by Elita Ouk. Photographs by Wendy Rockett.

Elita is a consultant for The Asia Foundation in Cambodia and Wendy Rockett is the Foundation’s Books for Asia senior communications manager. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and not those of The Asia Foundation or its funders. This post was originally published in The Asia Foundation’s In Asia blog here.

On September 18, nearly 20 publishers, editors, writers, and young technologists, ready with pencils and laptops, filled a co-working space in Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, for the country’s first children’s e-book hackathon. The hackathon is part of Let’s Read! an Asia Foundation initiative that applies technology interventions to stimulate reading in developing Asian countries. By the end of the day, participants had created a series of engaging, original children’s content in electronic format, all in the Khmer language.

According to a 2015 Asia Foundation research study, 40 percent of Cambodian phone users own at least one smartphone, and a third of the population has access to the internet. Such increased access to technology is also opening up new opportunities for educational material to reach parents, teachers, and children, and helping to formulate a new way of publishing children’s content.

 

Hackathons have the potential to invigorate children’s book creation and distribution in Cambodia, where small amounts of children’s reading material are published every year. Shifting publishing from a linear process to a collaborative model lowers development and production costs and dramatically compresses the turnaround time. Photos by Wendy Rockett

Hackathon participants were divided into teams, each with a writer, illustrator, designer, and coder. An editor and children’s book experts from Room to Read guided the teams through the process, from conception to detailed storyboards and finished covers.

The teams spent most of the day refining the stories, with writers working closely with the editor to strengthen the narrative and sharpen the language, while illustrators continually refined storyboard drawings and cover art to make sure they were compelling to children.

 

For most of the writers and illustrators, the hackathon was the first time they had ever worked directly with each other in real time.

 

In 11 action-packed hours, the teams produced four stories that were further refined after the event: Big-Eyed Bee, the story of an adventurous and clever bee; Prach and Sathae, a tale of two boys who learn to resolve their differences; The Amazing Journey, the travels of a boy and girl with an intrepid alien; and The Storybook Princess, which captures the magic of storytime.

 

The Let’s Read! books will be freely available from the Ministry of Education’s Open Education Resource site, as well as through digital library apps such as Khmer LEARN for anyone to download, read, and adapt for their own use. The books will also be offered in e-pub and print-ready formats.

 

With the support of Smart Axiata, one of Cambodia’s leading telecom companies, the next hackathon in March 2017 will incubate even more publishing talent and further expand the quality and diversity of local children’s books.

Read more about Let’s Read!

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Pallavi Rao has done her MA in English and loves music, literature and painting. She is the daughter of well-known Kannada writer Vaidehi, and has worked on a compilation of talks by eminent theatre personality Sri B.V Karanth (edited by Sri Muralidhar Upadhya). Pallavi has been teaching PU students in several places and currently resides in Delhi. She has translated several storybooks to Kannada including The Night the Moon Went Missing and A Whistling Good Idea on StoryWeaver. 

Q: You carve out time for translating children’s books from a busy life. What do stories in translation bring to young readers?

Young readers unknowingly come to know the culture, way of life and language at a young age itself. I think it is very important to imbibe these qualities at a young age. 

Q: What is your personal relationship to language and/or translation?

Kannada being my mother tongue, I have read and listened to several great writers and thinkers in Kannada. I breathe my language and this helps me bring stories into Kannada.

Q: What is your take on translation? 

Translation is a very responsible task. You have to translate the story keeping its original flavour intact and at the same time giving it the flavor of the language it is translated into. One should have a grip on both the languages i.e., from which you are translating and the one to which it is being translated into.

Q: Translating certain stories must have required a lot of research, especially when it came to STEM-related terms and concepts. For example, stories like A Whistling Good Idea. How did you explore new objects and concepts? 

When I read a story to be translated, I dwell on it and begin thinking it in my language. It helps me to understand the story in local circumstances so that I can translate accordingly. While translating concept-oriented stories like ‘A Whistling Good Idea’, I felt it was such a nice way to make a child understand the concept in a playful manner. Difficult concepts are quite hard for children, but when the same concept is told through games, it becomes simple and hence is more understandable and easy for a child.

'A Whistling Good Idea', translated by Pallavi Rao

Q: You have contributed for us immensely. How has the StoryWeaver journey been? What is one big takeaway from this experience?

Overwhelming. By repeatedly wearing a child’s shoe while translating, it has made me more observant and my mind keeps weaving stories for children from whatever I observe around me!

Q: How do you feel when your story reaches the child?

If I can ignite the imagination of a child and add to the child’s vocabulary through my stories, nothing would be more satisfying. 

Q: What is your key driver in taking up translation of stories into Kannada? 

I have a very strong feeling towards my language. Children in big cities in my state rarely speak Kannada, which is very disturbing. Through these stories, if I can sow seed of love for the language of the land - that would drive me to translate more and more stories.

Q: How else do you think we can join hands to take more stories to more children in more languages?

India has abundant folk stories and poems for children in regional languages. They have to be made reachable to more children in other languages too. For example, in Kannada, we have stories of Panje Magesh Rao, Hoysala, Ullala Mangesh Rao, Ugrana Mangesh Rao, Rajaratnam and so on. Apart from translating stories from English to regional languages, I feel that we should also translate stories from regional languages to English and to other regional languages as well.

Q: When you have been given a story to translate, what is your process, and how long does it generally take?

I read the entire story two or three times, linger on the story and try to visualize the same while working on other chores. I try to keep the language simple, use more of sound words to make it more attractive and increase the vocabulary in children.

Q: What is the hardest thing about translating from English into Kannada? How do you navigate words or phrases that are tricky to translate?

Certain English concepts are not present in Kannada. For example, we don’t have a ‘cape’ in our costume. In such times we have to coin a word in Kannada and ensure that the image is translated successfully to the child.

Q: Do you have any advice for anyone interested in becoming a translator?

Keep the language as simple as possible and make it interesting for children by visualising the story yourself to get the best output.

Q: A book you'd like to recommend to other translators?

From the ones that I have translated it would be ‘A Whistling Good Idea’.

Q: Can you tell us anything about yourself and your job that would surprise us?

Cooking and painting interests me to a large extent. Experimenting techniques in both the fields are the same, I feel.

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Suganya from the StoryWeaver partnerships team, talks to Vandana Shah, COO, Sharana, a Pondicherry-based social and development organisation that works to address the critical educational needs of socio-economically disadvantaged children and communities in urban Pondicherry and its surrounding villages.

This year, Sharana used the StoryWeaver for a reading programme they ran as part of the summer camps at their centres in Pondicherry. 

Q.Tell us about yourself and your association with Sharana. What motivated you to work in children’s education and welfare space?

My name is Vandana Shah and I am the Chief Operating Officer in Sharana- an NGO based out of Pondicherry. Most of what I am today is because of the education in the ashram school at the Sri Aurobindo International Centre for Education till the age of 21 completing my bachelor’s degree.
I was always passionate about people, the villages and communities. I had the opportunity to volunteer in Sharana, a social organization, for six months before my Master's degree. I helped by doing odd jobs, teaching children English, translating French letters in English, and most fun of all- accompanying the children for a one-week long residential camp in Summer. That week of Summer Camp has had a great impact on me; it is probably what made me decide to look back towards Sharana 6 years later. 

After having completed my Master’s degree I worked in several fields; teaching languages as a teacher, coordinator at a Language institute, interpreter. In 2013, Sharana happened to fall into my lap, when I approached Mrs. Rajkala P., founder and president of the organization and since that moment in March 2013- 6 years have flown across, I have not seen the time pass and I am beginning to realize a more meaningful purpose in life. 
In my experience at Sharana, I am convinced that true and lasting change can only be brought through education and this is especially true of children from the streets and slums. If they want to come out of the vicious cycle of poverty and become independent and productive individuals, schooling is essential. We have seen children from the toughest backgrounds come out victorious against all odds, and our dedicated team of social workers has always been present in case any hurdle arises.
 
2. Do you like to read books? If yes, how important is introducing reading culture in children from their young age?
I love reading books, although I confess, I have not been able to read as much as I would have liked to in the past few years.
In today’s age, where there are screens everywhere, it is essential to introduce reading to the children. It’s a dying habit, it’s so rare to see children pick up a book and read, most of them read on screens, watch videos - it's indeed the digital age everywhere.
I owe too much to my teachers and friends who pushed me to read, without their push I would’ve never done it. And now it’s our turn, more than ever, to encourage the children to read and to live the joy of reading, of coming back home and running to finish a book, or eating while reading, or reading through the night because we can’t just close the book! And that moment when you finish a book, and just hold it for a brief moment in your hands. That feeling is priceless.

3. Tell us about your experience with the StoryWeaver Reading Programme and what kind of impact it had on your children.

The children come to Sharana every day of the summer camps and plan several activities for them during this time, ranging from free games, to art, dance, etc. This year we had thought of introducing a reading practice and free-reading activities, where children can pick any books they would like to from the library and read.

The reading programme fell into our laps at the correct time- we had a series of stories, specially designed for Indian children in the context of the summer holidays. The images were real and local, the names were Indian, in short, the scenarios were palpable and imaginable by our children. This was a huge change from other books which may not cater specifically to Indian children. We used to project the stories and often do a read-along followed by some simple interactions and activities.
 
4. What change do you want to see in children’s education space? What do you wish for the children that you work with at Sharana? 
Sharana works with over 1000 children in total, of these over 400 are from the streets and slums in and around Pondicherry.  Most of the children who access our rural as well as urban centres are first generation school goers, most of which attend government schools. In this schooling system, where most exams are passed depending on your “by-hearting” and not necessarily on your understanding skills- it is important here to note that our children’s levels of English vary from basic to almost nil. The challenge, therefore, is huge, but the effects of this reading practice are real- today after just a few weeks of using these stories, the children are more confident when they read and they try to understand the meaning of the words and sentences without simply repeating -this was clearly lacking before.

We encourage children to read books. When they are in Sharana, books and art material is always at their disposal- they should be able to choose what they would like to do in their free time and have the means available to do it. 
To our immense pleasure some children have started picking up books and running to the shelves and fighting over who gets which book- sometimes it’s to go through the pictures, and sometimes it’s to read aloud- sometimes it may be too tough and they just try to read aloud a few words- whatever the reason we see that the seeds have been planted!
 
Reading is essential for the learning of any language, and especially reading aloud and reading regularly- we will continue to provide these to the children in the centre of Sharana. Even when other programs start and may finish- access to reading in Sharana will remain a constant. I want the children at Sharana to make friends with books and learn to escape into the world of the written word.
 

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