The Phantom Tollbooth
The other day I was watching a documentary about the Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. For anyone who isn't aware of it, it's a classic children's book, where the majority of the characters and the events are created from taking common English idioms very literally. The wikipedia page tells me it's been translated into multiple languages (I found it on the spanish and french amazons for a start), which was surprising, seeing as the original relied so heavily on English puns for the very basics of the story. Has anyone read it in translation? What did the translators do- change as much as possible to fit idioms in the target language, or play it straight and lose the fun?