StoryWeaver Spotlight aims to shine the light on members of the wonderful community of translators who help bring stories alive in new languages through their translation efforts. This week, we turn the spotlight on Sarita Sharan. Sarita is a passionate teacher, who uses stories to pass on information in a fun way to her students and her two kids. She works at a primary school in Badami Taluk, Bagalakot district. She often visits underserved communities and strives to convince drop-outs to continue schooling. Science, English and Maths are her favorite subjects. She has translated 11 books to Kannada for Pratham Books including Whpopee Hyperloop, Neelumbera on a Full Moon Night and  Anna's Extraordinary Experiments with Weather.

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

A:  Someone who works closely with children: teachers and storytellers, for example.   

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

A: If you can revisit your childhood and think and narrate like a child you are almost half way towards becoming a translator.

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

 I don’t see any set rules for this, it really depends on each piece of work and the way you want to communicate. For me, reading updated STEM curriculum, boosts my efficiency.

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

A: It is just like the relationship between a student and a teacher. A language is so rich, so versatile, so essential to communication.

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

A: I read the whole story a couple of times. And, imagine narrating the same to my students before I begin. How long? Ha ha! It depends on my schedule,

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

I think the highlight of translated stories is that they bring diversity, and introduce readers to different cultures and places. Kids really just enjoy the variety.

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

I liked Neelambara on a Full Moon Night, Sailing Ships and Sinking Spoons, Who Made Tomato Chutney and the Annamani story. They were were my favourites. I really liked the concepts and the way they were told as stories.

  

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

A: I think common sense quotient works here. It’s just about the concept as a whole and the way you narrate in your language. I think my profession has equally helped me in this regard.  

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

Wow! That’s an amazing feeling. I feel like a student who’s waiting for results.

Q: Translating stories must have required research when it came to STEM related terms and concepts.. How did you explore new objects and concepts?

Like I said, I refer to the latest curriculum related to STEM concepts. So, it clears my confusion and difficulty while translating too. 

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

My wish is that we reach almost every school in every nook and corner as a group till books reach the last child. I personally prefer print formats for this , as the feel of a book is sacred.   

Q: As a passionate teacher, story teller what do you think is the best way to approach a child?

Be a child while translating, narrating. That’s all!!

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Here's a step-by-step guide on how to use the Translate tool on StoryWeaver:

1. Login to your StoryWeaver account using your email ID and password. If you don’t already have an account, sign up here. A confirmation email will be sent to the email ID you have used to sign up. Please confirm your account to complete the sign up process. 

 

2. Click on the Translate tab on the StoryWeaver homepage. Select the language you would like to translate to.  Remember to translate the story in the language with which you are most familiar with or in the language in which you think and feel! The stories that come up will be the ones that do not have translations in your chosen language. 

3. Selecting a story for translation

• You can narrow your story choices by using filters like Reading Levels (who are you translating the story for), Categories (what kind of stories are you looking for) etc. Browse through the selected stories and pick the one you would like to translate. 
• Once you have selected the story, we suggest you read the story a few times before you begin translating. You can do this by hovering the mouse on the story card, clicking on the 3 dot menu and selecting the 'Read Story' option from here. 
• After you have read the story, click on the TRANSLATE button on the story card.

4. Setting up the translation draft

• The story will now open in the Story Editor along with the original text on the left hand page as a reference for you while translating. This reference text does not get published.
• The Tips button at the top will give you handy tips and best practises in translating children’s picture books. 

• To know more about the translation process, check out our Translate Tutorial or read the answers to Frequently Asked Questions about translation. You can also find some great translation tips here.
• You can save your translation and find it under ‘My Drafts’ in your Dashboard. 

• You can now translate without using the internet. To know more about our new Offline Translate feature, click here.  

5. Start translating

You can add your translation in the Story Editor window on the right side. Please note that only Unicode fonts work on StoryWeaver as it's a universally accepted standard display of font.

• You can type using the language keyboard on your machine or start translating the text phonetically in the text box. For example, you can type "namaste" in English to get "नमस्ते" in Hindi, which sounds like "Namaste". As you start typing the word in English, a list of possible transliterations will appear. Choose the one you want and press 'Enter'. 
• StoryWeaver offers transliteration support for 12 languages and dictionary support in over 100 languages to help with choosing the right form of the word in the translation. 

• If your chosen language does not have transliteration support, we recommend that you use Google Input tools. From Google Input tools, you can just copy & paste the translated text into StoryWeaver.

6. Formatting your translation

• You can change alignment, text size and text style using the formatting options in the editor. For better readability, we recommend matching these to the style, size and alignment used for the original text (on the left hand page). 
• You can add a duplicate page if the translated text does not fit into the text box (dotted lines). The duplicate page can hold the remaining text. 

7. Getting ready to publish 

• We recommended previewing your draft before you publish (from the Preview button in the editor).
• Hit the Publish button when you are ready. 
• This will open the Publish form. Fill in all the details, including the translation of the synopsis in the form before clicking 'Publish'. 

• Your story will appear in ‘New Arrivals’ shortly. 

8. Share your work, build your profile

• You can share your translation on social media so that others can enjoy it too. You can click on the Share button from the Story Details page of your story and share your story on WhatsApp, FaceBook or Twitter. 
• Lastly, don’t forget to update your profile page by adding a few lines about yourself, a profile picture and contact info (email ID/ social handles, if any) in the ‘My Details’ section of your Dashboard.

If you have any questions or are facing any issues, please write to us at [email protected]

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Payoshni Saraf, Outreach Manager, Digital Initiatives at Pratham Books shares what happened at a school visit to the Channasandra Government School, Bengaluru.

Wednesday morning brought in considerable excitement. The StoryWeaver team was going into a classroom, albeit not to study or teach, but to see what a wonderful classroom is made of!

As a part of a special project with Teach for India Bangalore, we are currently piloting the use of a curated collection of StoryWeaver titles in select  Teach For India classrooms, here in namma city. The pilot is one of its kinds with a focus on using stories to enhance reading comprehension in the classroom resulting into an increase in reading fluency over the year.

Armed with scribble pads and the palpable excitement of entering a classroom, we were welcomed in a 4th grade classroom in Government School, Channasandra at Kadugodi. First year Teach For India fellow Siddharth Chellappa was just starting the day with a morning meeting with his enthusiastic students discussing their visit to Cubbon Park the previous day.

We soon moved into the first class for the day, which was the English Reading Comprehension class. The projector was connected, StoryWeaver was live and the children were set! ‘Gulli’s Box of Things’ was the day’s pick. The Level 2 book follows young Gulli and his seemingly bottomless box of things that always has just the thing needed to solve other people’s problems. Siddharth started the lesson by spending some time on the cover page. He asked the children to look at the illustration and listen to the name of the story and predict what the story could be about. The children were enthusiastic and vocal and had lots of suggestions. Maybe the story is about a box full of books....or what about Gulli’s box being a magical box?  With all the conspiracy theories in place, the reading started.  For each page that was read, Siddharth would pause and ask children questions around it. For example ‘How does Gulli’s Grandfather appear in this picture?’ Or ‘What do you think made the ‘Clink-clonk-dadum-dum’ sound?’  There were many giggles and laughs with every Clink-clonk-dadum-dum by the way!

Another lovely moment was when Siddharth asked the children to try and relate aspects of the story to their own lives. He asked them if they knew anyone like Gulli in their homes or neighborhoods who helps without being asked and many children came up with examples of their fathers or friends helping strangers or people in need without an ask for it.

​Before we knew the story finished and we were left wanting more, as much as the children did. We wrapped up the visit with a quick interaction with the children and got to know about their favourite books…’Aaloo-Maloo-Kaloo’, ‘Rani’s First Day at School’ and The Giving Tree emerged as clear favorites.

We said goodbye to the little munchkins and promised to see them again!

​For the pilot we are currently in the midst of,​ Teach for India and StoryWeaver are aiming to harness the power of contextual stories and familiar settings to push reading comprehension among children, many of them first generation learners with English as their third or fourth language. The stories are being used for read alouds as well as independent readings with activities created around it to push understanding.  

​Siddharth Chellappa, whose classroom we visited had this to say -

"StoryWeaver is a great tool to use in the classroom, because it has so many possible applications. I'm able to create differentiated content ​from a story with such ease​ for all my children who are at different reading levels. Then, based on student interests I can also​ create amazing stories using StoryWeaver's ​collection​ of illustrations. Most importantly, having access to a massive story library​ with  characters and stories​ the children can relate to, is the closest thing to a superpower a teacher who loves ​English and Reading Comprehension can have."

We thank Teach for India for their support and enthusiasm, especially Teach for India Bangalore and Siddharth for letting us into their classroom​s.

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