book with my Intercambio Spanish/English learning group as the reading level was good for many of them. One of my friends in the group (Itziar) is a teacher and she shared it with another friend (Eneko) who spent a lot of time reading stories to children. Both thought that the book would work really well in Basque (bullying is also a problem for Basque schools) and they began working on a translation.

In 2017 we came home to New Zealand and Eneko sent the book and its 2018 sequel (FAB Club 2 - Friends Against Cyberbullying) to the Basque publisher, Elkar, who have bookstores all over the region.

After a little back and forth, Elkar signed up to publish the two existing books in Basque as well as the third one (FAB Club 3 - The Big Match) which I published this year. They have just released the first two and I was really excited when Itziar found them in one of Elkar’s bookshops in downtown Bilbao.

Elkar contacted me to ask me to record a promotional video for the second book. Cool!

In Basque.

I find even reading the language so hard. Which is why it took me nearly a week to get close to being able to pronounce the translation of the script I wrote. Here it is – I am sure anyone who can speak Basque will wince at my pronunciation, but I tried.

It has been a really rewarding experience working with the publisher and my Basque friends. My hope is that the book ends up in the hands of a lot of Basque children and that it helps them have a better time at school than I did between the ages of 8 and 12.