In the spring of 2024, the Bologna Children’s Bookfair asked CEATL to join in a new collective project: a video programme of literary translators reading out the UN Convention on the Rights of a Child (https://fairtales NULL.bolognachildrensbookfair NULL.com/en/focus/childrens-rights-in-20-languages/13880 NULL.html). The initiative is part of a partnership between BCBF and CEATL that, since 2022, has promoted best practice in literary translation and copyright.

(https://fairtales NULL.bolognachildrensbookfair NULL.com/en/focus/childrens-rights-in-20-languages/13880 NULL.html)

“The Convention is one of those texts we should read aloud over and over, to remind us what it means to be a child and what we, as adults, should always do: respect children and childhood. Now more than ever, with conflicts and migration phenomena the world over, children are victims of wars, natural disasters, malnutrition and diseases, terrible forms of violence, exploitation and abuse, or do not have access to quality education. The Convention explains who children are, their rights, and governments’ responsibilities. All the rights are connected to one another, they are all equally important and they cannot be taken away from children.

When BCBF invited CEATL members – in turn extending the call to FIT – to read the articles of the Convention aloud in their different languages, the translators’ reply to the call was a passionate one. They made videos from their home offices or out of doors, in a Berlin playground, or with Lego and toys in a toy library in the Netherlands, or reading the Convention to their own child in Zagreb.

This chorus of translators’ voices is powerful. Listen to them. Listen to the music of their languages. Every language has its own sound, its own rhythm, its own syntax, its own alphabet, its own symbols. There are languages we are more familiar with and others we might have never heard. Every language is a universe of literatures and cultures.”