Today is World Storytelling Day, which means it is time for our annual storytelling contest: Retell, Remix, Rejoice - this time, with a twist! This year’s edition of Retell, Remix, Rejoice will focus on translating some wonderful storybooks on StoryWeaver, and adding to the pool of multilingual children’s literature.

Translate storybooks and share the joy of reading in 10 languages

At StoryWeaver, we believe that every child deserves joyful storybooks in her own language. In order to work towards this, Retell, Remix, Rejoice 2020 will nurture the translator community, to find and encourage translation talent in 10 languages: Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi, Gondi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Vietnamese.

If you are fluent in one or more of these languages, just fill in the participation form (link below), and we shall assign you a storybook. All you have to do is translate the book into the shortlisted language and submit it!

This year’s prize

The winner(s) will have a one-on-one mentoring and feedback session with an editorial expert. The winner(s) will also receive a print copy of the translated book (only for participants based in India), and the winning translation will be published and highlighted as a Recommended title on StoryWeaver.

How to enter

Enter the Retell, Remix, Rejoice 2020 contest here: https://bit.ly/RRR_Contest

Guidelines for submission

1. The contest will run from March 20, 2020 to May 20, 2020

2. All translations submitted must be your own work.

3. Translations must be in Bahasa Indonesia, Hindi, Gondi, Gujarati, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, or Vietnamese.

4. Participants must be over the age of 18 to participate.

5. By submitting your work to Retell, Remix and Rejoice 2020, you are agreeing to a CC-BY 4.0 license being applied to it. This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation. To know more about CC-BY 4.0, click here.

6. Terms and conditions apply. All final decisions rest with Pratham Books’ StoryWeaver. For more read here.  

comments (8)

---

Writer, translator, editor and poet Agnes N.S. Nyendwa has always been best friends with books — right from her days as a warehouse clerk where she read up all the books in stock to her rise to an editor with publishing houses. Along the way, she was always passionate about her mother tongue Chinyanja, a language belonging to the Bantu language system of Africa and spoken widely across Malawi, Zambia and the Mozambique. Agnes is translating books on the StoryWeaver platform to her mother tongue and tells us in an email interview on why children need to read more stories in Chinyanja in her country and how she plans to make sure that more of them have access to these books.

Tell us a bit about yourself? 

I am a writer, translator, editor, poet (English and Chinyanja), president of the Zambia Women Writers Association and Vice chairman of the National Arts Council, and have been in publishing circles since 1994. I started off as a Warehousing clerk being the first employee to have been engaged in that position at Macmillan Publishers Zambia Limited. I studied Purchasing and Supply (CIPS) and emerged as best student in the field. In my job as a warehouse clerk, I became friends with a bunch of books which I took time to read and enjoy. I cultivated the culture of reading each and every book that was in the warehouse. I later knew each book by its content and what to present if anyone wanted to buy any book in any field. I made it a point after that to read any new title as it came.

Due to the immense interest that I had in books, I was promoted to be Assistant Editor when the Zambia curriculum transitioned into a new one. My first assignment was to handle local languages because the whole project was a challenge. I managed to have the project take off and in the process I was seconded for an in-house training at Oxford Macmillan Education in the UK, which later catapulted me to be an Editor of the organisation back home. 

What is your personal relationship to Chinyanja and to translation?

Apart from learning the language at school, Chinyanja/Chichewa is actually my mother’s language. As it is truly my mother’s tongue – my parents (my mother being a teacher by profession) made sure we honed the skill of speaking and writing it. They would not allow us to mix any other language when speaking with them, let alone writing to them. We were encouraged to read Chinyanja/Chichewa books, which I certainly do even now. This made us know the language without measure. Our home was our training ground for the local language where neighbours would be amazed at how we spoke it even when we grew up in a low density area where only people with high education lived. Friends would laugh at our tongue because sometimes they would request us to interpret the words we spoke. 

Later in life I still had a challenge convincing my husband that the words I spoke were actual Chinyanja/Chichewa. He thought that as a family we had developed a language that we alone would understand not until I bought a dictionary from a bookstore in Malawi. He took time to refer to it on every word that he thought was specific to my family. He was amazed to have found the very words in the dictionary. 

That is the power of teaching a child her mother tongue. It is easy for me to understand other languages because I can relate them to my own. I now thank my parents for imparting that priceless skill to me. I look at myself as one of those who is open to learning and embraces criticisms when it comes to the local languages. I have written and translated a number of books that are currently being read in schools.

You have been translating STEM stories. Describe the process to us. Would this process be different for a joyful picture book?

The process is not easy when you are just starting as a translator of STEM books. The process is quite challenging because of the absence of indigenous terminologies for certain concepts and words in general. STEM books have a lot of these non-indigenous terms. But by using the meaning approach and transliteration, the challenge is quite eased. I actually enjoy translating them because I get to understand and impart the terms in a way that are simple to grasp. 

I don’t find picture books to be any different from other story books because each book presents its own challenges, some may be grammatical or orthographical but rising to the challenge is what makes translating any book unique and adventurous. 

How do you plan to take the Chinyanja stories to the children?

In our society, doing a venture totally free can be quite challenging because the conveyor of the message needs finances to operate. I would love to have every child who is stationed in a Chinyanja belt to get hold of these wonderful stories. It is a fact that a bigger chunk of my country cannot access internet which can be a transmission port for these books. I need them printed in hard copies so that they are distributed for children to have and read wherever they are, with friends and family. 

My plan is to raise funds that can allow me to print and probably sell at a nominal price and for them to be spread where their relevance is. If I can find funds that can allow me to print and transport the books, I don’t think there will be any need to sell them but to distribute them to libraries and have them approved for use in schools. For those who are able to browse on the internet, sending the link to people I know and other official arts and educational platforms is helping to spread the books. I have actually started sending the link and people are reading them. 

What do you usually read? Which language do you prefer to read in? 

Yes I do read quite a lot. A good story is what prompts my language of preference.  I do read in Chinyanja and English as well as other Zambian languages that I have quite a considerable amount of knowledge.

A glimpse of the stories Agnes is translating to Chinyanja on StoryWeaver. You can read these stories here.

Thank you Agnes! May your tribe increase!

Write in to us at [email protected] if you want us to add your native language.

Be the first to comment.

---

The SNS Foundation leads community-focused initiatives with the objective of building a socially-equitable and environmentally-sustainable society. Through the appointment of over 100 additional teachers in 80+ partner government schools, learnings gaps among academically weak students are being bridged. Their programmes have impacted over 5,000 children. The Foundation is working towards building a hyperlocal library of 100 Marwari books with efforts of educators from the Marwari community. Marwari is a developing language spoken in Rajasthan (the largest state in India). With 20 million or so speakers (ce. 2001), it is one of the largest varieties of Rajasthani. However, Marwari currently has no official status as a language of education and government and therefore, lacks resources in the language. Vijay Tanwar, Manager JAWAI Operations, SNS Foundation tells us in his own words how he and his team are working towards creating a library of Marwari books against all odds. 

एस एन एस फाउंडेशन ने StoryWeaver Freedom to Read! के अभियान पर आवेदन किया था! हमें यह जानकर बेहद खुशी हुई कि इस अभियान के लिए एस एन एस फाउंडेशन को चुना गया है तथा हमारे शिक्षकों को 21 फरवरी, 2019 अंतर्राष्ट्रीय मातृभाषा दिवस पर मारवाड़ी भाषा में बच्चों के लिए गुणवत्ता कहानियों की एक डिजिटल लाइब्रेरी का हिस्सा बनने के लिए एक अवसर मिला।

मारवाड़ी एक राजस्थानी भाषा है जो भारतीय राज्य राजस्थान में बोली जाती है। जब मैंने राजस्थान में अपने सहयोगी कर्मचारियों के साथ इस अवसर को साझा किया था तो वे सभी खुश हुए और हिंदी भाषा से मारवाड़ी भाषा में कहानियों का अनुवाद करने के लिए उत्सुकता से आगे आने के लिए तैयार हुए । इन कर्मचारियों को मूल रूप से प्रथम से मध्यम वर्ग के बीच के काल में रेमेडियल छात्रों की नींव रखने के लिए शिक्षक के रूप में नियुक्त किया गया है।

“मारवाड़ी कहानियां ” शब्द सुनकर ख़ास तौर से मुझे काफी अच्छा लगा और जब मैंने टीचर्स से पुछा की क्या कभी आपने मारवाड़ी कहानियों पढ़ी हैं तो सभी का उत्तर एक ही था "नहीं "। अब यह जान कर खुशी दुगनी हो गई की अब जिन १३ सरकारी स्कूलों में एस एन एस फॉउंडेशन काम कर रही है उन स्कूलों के बच्चों को इन मारवाड़ी कहानियों को पढ़ाने का मौका मिलेगा । इन कहानियों को पढ़कर बच्चों का मनोरंजन तो होगा ही पर इसके साथ साथ उनका ज्ञान भी बढ़ेगा।

टीचर्स को हिंदी कहानियों को मारवाड़ी (भाषा) कहानियों में अनुवाद करने में जयादा वक़्त नहीं लगा। कुल ९ टीचर्स व एक फील्ड कोऑर्डिनेटर को १० / १० हिंदी की कहानियों को मारवाड़ी (भाषा) में अनुवाद करने की ज़िम्मेदारी सौंपी गयी और अनुवाद टीम ने इस ज़िम्मेदारी को बख़ूबी निभाया और दिए हुए वक़्त से पहले काम पूरा किया । अब असली चुनौती से टीम को मुक़ाबला करना था जब उनको यह बताया गया की १०० मारवाड़ी कहानिओं का अनुवाद जो आप सभी ने किया है उसकी सॉफ्ट कॉपी जमा होनी है । यह सुनकर सभी टीचर्स हाँके बांके रह गये क्योंकि जहाँ फाउंडेशन काम कर रही है वो छेत्र एक दम शहर से दूर का छेत्र है। इंटरनेट की सुविधा बहुत कम है, कंप्यूटर पर काम करने वाले लोग बहुत कम है कुल मिलकर सुविधा ठीक नहीं है।

अब जा कर यह अहसास हुआ की जो काम बहुत कम समय में हुआ था यानी कहानियों का अनुवाद अब इस से १० गुणा समय लगने वाला हैं क्योंकि परिस्थिति अनुकूल नहीं है।  जैसे तैसे काम को अंजाम देने के लिए फिर से टीम जुट गई, अब समय का पता ही नहीं चल रहा था कि कैसे समय भागा जा रहा है और प्रकाशन की तारिक़ नज़दीक आ रही है । फिर बढ़ी मुश्किल से लोगों से सम्पर्क साधा, लोगों को मनाया तब जा कर कुछ कुछ कहानियों को सॉफ्ट कॉपी में करने का लोगों ने आश्वासन दिया। परिस्थिति कुछ सुधरी ही थी के एक और ज़ोर का झटका धीरे से लगा। डी टी पी ऑपरेटर ने टाइपिंग करने से मना कर दिया क्योंकि उसकी दुकान डिस्टर्ब हो रही थी और बिजली का लगातार कई घंटो तक न आना काम को पूरा करने में बहुत बड़ी रुकावट बनता जा रहा था ।बहरहाल टीम का मनोबल टूटने नहीं दिया और टीम काम करती गयी और कहानियों की सॉफ्ट कॉपी बनती गयी और एक नया अनुभव का असहसास मुझको और टीम को हुआ ।

Powerhouse translators of SNS Foundation

अब मारवाड़ी काहियाँ प्रकाशित होंगी और पुरे राजस्थान राज्य के बच्चे इन कहानियों का लुपत उठाएंगे। टीचर्स इन कहिनोयों के प्रिंटआउट निकल कर बच्चो के साथ मिलकर कहनियाँ  पढेंगे । इन कहानियों को लगभग १५०० सरकारी  स्कुल के स्टूडेंट्स पढेंगे और हम सब का प्रयास सफल होगा।

SOIL Team publishes the Marwari stories on StoryWeaver

अंत में मैं सभी टीचर्स का धन्यवाद करता हूँ की उन्होंने अपना कीमती वक़्त निकला और इस मिशन को सफल  बनाने में सहयोग दिया। सॉइल टीम के स्टूडेंट्स राहुल वर्मा, रूपम दत्ता, अवनीश कुमार , निवेधा प्रियदर्शिनी व थमरईसेल्वी मोहनराज जिन्होंने मारवाड़ी कहानियों को प्राकशित करने में  में एस एन एस फाउंडेशन को सहयोग दिया।

मैं एस एन एस फाउंडेशन की हेड ऑपरेशन्स दमयंती भौमिक जी का भी तेह दिल से धन्यवाद करता हु की उन्होंने मुझे इस टीम का हिस्सा बनने का  मौका दिया. अनुवादक टीम के नाम: दुरपाल सिंह, हीर सिंह,  दिनेश कुमार, भूपेंद्र सिंह राणावत, गोविन्द  कुमार, सजल कँवर , सुरेश गर्ग, प्रदीप सिंह, विपुल सिंह, सोनिका गेहलोत  और मादाराम .

 

You can read the Marwari stories translated by SNS Foundation here. 

Be the first to comment.

---