Guri and Gura's Three Stories

Introduction
There are certain famous picture book series which fascinate both children and
adults. One of these is Guri and Gura (1967), a story about two mice, written by Rieko
Nakagawa and illustrated by her sister, Yuriko Yamawaki. It has been a bestselling picture
book loved by lots of people for a long time. I also love this picture book and read it over
and over again in childhood. In this book, Yamawaki’s picture of a big yellow pancake
cooked by the mice, who like cooking, looks so delicious that the recipe was actually
published.
The reason I chose this mouse story as my research is that I thought the English
translation was very interesting when I found it. Then I read the whole series of nine
books and compared the original and English translation. Of the entire series, Guri and
Gura’s Magical Friend (1992) was the most interesting, so I decided to use that book for
my research. Why this translation? How is the impression different? What is a “good”
translation for picture books? In this paper, I’ll try to back translate the English
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