You Be You! Explaining Gender, Love & Family by Jon Branfman and illustrated by Julie Benbassat is now available in three new languages—Arabic, Chinese, and Spanish. These languages join the current line-up of 9 languages, plus English, that have translations. The book is also available in French, German, Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, and Turkish.

GSN spoke with Branfman about these translations and why they’re significant.

‘My first goal was to make “You Be You” accessible to as many people as possible, so I focused on the languages most widely spoken in the world, like Chinese, Arabic, and Spanish,’ Branfman says. He notes that translations are currently being worked on for other languages, including Russian, Hindi, Italian, Polish, and Hebrew.

Translation process

‘I found each translator through my own network of friends and colleagues. It was crucial to find translators who had not just the linguistic skills, but also the cultural competency to thoughtfully translate topics of gender, sexuality, and family into each language,’ he explains.

‘I’m very lucky that my education and life experiences have helped me to build a network of international friends—for example, by working at a Jewish summer camp or attending graduate school. In this way, I’ve been able to find translators for every language that I’ve aimed for.’

‘Through friends and friends-of-friends, I was able to find wonderful translators who are members of the language communities into which they translated “You Be You,” and who understand the importance of respecting each region’s own sexual- and gender-minority communities and the terms people prefer to use for themselves.’ Read more via Gay Star News