Language #29: Chinese!

Nancy Drew has FINALLY been published in Chinese - it's only the world's most spoken language, after all!  The first 6 titles from the Girl Detective series have been released so far and the publisher's name seems to be Children Fun Publishing.  Previously the only known books by Carolyn Keene in Chinese were a couple of titles from the defunct River Heights series of the 1980s.

The books are a nicely laminated paperback with quite a few black and white illustrations inside.  The illustration style is similar to the manga/anime look of the Japanese books, but all artwork is original. 

I believe the book to the left is "Lights, Camera" where Nancy is menaced by a mountain lion.  I think it's funny that something got lost in translation, and it's a Lion lion pictured instead!

Last Argentine artwork

Of the 10 titles published in dust jacket by Editorial Acme of Argentina, I have been able to collect only 9 of the books with jacket intact.  The 10th, El Rancho de las Sombras, has been elusive until today, when I finally found a copy on ebay of Argentina!  I had never even seen the artwork so I am super excited to finally be completing that set (I had the book but no DJ).  So here it is folks, the last Argentine DJ!

More Korean covers found!

I discovered a new format of Korean Nancy Drews today! It appears to be a spin-off of the Japanese Yomiuri Shimbun books which were produced late 1970's to mid 1980's.

The Korean title translates to Adventure of Lost Map, which could indicate that the original story is Missing Map. However, the recycled Japanese artwork is from Wooden Lady, so possibly that is the source book. So far I have found 2 stories (the other one may or may not be Blackwood Hall) in this format.

So it is looking like there may be several varieties of Korean Nancy Drews produced by a variety of publishers. This is similar to what happened in the Japanese market, where there are 8 or 9 publishers that I know of. Wonder how many of them were actually licensed.......

Elusive Korean Nancy

There in an entry in Worldcat.org for this book under the Carolyn Keene section, indicating that there is officially at least one Nancy Drew that was published in Korea. I was lucky to find a blurry image of the cover. The translation of the Korean title is "Secret Stairway" so it is probably The Hidden Staircase.

Russian bootlegs?

I have found the text of several Nancys translated into Russian and posted online. Some of the sites are sponsored by libraries, so I guess this is some kind of Project Gutenberg for Russian girls needing suitable detective fiction! Not sure how Simon & Schuster feels about this.... Some of the sites have even gone to the trouble of cobbling together some fake Russian covers to accompany the text. Unfortunately it does not appear that these have ever been published with paper and bindings, but the images are kinda neat.

Little Korean girls using Nancy Drew to learn English

Wonder & Learn has released some of the Crew Clue titles as aids to teach English to Korean girls. There are workbook pages included with the story, and all new artwork (cover and internals). So far books #1-4 have been produced.

A whole new language to add to the lexicon!

While at the annual Nancy Drew Sleuths convention I received an email from Austin Johnson, another series book enthusiast. He sent me a clue about the existence of some Nancy Drew books in Vietnamese. Further investigation led to the discovery of 2 Girl Detective titles which were translated into Vietnamese in 2009, plus the apparent existence of some earlier works from the classic series issued in the 1990s. The reason these had not been noticed by me previously is that the 1990s books used the French "Alice" name instead of Nancy Drew. This would sort of make sense since Vietnam was once part of the French colony Indochine.

I am attaching the image of one of the Girl Detective books - I have not been able to find an example of the older books as yet. I think I have found a source for the Vietnamese Girl Detective books as they continue to be in print. I'm so excited that I can now officially declare that Nancy Drew books have been translated into 28 languages!