The story of the Little Prince has been speaking to adults and children around the world for more than half a century. As of last week, the boy-philosopher can now speak to Cambodians, too.
The publication of “The Little Prince,” known to Cambodians as “Preah Angkmchah Toch,” marks one of the few times since 1975 that a work of Western fiction has been translated into Khmer.
Christophe Macquet, the coordinator of the French translation program at Royal University of Phnom Penh, whose students translated the book, said he felt “The Little Prince” was an excellent place to start.
It tells the story of a young boy, who, stranded alone on a remote planet, sets out to find answers to some questions that have been bothering him. In the course of his journey, the people the Little Prince encounters make the solution to his problems clear.
“I thought it was a suitable work to translate, because the philosophy is good,” Macquet said. “It’s a good message, and it’s quite funny too. It’s also a poetic book—Khmer people like to laugh, and they are very poetic.”
Macquet worked on the book with five students of French translation over a period of two years.
“It was a real cooperation,” he said.
The text was translated by the students and corrected in class, after which Macquet consulted Khmer-language writers and professors to check whether the prose sounded natural, or if it “sounded like a translation,” he said.
The publication of “Preah Angkmchah Toch” marks the 136th language “The Little Prince” has been translated into. With 50 million copies printed, the book is thought to be the world’s most widely distributed work of fiction. Three thousand copies have been printed in Khmer, priced at 6,500 riel (about $1.60).
“The Little Prince” was written by Antoine de Saint-Exupery in 1943. As well as being a writer, the Frenchman was a passionate aviator, and this love of escapism is clearly reflected in his most famous work.
Just one year after “The Little Prince” was published, Saint-Exupery’s aircraft was gunned out of the sky by German planes in World War II; this, for many, cemented the author’s status as hero.
At the launch of “The Little Prince” last week, Saint-Exupery’s great-nephew, Olivier D’Agnay, noted the book’s relevance to Cambodia.
“It’s a book about peace,” he said. “Right now, peace is very important for this region.”
Macquet said he was initially drawn to the “The Little Prince” because it is accessible on many levels. It can be read as both a simple children’s story and a philosophic allegory.
“I chose ‘The Little Prince’ because I thought it would be a very simple work to translate,” Macquet said. “But in fact it was very hard.”
Macquet said there were two major problems with accurately turning Saint-Exupery’s tale into a readable Khmer work.
“First, does ‘The Little Prince’ speak in the language of [Khmer] royalty? For me, this would be a misunderstanding of the work. In fact, he speaks very simply, so in the end we decided to use simple language,” Macquet said.
Another difficulty was deciding which of the Khmer language’s many second-person pronouns to use in the text. “Saint-Exupery plays with personal pronouns a lot, so we had a hard time choosing the right words,” he said.
Macquet took his idea of translating “The Little Prince” to the educational NGO Sipar, which obtained the copyright for the book relatively cheaply.
But the rights came with a strict set of stipulations. Heloise Tissot, a technical adviser at Sipar, oversaw the book’s layout. She explained why the celebrated, simplistic illustrations were not so simple to put on the page: “We could change very little about the design of the book—the layout, the size. Everything had to correspond to Saint-Exupery’s first edition,” Tissot said.
When the Cambodian design team at Sipar began on “The Little Prince,” Tissot said, little was known about the text or it’s importance.
“Now, they know some of the passages by heart,” Tissot said. “I think they’re very proud to have done it.”
