''Martine'' is the title character in a series of books for children originally written in French by the

Belgians Belgians ( ; ; ) are people identified with the Kingdom of Belgium, a federal state in Western Europe. As Belgium is a multinational state, this connection may be residential, legal, historical, or cultural rather than ethnic. The majority ...

Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye and published by

Casterman Casterman is a publisher of Franco-Belgian comics, specializing in comic books and children's literature. The company is based in Tournai, 90 kilometres southwest of the centre of Brussels, Belgium. History The company was founded in 1780 by Don ...

. The first album, ''Martine à la ferme'' (''Martine at the farm''), was published in 1954, followed by 59 other books, which have been translated into many different languages. The book series has sold about 100 million copies and is one of the best-selling book series. When the author Gilbert Delahaye died in 1997, Jean-Louis Marlier, the son of Marcel Marlier, continued to write the stories. The series ended in 2011 when the illustrator Marcel Marlier died at the age of 80. The last book is the 60th, ''Martine et le prince mystérieux'' (''Martine and the Mysterious Prince''), published in 2010. The albums continuing to be published. The character was renamed for different languages and markets. For examples, Martine was named "Emma" for English-speaking audiences in Europe for video games and "Debbie" for the U.S. market.

Other media

A 3D animated series directed by Claude Allix and produced by Les Armateurs, recounting the adventures of Martine and her friends, was launched on August 27, 2012 on M6, and in Quebec from September 15, 2012 on

Télé-Québec The (; ), branded as () (formerly known as ), is a Canadian French-language public educational television network in the province of Quebec. It is a provincial Crown corporation owned by the Government of Quebec. The network's main studios an ...

. Two video games were released based on the character: ''Emma at the Farm'' and ''Emma in the Mountains'', both for the

Nintendo DS The is a foldable handheld game console produced by Nintendo, released globally across 2004 and 2005. The DS, an initialism for "Developers' System" or "Dual Screen", introduced distinctive new features to handheld games: two LCD screens worki ...

handheld system. The games are based on the first and eighth books respectively. The games were announced for release in the U.S. in 2008.

Albums

Martine in other languages

When translating children's books, foreign/unknown names are usually replaced by popular names from the target language. For example, the French-speaking Martine changed to "Tiny" in Dutch. Martine appeared in almost 40 different languages, of which the ones below with their corresponding names. * Albanian: Zana * Alsatian: Martine *

American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lang ...

: Debbie *

Arabic Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...

as published in

Lebanon Lebanon, officially the Republic of Lebanon, is a country in the Levant region of West Asia. Situated at the crossroads of the Mediterranean Basin and the Arabian Peninsula, it is bordered by Syria to the north and east, Israel to the south ...

: Touline تولين *

British English British English is the set of Variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United Kingdom, especially Great Britain. More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to ...

: Martine/Mary (Emma in Nintendo video games) * Catalan: Martine, Mireia, Mariona * Croatian: Maja * Czech: Martinka * Chinese: Martina 玛蒂娜 * Danish: Mimi * Dutch: Tiny * German: Martina, Steffi, Petra * Finnish: Martine * French: Martine * Galician: Martina * Greek: Μαρίλη, Λιλίκα *

Hebrew Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...

: Miriam מירי * Hungarian: Márti *

Irish language Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...

: Máirín * Icelandic: Margrét * Indonesian: Tini * Italian: Martita, Cristina * Japanese: Martine マルチ * Lithuanian: Elenyté * Macedonian: Марика, Мартина * Malesian: Martini * Picard: Martine * Polish: Martynka * Portuguese: Anita * Romanian: Andreea * Russian: Маруся (Marusya, mɐˈrusʲə) * Serbian: Maja * Slovak: Martinka * Slovene: Marinka * Spanish: Martita, Carolina, Martina * Turkish: Ayşegül * Welsh: Siani * Swedish: Mimmi

References

Belgian children's books Female characters in literature Child characters in literature Characters in children's literature Literary characters introduced in 1954 Novels adapted into video games {{child-lit-char-stub