When I first read the book in its Czech translation (since I’d borrowed it from a nearby library), I was struck by one interesting change. In this book, Fink was referred to as “she” rather than “he.” I figured that DreamWorks had simply changed his gender in their movie for some reason, and that in the books, he was female.

It wasn’t until today, when I was jokingly searching online for pages from Chapter 23 to make sure the female version of Fink didn’t have a different name, that I noticed this sentence:

“Thanks, Roz. I… I owe you one.” The fox smiled, briefly, and then he limped away.

You ask: How is it possible that in the Czech translation it’s a female and in English a male? In Czech, we have two names for a fox depending on its gender.

liška - female fox

lišák - male fox

lišče - fox cub

The publishing house for Czech libraries and bookstores, Mladá fronta, automatically translated “fox” as female. So in our books, Fink is female, while in yours, he is male.

Now I have two pages of concept art for Fink in female form, because I thought that’s how it was in the books. Basically, I accidentally created a Wild Robot OC (maybe I’ll show it later ;-) ).

I WAS LIVING IN A ILUSION OF THE BAD TRANSLATE