Martine (character)



Martine is the title character in a series of books for children originally written in French by the Belgians Marcel Marlier and Gilbert Delahaye and published by Casterman. 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.

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

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: Debbie
 * Arabic as published in Libanon: Touline تولين
 * British English: Martine/Mary (Emma in video games Nintendo)
 * 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
 * Hebrew: Miriam מירי
 * Hungarian: Márti
 * Irish language: Máirín
 * Icelandic: Margrét
 * Indonesian: Tini
 * Italian: Martita, Cristina
 * Japanese: Martine マルチ
 * Lithuanian: Elenyté
 * Macedonian: Mapuka
 * 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