“Linguistic diversity is increasingly threatened as more and more languages disappear. Globally 40 per cent of the population does not have access to an education in a language they speak or understand.” - UNESCO International Mother Language Day website

Since 2000, the United Nations has observed February 21 as International Mother Language Day to promote linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism. This year, StoryWeaver marks the occasion by opening a gateway to digital libraries in 100 languages for children across the world and thereby addressing the scarcity of books for children in their own languages. 

To achieve the milestone of 100 languages, StoryWeaver has collaborated with a global network of organisations and individuals who are helping create this vast resource of children’s storybooks, as part of its ‘Freedom to Read’ campaign. 

                                                                  

Our partners encompass national and international organisations, as well as language champions who share our passion for creating reading resources for children in their mother tongue languages. Partners like Azad India Foundation, AfLIA (African Library Information Associations and Institutions), Darakht-e Danesh Library, Little Readers' Nook, North East Educational Trust, REHMA, Right To Play, SNS Foundation, Suchana, Unnati Institute for Social and Educational Change and language champions like Agnes N.S. Nyendwa, Amit Dudave, Ana Jovic, Ankit Dwivedi, Kaye Suscang, Maharani Aulia and BE Priyanti, Nguyen Dac Thai Hang, Priya Bhakthan. The languages are varied - from mainstream languages like Afrikaans, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Spanish, Tamil, Telugu and Urdu, tribal languages like Gondi, Korku, Kora and Santali, endangered languages like Occitan to indigenous languages like Chatino, Mixe and Triqui and underserved languages like Assamese, Basa Jawa, Basa Sunda, Bhojpuri, Bundelkhandi, Igbo, Marwari, Sindhi and Surjapuri,

Collaboration has been the cornerstone of the StoryWeaver community, and the high quality of the translations - endured by a rigorous system of peer review - stands testament to the commitment of every contributor to "Freedom to Read".

These partners will take these digital reading resources even further - to serve children around the world, and help them read in their mother tongue languages. AfLIA (African Library Information Associations and Institutions) will roll out their continent-wide reading promotion ‘Read Africa Read’ with the same storybook titles in different languages across Africa. The Ghana Library Authority has already downloaded a book translated into Ewe in the e-readers in the Library and read it aloud to children on the World Read Aloud Day. The SNS Foundation in Rajasthan is working towards building a hyperlocal library of 100 Marwari books which will be used in 1,500 schools in Rajasthan. 

The troubling statistic of 40% of the global population not having access to education in a language they speak or understand translates to over 2 billion people who would benefit from having books in their mother tongues. 

“Through StoryWeaver, increasing access to quality reading resources for children has been made possible like none other. We are also grateful to collaborate with like-minded partners whose primary mission -- like ours -- is to get every child to read,” shares Suzanne Singh, Chairperson, Pratham Books.

Click here to take a look at a short video on the Freedomto Read journey. 

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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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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. 

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