Pantilat

Yoav Pantilat
Writing 2
Vicky Ballmes
12/8/2015
WP3 Portfolio Edition
The ability to translate genres not only demonstrates a persons ability to understand the
conventions of multiple genres, it is a tool that all authors must be able to utilize. We often see
familiar books become movies, graphic novels, and childrens books; poems and speeches
become articles, op-eds and novels. For my first attempt at a genre translation I chose to start
with an online magazine article about Donald Trumps presidential campaign. I chose this genre
for its accessibility from the point of view of a student and because the topic interested me. The
article I wanted was easy to find for free and in a format that was easy to save and manipulate
when translating. However, I took an unconventional route when I chose to translate this article,
written for informed adults, into a childrens picture book, written for young kids learning to
read. I picked the genre of a childrens book because I had a vision for what the final translation
would look like, it is a genre that Iand most peopleare familiar with, and I thought it would
be funny to write a childrens book about Donald Trump. To convert this article into a childrens
book, it is necessary to distil the article to its defining features including narrative and tone; then
reference existing childrens books to build a framework of conventions regarding content and
design in order to create the most accurate and representative example of the childrens book
genre.
The article I began with is titled Is Running for President Donald Trumps Worst
Business Decision Yet? from the Atlantic Monthlys online publication. The article by David A.

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Graham discusses the financial hit Donald Trump has taken as a result of his distasteful remarks
about immigrants from Mexico. His rude words caused many of his business partners to sever
ties with him, drop his products from their stores, and cancel his projects. I chose this article
because it is about a relevant topicthe current presidential raceand it is a reasonable length.
Before I began to look at the conventions of the picture book I had to analyze the article
in order to determine what pieces I needed to preserve in my translation. Rather than looking at
the conventions of the magazine article genre, I focused on the specific literary choices of the
article I was translating. What I had to do was isolate the elements of narrative, tone, and
perspective that were integral to the message of the article so that I could preserve them in my
translation. The article took a clearly critical tone towards Donald Trump and it was necessary to
maintain this point of view in the picture book. I accomplished this in the way I depicted Donald
Trump as the rude billionaire. The other important piece of the article was the narrative. That
narrative showed the chronological cause and effect of Trump first making rude remarks, losing
business partners, and eventually losing money. Since a narrative arc is one of the few
conventions that these two genres share I felt it was necessary to carry that into my translation.
Once I knew what I wanted to take from the article I needed to figure out how to translate
those pieces into a childrens book. To do this I had to fully understand the conventions of a
childrens book along with the purpose of this genre. To do this I took Kerry Dirks advice from
her article Navigating Genres. Before writing my own childrens book I looked at existing
examples that I could reference. What Dirk suggests in her article is to identify the audience and
purpose of a genre and then use examples of texts that fall into the same category to use as a
reference for how to construct your own piece. As Dirk puts it Once we recognize a recurring
situation, a situations that we or others have responded to in the past, our response to that

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situation can be guided by past responses(252). The situation of my translation was addressing
children through picture books. In order to understand the conventions I would use I looked for
some examples to base my writing on.
In researching this genre I read dozens of childrens books from collections like Mother
Goose and authors like Dr. Seuss. Several conventions I found were common across all the
childrens books I referenced and so I used these as the framework for my translation. Some
were related to syntax and grammar and others related to content and structure. After analyzing
several books I settled on the conventions that I thought were most and representative of the
genre, specifically the word choice, rhyming scheme, narrative, and the inclusion of a virtuous
lesson.
Typically, childrens books use common and simple words to describe things. This
strategy is important seeing as young kids will not understand complicated terms. The purpose of
these books is to entertain the kids while also introducing them to reading and that task is too
complicated if there are too many words used outside of a childs vocabulary. Where the article
uses phrases like disparaging characterizations I describe, in my piece, people with words like
mean and nice; I describe relationships with words like friends rather than associates or
business partners.
The next convention I emulated was the use of rhyming. While not all childrens books
rhyme, the vast majority of books that rhyme are childrens books. Rhyming is a distinguishing
feature of childrens books and so I decided to use that convention in my translation. Each stanza
is 4 lines long and represents its own idea. The lines have an A B C B rhyming scheme, one that I
found used often in the books of Dr. Seuss for example.

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There were conventions related to the content of the childrens book as well. The vast
majority of childrens books tell a story. They tell a narrative with a main character and follow a
chronological sequence. Knowing this I turned the facts presented in the article and arranged
them into a story. In my book I first introduce the protagonist, Donald Trump, show him saying
mean things and then dealing with the consequences.
Not only do childrens books tell as story the large majority of these stories have some
moral or virtue they attempt to impart onto the reader. They have a clear good side and a bad side
and what the characters do and what happens to them illustrates some life lesson. For example, in
Dr. Seuss Green Eggs and Ham, the lesson is to try new things. In the Lorax the lesson is to
respect the environment over money and in How the Grinch Stole Christmas the message is to
love and include everyone. The way I applied this to my childrens book was by including in it a
life lesson. The article had a message that I simplified into a universal truth in my translation. In
the article the message is that trumps actions have hurt him financially and hurt his brand. Author
David A Graham sums this up when he says The thing about Trumps comments about
Mexicans and his clumsy attempts at clean-up since is that they dont just hurt him directly, in
the loss of earnings from the Miss USA contest or any of those ties and shirts; they also degrade
the value of his brand and reputation. The message of my translation is that people should treat
everybody with kindness and that being mean to others comes at a price, a message applicable to
the article but more universal. It is perfectly oversimplified for a young child and shows a clear
right and wrong situation to learn from.
It did not take me long to write the text for my translation however there are many other
aspects to a childrens book besides the text. Because children are just learning to read there is a
lot of information conveyed through the layout of the pages and the images that accompany the

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words. I had to make a lot of design choices when making my book. To do this I applied the
strategies of Michael J. Klein and Kristi L. Shackelford from their essay Beyond Black on
White: Document Design and Formatting in the writing classroom. When it comes to text
design they say An often overlooked element of design is the visual treatment of text itself. In
this definition of text, text does not include your word choice or the structure of your argument.
Instead, it refers to the look of the words o the page.(334). Writing the words to a childrens
book is not that difficult, however according to Klein and Shackelford that is only half of the
work to be done. We wouldnt really recognize a childrens book if the text was arranged in
twelve point Times New Roman with one inch margins. I thought about their suggestions on text
and type, images, and alignment when putting the book together.
To accomplish this, every aspect was consciously designed in a way that gave the
most clarity to the reader. For the text and type, Klein and Shackelford suggest thinking about
how the size, font, and spacing of the words affect the readability of the piece which led me to
use a large font would make it easier for the children to pick out individual words while reading
(334). Again I focused on clarity when it came to the illustrations, using large, simple images
from clip art and placing them in the center of the page. Finally I repeated this method by
showing one stanza per page and placing it in the center, a strategy that Klein and Shackelford
claim, increases readability by allowing the readers eye to return to a consistent location on
the page while reading.(337). These elements of design are important in a childrens book
because they support a learning reader in understanding the meaning of the text without being
distracting or confusing to a child.
It was interesting to see how the finished translation came out. At first I was not sure if I
could turn a nuanced and politically charged magazine article into a simplistic and educational

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book for children. The final result is a funny and ironic combination of sophisticated current
events in the familiar, but unusual considering the topic, genre of a picture book. This translation
allowed me to practice finding the important conventions of a genre while also distinguishing
them from the literary devices specific to an individual work. I became familiar with the
conventions of a childrens book but I also learned how to distil one genre to its most important
pieces and preserve them through translation.

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Works cited
Dirk, Kerry. Navigating Genres. Parlor Press. 2010. Print.
Klein, Michael J, Kristi L. Shackelford. Beyond Black on White: Document Design and
Formatting in the Writing Classroom. 2011. Print.
Seuss. Green Eggs and Ham. New York: Random House, 1960. Print.
Seuss. How the Grinch Stole Christmas. New York: Random House, 1985. Print.
Seuss. The Lorax. New York: Random House, 1971. Print.
Graham, David. "Is Running for President Donald Trump's Worst Business Decision Yet?" The
Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 2 July 2015. Web. 8 Dec. 2015.