“Fantômes zinzins et compagnie” now speaks Khmer: Cléant-Main, Miauline and Ballerine land in Cambodia

After Thai, Chinese, Malay and Indonesian, the mischievous little band of ghosts dreamed up by Editions Gope now speaks Khmer. A new step for this bilingual children’s collection that turns language learning into a game — and this time, it speaks directly to young Cambodian readers.

Cover of the French-Khmer edition — © Éditions Gope

A collection that travels across Southeast Asia

Since 2009, Editions Gope, an independent publishing house dedicated to books set in or inspired by Southeast Asia, has built its identity on translation and bilingualism to keep the French language alive across the region. “Fantômes zinzins et compagnie” first appeared in a French-Thai edition in spring 2025, before being adapted into French-Malay, French-Chinese and then French-Indonesian versions. The French-Khmer edition, released this summer, completes this family of translations and, for the first time, brings these playful ghosts back to the very land that inspired them most directly: Cambodia.

Three mischievous spirits, plenty of warmth

Written by Jean Maury and illustrated by Sketchman Boris, the book gathers three short stories built around a family of ghosts as clumsy as they are endearing. Cléant-Main always has a trick up his sleeve, Miauline knows how to talk to animals, and Ballerine simply cannot stop dancing from morning to night. Together, this playful trio delights in disrupting everyday life: misplaced keys, cats meowing in the dead of night, dead leaves swirling up for no reason at all. Small everyday mysteries that young readers are invited to solve.

A Khmer translation carried by a local team

The Khmer text was translated by Pikol Sieng, with the collaboration of Etienne Moeng and David Roncin — the latter already familiar to Gope’s readers for his Cambodian novel “La fugitive de Battambang.” The format stays true to the previous editions: 70 colour pages, 13.7 x 19.5 cm, designed as much for shared family reading as for classroom learning, whether in French or in Khmer.

A bridge between languages and cultures

Beyond the stories themselves, it is the collection’s deeper purpose that stands out here: giving French and Khmer communities a shared, playful tool to learn one language through the other. A mission that has guided Gope’s editorial line for more than fifteen years — introducing Cambodia, and Southeast Asia more broadly, through books.

“Fantômes zinzins et compagnie,” French-Khmer edition, is available for purchase on the Editions Gope website (book page on gope-editions.fr), as well as in bookshops.