The Czech author Barbora Klarova’s collection The Amazing Engineer’s Adventures has arrived in the Arabic library, bringing children seven stories that blend adventure with technology and make the search for solutions part of the pleasure of the tale.
Dar al-Zawi publishes the book in Tripoli
Dar al-Zawi Publishing in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, published the Arabic edition, while the book received immediate approval from Libya’s Ministry of Culture, which requested copies for its collection. The work belongs to a well-established Czech tradition of personifying inanimate objects, associated with the city of Prague and the classic works in puppetry and animation that it has contributed to children’s imaginations around the world.
Rather than presenting machines as mere gears and metal wires, Klarova gives them their own feelings, desires and dreams, in a world where the stories are complemented by cheerful illustrations equal to the text in their visual importance and their impact on a child’s awareness. The idea for The Amazing Engineer began with stories Klarova used to tell her daughter at bedtime, inspired by the child’s fascination with diggers and trains.
The mother would quickly write down ideas for adventures, around which a hero took shape who could understand the language of machines and deal with their problems. The stories then moved from the child’s bedroom to Czech radio, where they were broadcast on the popular children’s programme “Hayayaya”, before being collected into seven stories that seek to encourage children to think independently.
From bedtime stories to Czech radio
The bedtime stories thus became a literary project combining fantasy with a practical approach to problems, placing machines at the heart of events as characters with their own voices and temperaments. Klarova said she had not imagined, “even in her wildest dreams”, that her stories would cross into Arabic.
In a light-hearted spirit, she expressed her wish that she possessed a magical ability enabling her to learn Arabic in an instant, so that she could knock on the doors of Arab families and ask children whether they had “a machine at home” that needed the advice of her hero. The author addressed a message in Arabic to her young readers, saying: “Enjoy the stories above all, and perhaps one day one of you will become an amazing engineer”.
Klarova looks forward to young Arabic readers — received?
Translating the work posed challenges that went beyond the direct transfer of vocabulary. It was necessary to address the particularities of the Czech language and its cultural context, so that Arab children would read the story as if it had been written in Arabic, without losing its original identity. The most difficult aspect was conveying the imagery and the rhythm and music of the narrative, because a literal translation could strip Czech constructions of some of their magic.
The attention to vocal rhythm is evident at the opening of the story of the little locomotive that loves travelling through fields and valleys and carrying people on unforgettable journeys. The story describes the passengers’ happiness and admiration for it, before its cheerful voice echoes across the horizon: “Hurray! Choo choo! Hurray!”, until everyone who catches sight of it finds themselves shouting or whispering the same tune without realising it.
The story “The Angry Lift”, one of the seven tales, has a particular resonance for Arab readers. In it, the lift grows weary of the monotony of its life and loudly expresses its desire to travel and see distant lands. The Amazing Engineer fulfils its wish and takes it from Prague to Saudi Arabia.
There, the lift receives exceptional treatment: its blown-out lamp is repaired, its bars are painted gold, its buttons are replaced with precious stones, and it is polished until it becomes bright and gleaming. But its fascination with the heights and the visual opulence around it does not last, as it is overcome by a feeling it has never known before and discovers that it misses its homeland. Through this journey, the text and accompanying illustrations convey a meaning that brings together the desire for adventure, the experience of change and attachment to one’s homeland.
The idea is not presented separately from the events, but takes shape through the lift’s own experience, from its rebellion against its usual life and journey to a distant country to its realisation of the meaning of belonging. Dar al-Zawi Publishing adopted this approach because the work contains a form of fantasy capable of stimulating a child’s curiosity.
The Libyan Ministry of Culture’s approval and its request for copies of the book added institutional support to the experience and encouraged the continued translation of other works of Czech literature, thereby expanding the presence of Eastern European literature among young Arab readers.
