Mienie-Die-Poeh
Deur
A. A. Milne
Vertaal deur Gratia Hess
Tekeninge deur E. H. Shepard
Nasionale Boekhandel Beperk
Kaapstad – Boekhandel - Johannesburg
Winnie-the-Pooh in Afrikaans
A Translation of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh
Translated into Afrikaans by Gratia Hess
First published in 1952 in Johannesburg by the Capetown National Bookstore. Translation Copyright © 1952 by Gratia Hess

Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book in the world. Afrikaans is an Indo-European Language. Afrikaans is a language read and spoken by 18 to 24 million people in South Africa and Namibia, and to a lesser extent in Botswana and Zimbabwe.
Winnie-the-Pooh is less popular in Africa than it is in other countries because there are no bears in Africa. Winnie-the-Pooh is most popular in places where there are lots of bears such as Russia.
Afrikaans is a mixture of Dutch and several African languages including Bantu and Zulu. Indians and Malays who were brought here by the British have also made contributions to the language.

Africaans is the second most widely spoken language in South Africa, after English. It is spoken as the primary language by 22% of the population. It is taught in the schools of South Africa.
Africaans is considered to be the primary language of the “coloured” population. It is said that the coloured race got its start nine months after the first White man came ashore and saw the first Black woman.
Africaans is primarily a simplified version of Dutch. 90% of the vocabulary is derived from Dutch, with most the remainder coming from African languages.
When Columbus discovered America in 1492, he was searching for and believed he had discovered a route to India. He never realized he had found a new continent. That is the reason he called the people he found there “Indians”. He was not on a voyage
of discovery or conquest. He was on a business trip, hoping to find a shorter route to India, whose valuable spices and foods were worth more than their weight in gold. He wanted to reach the Spice Islands with their valuable products of nutmeg, mace and
cloves.
Bartolomeu Dias realized he could reach India the other way, going around Africa. He sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, reaching the Indian Ocean from the Atlantic, the first European known to have done so. He rounded South Africa and
reached the Eastern Cape of South Africa, but his crew mutinied and he was forced to turn back to Portugal. On his way back, he discovered the Cape of Good Hope in May 1488.
Back in Portugal, Dias organized a second expedition. He again reached South Africa but he died in a storm on 29 May 1500 near the Cape of Good Hope that he had named the Cape of Storms.
Following the discoveries of Bartolomeu Dias, the expedition of Vasco da Gama set sail from Lisbon on 8 July 1497. He knew where South Africa was, so he sailed directly across the open ocean instead of hugging the coastline. He made landfall and on 4
November 1497, on the African coast. He reached India on the Malabar Coast in the state of Karala in India on 20 May 1498.
With a trade route between Europe and India established, Cape Town became a regular pit and refueling stop for trips between Europe and India. Jan van Riebeeck established a trading post and naval victualing station at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Van
Riebeeck's objective was to secure a harbor of refuge for Dutch ships during the long voyages between Europe and Asia
In 1795 the British sent a fleet of nine warships to occupy the territory as a way to stop any potential French attempt under Napoleon to reach India. Control of the cape changed hands several times between the British and the Dutch until 1814 when the
Dutch government formally ceded sovereignty over the Cape to the British.
The Dutch had established farms in the area often with African wives and moved inland. The Dutch became known as the Boers. The British were seeking to establish control all the way around the world so that the sun would never set on the British Empire
and wanted to control Africa all the way up the Nile to Egypt. The British fought two wars against the Boers known as the Boer Wars. The Dutch defeated the British in the First Boer War, 1880–1881, but lost in the Second Boer War, 1899–1902.
Diamonds were discovered in South Africa in 1866. This led to the formation of De Beers Consolidated Mines which had a monopoly over the world's diamond market. In 1885, extremely rich gold reefs were discovered in Transvaal Territory. These discoveries
led to a tremendous diamond and gold rush, as thousands of prospectors came to South Africa to try to get the diamonds and the gold. Prostitutes came here too.
This translation of Winnie-the-Pooh follows the original book closely, but does add the translator's own minor variations. The purpose of this book is to help Afrikaans speakers learn English and to help English speakers learn Afrikaans. To have a
translation as close as possible to the original is the most useful. The name for Winnie-the-Pooh in Afrikaans is Poeh. The Rabbit is Hasie. Christopher Robin is Christof Robertus.
Ishi Press has reprinted translations of Winnie-the-Pooh into 30 languages thus far. We have published it in Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Danish, Dutch, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Korean,
Persian, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Turkish, Yiddish, Hindi, Urdu, Khowar, Kalasha and Latin. We have six more languages lined up, including Japanese and Latvian.
This translation into Afrikaans is part of project to translate Winnie-the-Pooh into other languages. The idea is children need to learn to read at an early age and the best way to teach them to read is to provide reading materials that they find
interesting. Children around the world laugh when they see Winnie-the-Pooh saying and doing silly things. Since Winnie-the-Pooh is the most popular children's book world-wide, translating this book into the different languages of the world will be
conducive to teaching children to read in those languages.
Translations are always difficult. A word in any language will almost never have exactly the same meaning in another language. For example, at the beginning of the English Language original of Winnie-the-Pooh, on the third page there is the following
sentence, “He came to a sandy bank and in the bank was a large hole.”
Now you may be wondering, “Was that because somebody has robbed the bank?” Of course, you know the answer. The bank has not been robbed. But if your translator is somebody not familiar with the banking system, he may not provide the proper
translation to this sentence.
We are not translating the entire book. We are only translating Chapter 2, which is the most interesting, most popular and shortest chapter. Winnie-the-Pooh is based on the most popular children's character in the world. Part of the reason for this is
Winnie-the-Pooh was based on an actual living bear in the London Zoo named Winnie. Christopher Robin is the name of a real person who was the son of the original author, A. A. Milne. The son had a teddy bear he liked to carry around with him he named
Winnie-the-Pooh.
Winnie-the-Pooh is perhaps unique for a children's book in that it is based on real people and historical events. Christopher Robin was a real person. As a child, he had a teddy bear he named “Winnie-the-Pooh”. The bear was named after a real bear in
the London Zoo named Winnie. Winnie had been found in the forest near Winnipeg, Canada. His owner had brought him to England and eventually had donated him to the London Zoo.
Because this book is about real people and events, this places the book in a different legal position than other children's books with cartoon characters such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck which are purely the inventions of their creators. The real
original Winnie-the-Pooh teddy bear is now on display at the New York Public Library Children's Room on 42nd Street at Fifth Avenue. Elvis cannot be copyrighted because Elvis was a real person, so anybody can write their own stories about Elvis, although
you cannot copy somebody else's story. This has helped spread the popularity of Winnie-the-Pooh.
We would like to hope that this little bear, Winnie-the-Pooh, can bring peace and unity to the languages of the region.
Sam Sloan
Bronx, New York
USA
October 7, 2017

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