She’s Here! Mafalda Arrives at Long Last! An Interview with Translator Frank Wynne, and Publisher Jill Schoolman

About ten years ago a family friend went to South America and came back with presents. For my daughter, he presented a t-shirt that looked something like this:

I was instantly charmed. Even more so when he explained to me that in a lot of Spanish-speaking countries, Mafalda is huge. Think Peanuts but imbued with late 60s/early 70s Argentinian politics. Still, it seemed so odd that I’d never encountered her before. If she truly was so influential, where were the translations?

Years later, I finally have my answer. On May 13, 2025, the first Mafalda volume (of five) will be released by Elsewhere Editions. And here’s some info on the series itself, from the publisher, which may answer some of your questions:

“Quino published Mafalda between 1964 and 1973 in Argentina. Not only was the series about a group of kids pranking each other, playing chess, and having philosophical conversations, Mafalda also critiqued censorship and police brutality as dictatorships spread throughout Latin America.

At the heart of it all is Mafalda herself: six years old, smart as a whip, and ever attentive to the absurdities of human life on earth. Her undeniable moxie has endeared her to readers not just in Argentina but also in Poland, Greece, Italy, France, Taiwan, and beyond. Larger-than-life statues of Mafalda have popped up in public spaces in Spain, Mexico, and Argentina.”

I had a chance to read the new Mafalda book and to my infinite relief it was everything that I’d hoped for and more. I’ll put some of the strips at the bottom of the post that I particularly enjoyed, but before that, let’s talk to the translator, Frank Wynne, as well as publisher Jill Schoolman, who acquired Mafalda in the first place, and get some answers.

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Betsy Bird: Frank, thank you so much for answering my questions today. You’ve translated a host of authors from the original Spanish over the years. How many of these were comics? And how familiar were you with Mafalda prior to this assignment? 

Frank Wynne: I began my career as a translator in comics… Having been variously a cinema projectionist and a radio announcer, I moved to Paris in 1984 and worked as a bookseller. It was there that I discovered bandes dessinées, or what we now call graphic novels, and it was there, too, that I first read Mafalda (in French, I would not learn Spanish for at least another decade). When I later moved to London, I became very involved in the British comic scene, working with Fleetway and Tundra on various titles, and later as editor of Deadline (whose contribution to world culture was Tank Girl by Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin), During that period I translated a lot of comics for a variety of publishers, including artists like Bilal, Mattotti, Édika and Tardi. And while I was editor of Deadline, I even published a handful of early Mafalda strips which I translated and lettered myself.

Mafalda was always profoundly important to me. Argentina has always had a large inventive comics community – from the nightmarish visions of Alberto Breccia and the seminal work of Solano López, but Mafalda was particularly important. While it owes a small debt to Charles Schultz’s Peanuts, it was revolutionary  (or should I say counter-revolutionary) in that Mafalda’s funny, jaundiced, cynical child’s-eye view did not confine itself to childhood subjects, but tackled major political shifts, from the Vietnam war, to the rise of Peronism, the skewed world economy and the encroachments on press and personal freedoms in Argentina and elsewhere. Quino could do this because he presented the natural bewilderment of a preternaturally intelligent girl observing the world around her. His work was and is funny, penetrating, insightful and thought-provoking

BB: Agreed. Jill, for your part, I’d love to know a little bit more about how Elsewhere Editions was able to bring out what is, as far as I can tell, the first English language translation of Mafalda. First, how did you know about Quino’s work?

Jill Schoolman: In 2011, I took part in an editors’ fellowship program in Buenos Aires. I encountered Quino’s Mafalda there. I fell in love right away (of course). I was amazed to learn that although the series was a phenomenon around the world (particularly in the Spanish-speaking world), no one had yet published it in English. We made an offer upon my return but it took quite a while for us to secure the English-language rights. But here we are! 

BB: I’m so glad you did! Can you give us a bit of a sense as to why we haven’t seen Mafalda in the States before? 

Jill: It’s a mystery to me!

BB: Absolutely. But I wonder about some of the other problems with bringing it here. Frank, what were some of the challenges with this particular translation? 

Frank: There are always  problems. Chief of these is that, like many comic artists. Quino loves a pun – and puns cannot be translated, they have to be reinvented, which means finding another expression that suits the context, and has words which lend themselves to punning. There are a number of other challenges – the early Mafalda strips were drawn in the 1960s, so here and there I have glossed to provide a little  context for contemporary readers; equally important, they assume a certain familiarity with Argentinian politics and society, which also required a little contextual tweaking. I’ve even introduced a joke of two of my own.

BB: Well, some of the translations work so well that I was curious as to how they even came to be. For example, in one of my favorites Mafalda notices that there’s a skin on her milk. She stares at it, then asks her mother, “Or don’t you worry about skin heads?”  It’s SUCH a perfect joke, but how did you translate it?

Frank: Because that’s not the joke in the original, that’s the joke I had to come up with to. In the Spanish Mafalda complains  about cream (nata) on top of her milk, and asks her mother whether she’s opposed to  control de natalidad (control of creaminess but the phrase control de natalidad actually means birth control)

BB: Oh, dear god, that’s awesome! Not to worry, folks. There are plenty of other birth control jokes that did make it in. So Jill, much along those lines, what was it about Mafalda that you felt would speak to American readers today?

Jill: Mafalda’s clear-eyed humanity is needed more than ever today. All of the realities around her that she questions and protests against—war, consumerism, political corruption, sexism—are still very much with us. We need her innocence, outrage, and dead-serious commitment to change this unacceptable world. She and her entourage are as lovable and giggle-inducing now as they were when they first appeared.

BB: Humor is considered subjective even when two people are speaking the same language. Jokes don’t always translate over national lines either. Frank, were you responsible for selecting which strips in this book would translate best, or does Mafalda naturally lend herself to an international appreciation of her humor? And how difficult is it to translate something and make it funny?

Frank: The plan is to translate all of Mafalda, from her first appearance. As a short-form newspaper strip, it lends itself well to being translated, and deals mostly with preoccupations common to children who are discovering the world in all its incomprehensible complexities…  there are a few panels here and there where jokes had to be reframed because translating them more literally for a contemporary audience risks seeming  offensive (whereas at the time, drawn as they were during the civil rights movement, Quino was skewering precisely the prejudices of the period). As to making them funny – once you have a voice inside your head, everything is easier, and reading and re-reading Mafalda over a period of more than 30 years, I can hear her voice inside my head, I know the kinds of things she would say, and the kinds of jokes should make, and the natural outrage she feels at the sheer unfairness of the world (and of soup)

BB: Oh yes! Mafalda’s infamous loathing of soup. Frank, will you be translating any other comic works in the future?

Frank: I hope so – as I said, comics and graphic novels are where I began my career in translation. It is a little rarer now for me to be offered comics to translate, though I still take on those that are offered!

BB: And finally, Jill, will we be seeing any more of Mafalda after the publication of this book?

Jill: Yes! This is the first of five volumes. The plan is to publish one a year.

BB: That’s the best news I’ve heard all day.

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I cannot give you all of Mafalda to sample, but if you click on the comics below, you can at least get a bit of a glimpse of what we’ve been talking about here.

Special thanks today to Frank and Jill for answering my questions and to Emma Raddatz and the folks at Elsewhere Editions for organizing all of this and sending me the interior spreads. And be sure to expect the first Mafalda volume on May 13th!

Filed under: Best Books, Best Books of 2025, Interviews