Azad India Foundation (AIF) was founded by Yuman Hussain in 1998 to seed initiatives in education & primary health care. The organisation's activities reach out to marginalised women, adolescents and underserved children from rural and urban areas of the Kishanganj district in Bihar. 

We are delighted that AIF is participating in our Freedom to Read campaign for the second year in a row. They are also our first partner-translator this year to have completed their goal of translating 70+ Surjapuri bilingual books (English-Surjapuri and Hindi-Surjapuri). In an email interview, Yuman Hussain, Executive Director of Azad India Foundation, tells us about the importance of bilingual books and how these books have helped children read and  learn in their mother tongue.

The Azad India Foundation team and the children in their learning centre in Bihar

“Azad India Foundation is delighted to be part of the #FreedomToRead campaign for the second year in a row. Foundational learning skills like reading are essential for a child’s  progress. StoryWeaver is a unique platform that allows children to learn these skills joyfully in their mother tongue.”

- Yuman Hussain, Executive Director, Azad India Foundation

We are delighted that Azad India Foundation has participated in the Freedom to Read campaign for the second year in a row! How does it feel to be a part of the campaign for the second time?

It feels great to be part of the Freedom to Read campaign once again and to complete the translations well before time! The credit goes to the team. It was quite challenging this year as we chose to create bilingual books in English-Surjapuri.

Do tell us about the Surjapuri community and language: What is the mother tongue footprint and what resources are currently available? What are the challenges faced by Surjapuri children when they enter school? 

Surjapuri is a dialect that is spoken in the Seemanchal area comprising Kishanganj, Araria, Katihar and Purnia of Bihar, and with minor variations in some parts of Bengal, neighboring Kishanganj.

I am currently not aware of any resources that are available for children in the local dialect of Surjapuri. In most schools, children learn in Hindi. In some schools, they are also taught in Urdu.

Can you tell us a little bit about how the Surjapuri books created from last year’s campaign are being used? Do the children have any favorites?

We have taken printouts of the Surjapuri books from last year’s Freedom to Read campaign and these are being used in classrooms for supplemental reading. Some of the STEM books are being used to explain maths and science concepts. The kids really like Gappu Can’t Dance (Gappu nachwa ne sakche)  and enjoy enacting it in class. However, Fat King Thin Dog (Moto Raja Patla Kutta) is their all-time favourite!

This year, you’ve chosen to create bilingual books in English-Surjapuri and Hindi-Surjapuri. Could you tell us about the need and benefits of these books? 

Bilingual books help children understand concepts easily, and if created in the local dialect, then it becomes so much easier for children to learn. The English-Surjapuri books are great teacher learning material (TLM) for non-Hindi or English speakers. Through StoryWeaver, we have access to thousands of free storybooks. We are aiming to create at least 200 books in Surjapuri on the platform.

We do not have reading material/storybooks in English for our children, so these bilingual books for level 1 and 2 are helping our children learn and read English. Aakansha, our India Fellow at AIF, helps with the reading sessions in English–Surjapuri.

Do tell us about your team who worked to create these 70+ Surjapuri bilingual books, and how they went about the translation process.

We have an enthusiastic young team of translators: Chand Quasar, Juhi and Saqlain, supervised by Muzzamil, who rose to the challenge once again. First, they translated storybooks from Hindi to Surjapuri. Then, I added the English version and uploaded the books on StoryWeaver. It was slightly challenging finding the corresponding words/sentences in English that matched the Surjapuri version, but it was fun.

Azad India Foundation's Team Badhte Kadam

Thank you so much, Azad India Foundation, for giving children the #FreedomToRead in Surjapuri! 

---

You can read all the storybooks translated by Azad India Foundation here. 

Read more about the organisation 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. 

Be the first to comment.

---

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!)

---

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.

comment (1)

---

In the second week of February, a three-member team from Pratham Books visited Rohtak, Haryana to conduct a translation workshop with 25 teachers from 20 districts. Little did we anticipate the warmth and love we would receive from the participants who came from all over Haryana. But what was truly inspiring was that these teachers stayed overnight at the Government Senior Secondary School in preparation for this workshop. They were so self driven that they had explored StoryWeaver and made themselves a little familiar with it even before we entered the school premises.

The main aim of the workshop was to conduct a translation hackathon. This meant working with teachers to translate  Pratham Books titles to Haryanvi on our digital platform, StoryWeaver. Every teacher translated at least three Level 1 and Level 2 books. But before that, they all took turns telling us about their favorite childhood stories that have stayed with them effortlessly, emphasizing the huge retentive power of stories. 

 

 

Their welcome sign for us on the blackboard

It was exciting, the idea of translating children's books to their first language. Most of us won't question the existence of books in the languages that we first spoke at home. Not so much for anyone whose mother language is Haryanvi. The teachers speak it, but are not used to reading Haryanvi in books. Also, it changes its dialect with every district and even within a district. So the challenge was to translate stories in a way that's mostly uniform and can be understood by a child who belongs to any part of the state. The discussions that ensued among the teachers reflected their expertise in the language but also the mutual respect they had for each other's opinions. They reviewed each other's work in pairs and with the final feedback incorporated, every teacher enthusiastically read out their work to the whole class.

The most important appeal for everyone involved here was that in two days, this translation hackathon yielded a proper set of 71 Haryanvi books! More and more children across India, and specifically in Haryana, can now read stories in their own language.

During the workshop, we talked about the value of translation, the concerns behind it, and the importance of translating meaning to meaning instead of word to word, and from one cultural context to another. We talked about StoryWeaver, our open repository of children's books, and the ways they can use this platform in their classrooms for free to enable joy of reading among students. The teachers agreed that the essence of their language lies in its humour, and there was plenty of that for the time we spent with them!

After a delicious meal, we were ready to leave and bid farewell to the fresh air of the town when the teachers insisted that we stay a bit longer. Some teachers performed impromptu plays for us, some sang and others made us laugh.

It was truly a memorable workshop with every teacher an eager champion of Haryanvi in their own school and in their own district. And with that, the number of languages available on StoryWeaver rose to 107.  There could have been no better way to ring in the International Mother Language Day.

Browse and read the Haryanvi stories on StoryWeaver.

 

comments (3)

---