KOHALA COAST — For linguist Keao NeSmith, translating literature isn’t just about going line-by-line through a book and translating the words.

“It’s the thought in the (author’s) head that needs to be translated,” he said. “It’s not a matter of translating the words; it’s an issue of translating the culture.”

NeSmith presented a panel Saturday at the HawaiiCon Science Fiction Convention about his efforts to translate popular literature into Hawaiian as well as a recent effort to translate Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s classic French novella “Le Petit Prince” (The Little Prince) into Hawaiian Pidgin. More.

See: West Hawaii Today

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