Translating War and Migration in Children’s Literature

Mexique, el nombre del barco (2017) is a picture book for children written by María José Ferrada and illustrated by Ana Penyas (2017). It narrates the migration of 456 Spanish Republican children fleeing the Spanish Civil War aboard the ship Mexique. This article explores the book’s multimodal nature as an act of translation, addressing both the migrant experience and its historical context.Through poetry and illustrations inspired by historical photographs, the first part of the book translates the children's emotions and memories into a narrative in which objects such as the ship, the moon, and the suitcases serve as symbolic bridges connecting their past and present. The second part provides a verbal translation of the historical context, complementing the emotional and symbolic elements of the first. Drawing on the notion of translatio as a transportation of meaning, the framework of intersemiotic translation (Jakobson 1959) and refraction (Lefevere 1992), and Vidal Claramonte’s perspective on storytelling as a form of translation, we explore how visual and verbal elements adapt historical narratives for a contemporary audience. By engaging with multimodal, emotional and historical translation, Mexique, el nombre del barco conveys the complex experiences of migrant children, fostering empathy and solidarity with past and present migrations.