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

A: I usually read in English and Marathi. I prefer to read English non-fiction.

Q: Do you have a favourite book / author and why is it a favourite?

A: My favourite book is 'Man’s Search for Meaning’ by Viktor Frankel.  And why? Well, the name is self explanatory ☺

Q: You have contributed for us immensely. How has the StoryWeaver journey been?

A: StoryWeaver was an exciting experience for me. Being from the software field, writing for CMS based business websites was a routine thing for me. But translating & reviewing fiction for a digital platform and seeing it ‘going live’ in a moment was very exciting.

Q: What is one big take away from this experience?

A: My take away from this experience is that digital platforms are quite flexible (and quite forgiving, unlike print media). I learnt a lot about localizing the content while translating content from Indian cultures, other than my own. Once, I found nouns in one language were taboo words in another!

Q:  How does it feel when your story gets published online?

A: Initially it feels different than print for sure. There is no wafting ‘fragrance’ of paper and ink, like in paper books. It took me a while to get used to the book ‘getting published’ at a click of a button on the digital platform.  

Q: You have translated / reviewed a handful of stories for us. Which one has been your favourite and why?

A: My favourite is How Do Aeroplanes Fly? / विमानं उडतात तरी कशी?  This book is not just about the science behind flying the aeroplanes, but also underlines the fact that women can do everything, and gender is not a hurdle if one wants to break the social barriers.

Q: What is your key driver in taking this up? 

A: Like most Indian languages, Marathi too lacks quality content for young readers, especially in STEM topics. So I felt the need to do my bit.

Q: How else do you think we can join hands in taking bigger steps for children’s literature?

A: We can translate German books in Marathi and other Indian languages, and that too in our cultural context. I would love to help on that front. Also, I would love to help in conducting workshops for budding translators and teachers aiding the translations of StoryWeaver content.

Q: How has the overall experience with SW been? 

A: The StoryWeaver experience was very rewarding. I got immense satisfaction while translating world-class books in my own language.  

स्टोरीविव्हरवर वेगवेगळ्या कथा व पुस्तके अनुवादित करणं हा एक अनोखा अनुभव होता. जागतिक दर्जाची, सुंदर सुंदर चित्रं असलेली पुस्तकं स्वत:च्या मातृभाषेत आणतानाचा आनंद काही औरच!

 

 

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Varsha Seshan is a children's writer, author of The Prophecy of Rasphora and The Story-Catcher, among others. She has twice been shortlisted for the Scholastic Asian Book Award, and a collection of her short stories, Dragonflies, Jigsaws and Seashells, was a finalist for the Best Middle-Grade/Young Adult Book at the Singapore Book Awards 2019. She conducts reading and writing workshops for children and adults at schools and libraries. She is also a classical dancer, with over 25 years of training in Bharatanatyam. Varsha has written two storybooks for Pratham Books - Today I Am and What Will Happen?

In this blog post, Varsha writes about a training workshop that she conducted with librarians of municipal schools around Mumbai, and using StoryWeaver to chalk out a library reading programme for these schools.

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As a British Council trainer, I’ve conducted numerous reading workshops and facilitated many interactive sessions for theme-based reading challenges. I’ve worked in schools as well as at the British Library itself, interacting with a range of children, from those who devour books to those who yawn at the sight of a library.

So, when Anubhooti Learning Solutions (then ‘Experiential Learning Solutions’) asked me whether I would chalk out a reading programme to be administered by librarians at municipal schools in Mumbai and Navi Mumbai, I was interested. The project was a CSR initiative by D-Mart and the crux of the idea was to support a few schools through a library programme.

Excited, I drafted a detailed outline of what we could do. I devised a theme-based approach with detailed assessment criteria, for that was something that the reading programme team felt was crucial. I also worked out the learning outcomes, outline and structure of three training sessions for the librarians. All of them had worked in different capacities earlier and were to be associated with the library space for the first time. The purpose of my training sessions was to introduce them to their role beyond classroom management and discipline, emphasising that inculcating the habit of reading and a love for language is as much a part of a librarian’s role as the issue and return of books.

Varsha Seshan conducts a workshop for librarians from municipal schools around Mumbai

Yet, it was only as we launched the programme and began the first workshop that I began to understand how many problems the librarians face. A theme-based programme with assessment criteria was all very well. How would we deal with the other big issues, including the fact that many children did not even attend school regularly? As we went on, there were three problems that I was determined to address through the reading programme:

• One, children come from multiple linguistic backgrounds. For instance, in a predominantly Hindi-speaking area, children attend a school where the medium of instruction is Marathi. “In my class of forty, only five children speak Marathi,” one librarian said to me.

• Two, every class has students with varied reading levels. “The children who have been with us for some time are okay, on the whole, but new children come in all the time. If a child is ten years old, the school administration puts him in class five, even if he has not even learnt the alphabet yet!”

• Three, some schools have different languages of instruction running concurrently. “My first period is with Hindi-medium children, then semi-English, then Marathi, then Hindi again. Each week, I have Urdu-medium, English-medium, Hindi-medium and Marathi-medium children coming to the library!”

What could we do? How could we hope to tackle such a wide range of problems?

Additionally, what started as a small group of eleven librarians soon began to grow. This is the third year of my association with Anubhooti and the D-Mart initiative, and we work with 47 librarians: D-Mart now supports 68 schools through its reading programme.

It is at this stage that my use of StoryWeaver in libraries comes in. D-Mart’s vision for the reading programme includes providing a minimum of 200 hard copies of Pratham Books in three focus languages (English, Hindi and Marathi) for each library that it supports. Five schools also use StoryWeaver books offline. This was a huge boon to me, for at least I had a starting point. I could access the same story in many languages, and thanks to the Creative Commons licence, I could encourage teachers to work with each story in multiple ways. Teaching requires so many resources that access to free material is invaluable!

Reading Levels

I was first attracted to StoryWeaver by the clear levelling of stories, and so, this was the first thing I introduced to the librarians too. In a single class, librarians deal with students struggling to read the alphabet as well as students who read stories confidently. With such a wide range of readers thrown together in one room, I find it particularly relevant that the reading level of books on StoryWeaver is not clearly linked to an age-group. This is important to me because slow learners are often targets for bullies. Reading a “kiddish” book, marketed as one for younger readers, leads to the shaming of slow learners, and a simple indication of reading level rather than age is an important step towards addressing (though not solving) this problem.

StoryWeaver has over 16,000 storybooks that are classified into four levels based on a child's reading level.

The first time we used StoryWeaver, we worked with three stories I love – I Am Not Afraid, Ammachi’s Amazing Machines and Farida Plans a Feast. We read each story many times, in three languages. Bilingual books are particularly wonderful in the context of this reading programme, for when a child is required to read in one language, even though s/he is more comfortable in another language, having both on the same page is a great aid to reading comprehension. All of us loved the simplicity and artwork of I Am Not Afraid. It allowed us to explore and enjoy the story without being daunted by complexity of narrative and vocabulary.

The main activity we engaged in after reading the books was to create simple stories of our own. Inspired by the sweet simplicity of I Am Not Afraid, librarians created wonderful picture books about conquering fear. This was just the first step because they took the idea back to their libraries and asked children to make books of their own. This was a huge boost to the reading programme, as it encouraged children to read more and write more. The most wonderful outcome was that even if they read nothing else, children wanted to read what their friends had created. An added bonus was that there were suddenly many more books in the school library!

Librarians work on activities as part of the workshop

Librarians at the workshop prepare a chart on morals learnt from stories.

Wordless Picture Books

Wordless picture books are all kinds of lovely. We “read” the charming I Can Dress Myself! and then looked at how to work on language skills using a book that is written in none of the focus languages. Beginning with simple questions and answers – giving the girl a name and naming all the pieces of furniture in the room – we went on to a storytelling session, where the pictures in the book became visual aids.

Next, to continue our exploration of the use of StoryWeaver without language, I showed the participants Deepa Balsavar’s vibrant picture of a busy market. With so much happening in a single image, the librarians could explore a range of vocabulary. Consequently, they came up with various ideas of how they could use pictures in class to increase attention and concentration. We discovered that wordless picture books and the visual treat of any detailed image would include both children with very low language proficiency and confident readers who want something new.

Lists

The lists on StoryWeaver allowed me to modify the reading programme in the third year, making the entire programme much more accessible. In the first year, the feedback I received from the librarians indicated that a huge majority of older students did not want to read fiction. Working with non-fiction and stories that clearly reflect the world we see around us thus became important to the reading programme as we moved forward.

And so, for the third year, I chose to begin with three themes – Environment, Science and Technology, and Mathematics.

For the first theme, we read What’s Neema Eating Today? in English, and A Cloud of Trash and Anand in Marathi. Once we had read all three stories, it was time for our next activity. 

In groups, the librarians chose a story to work with and present in a novel way. Some took the story further, imagining what would happen next. Others analysed the story in different ways, changing the setting to their own schools. Soon, through skits and quizzes, we had Chhakuli (the lead character in the Marathi translation of A Cloud of Trash) sorting out the garbage problem in a neighbouring village. We had Anand talking to his friends about taking pride in his work, and about there being no shame in working as a rag-picker. We had questions and answers about character motivation and themes. We discussed segregation of garbage and the role each of us must play in the process.

Varsha Seshan watches the prep for a play based on the book 'A Cloud of Trash'

For Mathematics, we read It’s a Laddoo Party! enjoying the repetition and humour in the tale. Working with maths stories was an intriguing idea for many, one that they could not wait to take to their classrooms.

As a quick recall activity for vocabulary, we also played a ballgame. When a ball is thrown to a participant, s/he must quickly say a word that is clearly related to one of the four stories we read. So we remembered what Neema ate, recalled characters like Peter Uncle and Mihir, and discussed seasons of the year.

What happens next?

While I work with only the librarians, the proof of the pudding is, of course, in the eating. As the librarians do not have easy access to audio-visual equipment, working with StoryWeaver remains, for the moment, limited to schools that have computer labs with books downloaded on the systems. Children read independently – either using StoryWeaver offline or hard copies of books in the library. Eventually, I hope that infrastructural changes will allow librarians to use StoryWeaver to the fullest, including the Readalong feature and YouTube channel.

Yet, exposure to all this material has ensured multiple gains. For one, the librarians themselves have begun to read. Their purpose is clear: using stories actively in the library so as to move beyond the rather monotonous role of distributing and collecting books. Secondly, a theme-based approach allows them to look at books in their collections in a new light and create new books that then encourage reluctant readers. Thirdly, access to the same book in all three languages makes the act of reading less daunting, especially when it comes to reading in a language that is not one’s mother tongue or first language.

Librarians create charts based on stories discussed at the workshop.

And finally, feedback from the reading programme team at D-Mart is promising. Librarians and programme managers assure me that children now enjoy the books tremendously, and isn’t that the greatest victory of all?

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Manohar Notani is an engineer by qualification, but over time, realized that engineering was not his cup of tea. He says 'This realization of being a fourth idiot came somewhat late'. He is now happy in the world of words and we are lucky to have his skills as a Hindi translator. His transaltion of MIss Bandicota Bengalensis Digs up the Seashore won the Hindi book of the Year award at FICCI.

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

A: It should be, and should sound ‘natural’. I don’t like to treat language as a mere means of communication. Language is an independent entity itself. Hence, my utmost endeavor is to ingest the concept(s), thought(s) presented in the ‘original’ and then present them in ‘my’ language as if they were never alien to it.  

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

A: It all depends on the fluidity and cogency of the original. If the given story has a natural spontaneity and mirth in it, that ‘wow’ element will follow easily and naturally in my translation too. Otherwise, I have to have 3-4 reading and re-reading sessions prior to translating it. In short, I need to imbibe the original story in its content and spirit.   

Q: What do stories in translation bring to young readers?

A: Pure pleasure, at least, if nothing else.

Q: How did you cultivate the skills needed to translate books for children?

A: Keeping alive and kicking my child within, through perseverance though.

Q: You’ve translated many stories for us. Which has been your favourite to work on?

A: Miss Bandicota Bengalensis Digs Up the Seashore , of course.

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

A: Read, read, and read a lot. One has to have a rich ‘working’ vocabulary. Moreover, I invest a lot in books, dictionaries, subscribing to online dictionaries etc.  

Q: Tell us something about how did you go about translating 'Miss Bandicota'? And how do you feel about the outcome?

A: To translate a story of Miss Bandicota’ s caliber, one needs to have the ‘feel’ of its milieu and throw one’s imagination to childlike tantrums.

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

A: It’s a sheer, yet indefinable pleasure.

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

A: By having a strong faith in storytelling as a strong device for making our universe a better habitat.

Q: What type of person do you think makes the best translator for children’s stories?

A: One who has a knack for nonsense.

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

A: Be a perpetual yet an untiring learner.

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

A: The God of Small Things and White Tiger. 

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