Theresia Alit is a freelance translator, who translates books from English-Javanese to Bahasa Indonesia-Javanese and vice versa. She is passionate about creating a repository of storybooks in her mother tongue, Basa Jawa, as she feels that the number of people who tell children's stories in Basa Jawa is decreasing. Previously, she has worked on translating stories into Javanese for a project called Serat Kancil. As part of the Freedom To Read 2020 campaign, she has created a digital library of 50 storybooks in Basa Jawa. 

In this email interview, Theresia writes about translating books into her mother tongue and the importance of creating children's books in the Basa Jawa.

Do tell us about yourself, your interests, your work.

My name is Theresia Alit, and I am from Indonesia. I am a freelance translator, and I work on translations from English-Javanese to Bahasa Indonesia-Javanese and vice versa. Speaking of interests, I am very interested in traditional culture, languages and people.

We would love to learn about your personal relationship with Basa Jawa - do tell us about it.

I am a native speaker of Basa Jawa, and was raised speaking the language. I find it sad that a lot of people in the younger generation of today do not really speak or understand Basa Jawa, despite it being their mother tongue.

How did you come across StoryWeaver and the Freedom to Read campaign?

I came to know about StoryWeaver and your Freedom to Read campaign on Twitter, from a retweet by the Wikitongues account.

Why do you think is it important to have children’s books in Basa Jawa?

I feel that it is extremely important for the younger generation to learn and read Basa Jawa. In fact, yesterday, I did a campaign with a community of small children, and they were really enthusiastic about reading stories in the language!

Theresia Alit conducts reading sessions for children in Basa Jawa in Indonesia

Of the 50 storybooks that you translated, which story would be your favourite and why?

I really enjoyed the book, Bayi gajah kang penasaran. It's so funny!

What are some of your favourite books from childhood? Is there any memorable reading moment that you would like to share?

Some of my favourite books are The Little Prince, Asterix and Obelix, Uthak-uthak Ugel (folktale), etc. When I read a book, I feel that I am moving into another world altogether. (just like Puchku!)

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You can read all of Theresia Alit's translated storybooks here.

Do join the conversation by leaving your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also reach out to us through our social media channels: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

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It’s that time of the year again, for One Day, One Story – Pratham Books’ annual storytelling campaign celebrating International Literacy Day on September 8th. Last year, we had over 6700+ Reading Champions conducting 5500+ sessions, reaching out to 40,000+ children all across India with the stories of Gappu and Nila. And this year, we hope to make it extra special!

Why One Day, One Story?
To help children discover the joy of stories, and fall in love with reading. On September 8th every year, Pratham Books Champions all over India use two books to conduct reading sessions for children in their communities.

What’s the story?
Typically, One Day, One Story is a volunteer-led on-ground event where Reading Champions conduct storytelling sessions with groups of children all over India and the world. Due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, this year is a little different, since children everywhere are still at home and on-ground storytelling sessions or book dispatches won’t be possible. So we’re taking One Day, One Story online, where we invite you to conduct virtual storytelling sessions and readalouds over the internet, to continue to spread the joy of reading far and wide!

The storybooks for One Day, One Story this year were chosen keeping in mind that children have been at home for many months now and could use a little bit of humour along with some insight on managing their emotions through these uncertain times. The two books for ODOS 2020 are Angry Akku, a Level 2 book written and illustrated by Vinayak Varma for younger kids, and The Girl Who Could Not Stop Laughing, a Level 3 book written by Meera Ganapathy and illustrated by ROSH for older kids. 

How does this work?
You could conduct a storytelling session online – through Zoom or Whatsapp with a group of children, or on Facebook or Instagram Live.

OR you could record your storytelling of either (or both!) of the books on your mobile phone and share it on social media with the hashtag #OneDayOneStory2020 and then tag a friend to do a reading of the books! (Don’t forget to tag us too!) Check out some basic tips on how to record yourself telling the story.

Whichever storybook or platform you choose, we would love for you to use it in creative ways – read, narrate, enact… so that it’s fun for children to watch and listen to.

Sounds interesting? Mark your calendar for September 8, and join thousands of other Champions sharing their love for reading with the children who need it the most!

Note: If you have any queries, please mail [email protected] before you fill in the form.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. This is the first time I am conducting an event. How should I prepare for it?
Read the book a few times. If you are reading to a younger age group, see how you can tell the story without actually reading from the book (to retain their attention). Think of activities to engage the children after the storytelling. Alternatively, read a few more stories around the same theme.

2. Can I conduct multiple storytelling sessions online?
Oh, yes, you can! The aim is to reach as many kids as possible. You can do more than one session on more than one day, on or after September 8th.

3. Will I be receiving physical copies of the books?
Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and ensuing logistical difficulties, we will not be dispatching physical copies of the books and banners for One Day, One Story this year. But once you sign up, we’ll be happy to share e-copies of the books in multiple languages. You could read the story aloud from a digital device, like an iPad or a mobile phone, or you could print out the book and hold it up while you read.

4. Should I document the event?
Yes please! You can send us the storytelling video you make, a write-up and tag us on social media when you share your video – just share with us the “real impact” you’ve helped make.

5. I really want to conduct a session but I am not free on September 8? What should I do?
The aim of One Day, One Story is to spread the joy of stories. In case you are unable to, you can still conduct it on a day close to the chosen date. Because children getting to listen to a fun story is much more important than a date, right? This year, we are running One Day, One Story all through September 2020.

6. How do I do a virtual storytelling session?
Once you sign up for One Day, One Story, check out these tips on how to take a video of yourself reading out the story using a mobile phone. If you are conducting a live storytelling session with a group of children on Zoom, Whatsapp or Instagram/Facebook Live, you would need to keep in mind all the things you would normally do when doing a storytelling session in-person – the only difference this year is that it’s online!

Check out some online readaloud videos that others have done with our stories over the past few months here!

Sounds like something you would like to do?
Hop on board! Individuals sign up here and organisations can sign up here.

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Illustrations by Vinayak Varma and ROSH

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Written by Kirsty Milward, Founder, Suchana Foundation

Settle down for this long read that comes to our blog from Birbhum, West Bengal.

                                       

Suchana set out in 2005 to try to solve the problem of low learning levels among many adivasi primary school–going children in Birbhum, West Bengal. For part of the solution, we quickly settled on the fact that when Santal and Kora children start school they do not understand much of what they are expected to learn to read, because all teaching, and all learning materials are in Bengali.

But trying to introduce first language / mother tongue methods – or even multilingual methods – in our teaching programme was made hugely challenging by the fact that there were no written materials for children in the languages the children spoke. For Kora, there were no written materials full stop.

The 10 Santali and Kora translators

So we began to make materials. For Santali, this meant getting some guidance from organisations who had already been using Bengali script to write Santali, and then inspiring Santali teachers working in Suchana to tap into their creativity and write. For Kora, this meant generating a discussion among community leaders on how words should be written using the Bengali script; it meant young Kora teachers doing research among elders to re-learn disappearing Kora vocabularies; and it meant getting groups of young people together to write songs, rhymes, stories and a simple tri-lingual word book.

But this creative process took time, and coupled with lengthy printing processes with hideous proofing challenges and equally challenging costs, this meant we could collectively only produce three or four small books a year. By 2014, we had produced 15 books. And meanwhile, the children in the education programmes were growing up. Their young years, in which access to first language materials could be such a critical intervention, were running out.

Then in 2015, in a moment of serendipity, Suchana discovered Storyweaver. With a creative commons platform, a torrent of lovely stories graded into reading levels, and beautiful layouts to use, creating a varied, usable, children’s literature in Santali and Kora, suddenly changed from a daunting task to one within our grasp.

The same young team of fifteen Santali and Kora teachers who had been involved in making books from scratch set to work. Most had acquired some technology skills through Suchana’s other programmes in the intervening years. They shared these skills with those who had not; and themselves learned to use the Suchana platform through a mixture of online tutorials, personalized help from the Storyweaver team, and a fair bit of trial and error.

In their first translation marathon, they translated around 50 stories. Teachers chose freely which stories to translate from a pool of Bengali stories available on the platform, which they could translate from easily. With few options for getting their work formally reviewed and checked, they inserted quality control by creating a peer-review system in which they carefully checked each other’s work before stories were published online.   

We had gone from 15 to 65 in about 3 months.

Concerned about how we would ensure that digital stories would reach the hands of children who had very little access to technology, Suchana arranged to print 20 of these stories. Both print and digital stories were then woven into Suchana’s mobile library programme which reaches about 1500 children. Librarians took laptops to remote mobile library villages and showed Santali and Kora digital stories to library members in read-aloud sessions. Children were then free to take home printed stories available in the library stock, where they could read them again, and read with their families.

Children looking at stories on the computer

For many children with emerging literacy, being offered a chance to read stories in their own languages was like a light switching on. Suddenly, text which usually seemed dense and difficult made sense and fitted together. Now, when they were not sure how a particular letter in a word worked, they could make deductions based on their understanding of the likely word being represented to figure out what the letter was doing. Suddenly, it was possible to have meaning fall into the place of decoded text, and the story rise out.

But even 50 stories – about 25 in each language – can get read quite quickly among a multi-age group with library sessions every week. So in 2018, Suchana joined Storyweaver’s Freedom to Read Campaign and the push to 100 stories in each language. Beyond reaching Santali and Kora stories to children through the mobile library membership, Suchana had just begun to work more consistently with local primary schools and ICDS anganwadis on using mother-tongue methods in early years’ classrooms. Most teachers and anganwadi staff teaching adivasi children do not have the luxury of knowing the languages of the children they are charged to teach, and many are acutely aware of the difficulties this presents. So Suchana’s second translation marathon focused partly on producing bilingual books in Santali-Bengali and Kora-Bengali – with a view to enabling willing teachers to help their Santali and Kora students access stories in their own languages too. Watch this space for more information in a few months on how this initiative goes.

This week we crossed 212 stories: just over 100 in Santali; just over 90 in Kora; and 15 stories Suchana had produced from scratch. This feels like a very different place we have arrived at. Several hundred children are now reading a real variety of books in their own languages – from very simple, to more complex ‘Level 4’ books as they progress in their literacy; and books which can help themselves and their teachers transition from their own languages into Bengali, the language of their schools. They read about animals, people, families, friends, trees, maths concepts, science ideas, joy, sadness, and everything in between, in their own languages. The amazing worlds that children’s literature can open up have finally become theirs.

Congratulations for this huge achievement to the Suchana translation team: Bhabini Baski, Churki Hansda, Komola Murmu, Sova Tudu, Lakshman Hembram, Subhadra Murmu, Narayan Hembram, Shanto Kora, Kumkum Kora, Debika Kora, Kalicharan Kora, Rajesh Kora, Pathik Kora, Nobin Kora, Anjana Kora and Krishna Kora.

We have not finished, but Storyweaver has started something, and we are on the way.

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