This campaign is now closed

 

Children LOVE ‘spotting challenges’. Ask them to spot anything from a busy image and you can be sure they won’t quit. 3 crabs on a beach, 4 tyres in a workshop, 11 spoons in a kitchen... anything! Unfortunately, it’s hard to come by memorable spotting books which are affordable. So...

 

This Children’s Day (November 14), StoryWeaver is eager to create a fun spotting book for children and make it available for free. We think this will be special if it’s a collection of illustrations from artists around the world. And this, illustrators, is where we need your support. Just 1 illustration from you can make all the difference! 

 

The best entries from Spotathon will become part of a grand spotting book published by StoryWeaver, filled with illustrations from different artists. However, each entry that is submitted as part of Spotathon will be available on StoryWeaver as an individual activity book as well.

 

Here’s how you can participate in Spotathon!

 

• Draw something which has enough details so that a child can spot up to 15 objects in it. Think of a setting which can accommodate these details. A beach, rainforest, kitchen, classroom, market... the possibilities are endless! The objects to spot are up to you. 

• Before you start, imagine the child you’re setting the challenge for. Our readers are primarily children who haven’t had much access to books. We have 2 different categories which are linked to age and levels of difficulty. Remember, these are only guidelines.

 

a. 3-6 years (Level of Difficulty: Easy) – She has only recently started reading books. She’d enjoy spotting up to 8 objects. While she’s open to all kinds of settings, do remember that her vocabulary is limited. But her imagination definitely isn’t! As an example, here is an illustration by Soumya Menon of what would be ideal for her.

 

b. 7-10 years (Level of Difficulty: Medium) – As she’s expanding her vocabulary, she will be more comfortable with prediction and open to unfamiliar settings. She’d be able to spot up to 15 things. Even the way in which the objects are hidden can be more complex here. As an example, here is an illustration by Bindia Thapar of what would be ideal for her.

 

• As the spotting exercise also requires an answer key for reference, you will need to prepare it using the same drawing. All you have do it number the images accordingly. Here’s an example.

 

GUIDELINES FOR SUBMISSION

 

Timelines

Spotathon begins on October 25 and ends on November 21.

 

Submission

 

 

• You will have to submit two illustrations: Main Illustration and Answer Key (examples above).

• You can submit your entry in any language that is available on StoryWeaver.

• You can submit more than one entry.

• Watch a short Video Tutorial on how to submit your entry on StoryWeaver.

 

Format

• Size of illustration (Main illustration & Answer Key): 11.17 inches (width) x 5.35 inches (height). This is the recommended size as it fits neatly into one of the templates on StoryWeaver.

• The illustrations should be high-res (150-300 dpi).

• Format: JPEG

• File size for each illustration: Between 2 to 4 MB; above 4 MB will slow down the upload process

 

Copyright and other guidelines:

• To participate in Spotathon, you must be over the age of 16.

• The illustrations you submit must be your original work. 

• By submitting your work, you are agreeing to a CC-BY 4.0 license being applied to it. To know more about this license, click here.

 

You can register for the campaign over here so that we know you're participating and can reach out for any updates. If you have any queries, feel free to drop us an email at [email protected]!

 

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Vasrha Gajendragadkar is a creative writer and translator. She has authored and translated more than 25 books including children's  books, creative prose, fiction and non- fiction works and environment related writing. She is also the recipient of two state literary awards.

Q: Can you tell us anything about yourself and your job that would surprise us:)? 

A: Basically I am a creative writer and a translator. The number of books authored and translated by me is 25+. As a professional, I am in the field of content creation and development for last 25 years. Besides literary writing and translation I have dealt with variety of assignments like script writing for educational documentaries, storyboard writing for E learning courses, copy writing for advertisements, case study report writing, technical and scientific translations and many more.

I am glad to mention that my story book for children has received the state literary award in the children’s literature section in 2013 and my translated fiction has received the state literary award for best translation in 2014.

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

A:  I am blessed with a strong and rich legacy of literature. My father (Dr. R. C. Dhere) was an erudite literatieur and scholar in the field of ancient literature, culture and folklore. I am born and brought up in a house where books are regarded as a major asset. Naturally I have a closer bond with language and literature. It is not just a medium of expression for me; but language is my identity. So in spite of having a post -graduate degree in science stream, I chose to focus on writing.

As regards translation, I have an intense passion for it. At the age of 22 I dared to start translating a classic and the best seller Gone with The Wind. It was my first ever translated work (It took 11 more years to see the light. It was published in 2009.) I have been in both literary and professional translations for last two decades and madly love translating fiction, especially children stories. My science background is an added advantage for me, since I am able to translate STEM content with more ease.

 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 entire story, first as a reader, to enjoy it. Second time when I read the same, I start retelling it to myself. It helps me to avoid the literal, word to word translation. Then I begin with actual translation. Even after completing the entire story, I read and re read it loudly to bring it maximum close to the original work, still giving the flavor of Marathi language and culture.

It is really difficult to tell the time required for a translation. It can happen so that a seemingly simple and short story is too difficult to translate. In such cases it requires more than 3-4 drafts to make it final and satisfactory.

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

Similar to original works, translated stories are treasures of entertainment for children. But more than that translations abate the young readers to know different regions with different cultures. In short they introduce children to the broader world and connect them with the distant people. These bonds help for their intellectual and emotional development. Moreover, translations increase the vocabulary and linguistic skills of children, since many a times new word are either coined or used creatively by the translator to bring the exact sense of the original content.  

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

Right from my school age, I happened to read variety of translated books. I read translations of Rabindranath Tagore, Sharadchandra Chattopadhyay, Premchand, Tolstoy, Maxim Gorky, Arthur Conan Doyle and many more. When I began with the translations it was at the back of the mind that the young readers must enjoy the translations like I did. The translated work should be as enriched and interesting as the original work so that children will be able to relate themselves with it. I consciously make it a habit to retell a story to myself, assuming that I am a child. This makes me think and select the appropriate words and phrases that would be close to the children’s world. I am always agile that my translations should help them cross socio-cultural boundaries without feeling they are doing so. I am of the opinion that translation is not entirely related to developing skills. It is related to your ability to unite with soul of the original author and what it requires is sensitivity, more than the skills.

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

A: I have translated more than 30 stories for Pratham Books. It is really a wonderful bouquet of variety of stories originated by writers across India. Actually it is difficult to name any one but I have enjoyed translating ‘’What Happened to the Old Shawl?”  and 'Neelumbera on a Full Moon Night”.

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

A: There are two major challenges in translating English fiction. Socio-cultural disparities and different literary expressions create hurdles in translation process. Secondly, it is as difficult as a rope walk. On one hand you have to stick to the original work (means you have limited freedom) and on the other hand you should be careful not to create a corrupt copy.

When there are no parallel words or phrases in Marathi, I squeeze out the essence of the content and re formulate the same so as to bring an original flavor. The words I use may not be of the same meaning but they underline the same emotions.

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

A: It is an ultimate delight when your creation is the hands of those for whom it is targeted. I do feel that translation is a creation just like the original work.  In fact, it is more difficult and complex a creation since you have limited freedom.

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

A: As far as I know, currently we are translating the stories mostly from English or Hindi. We can also do the other way. Stories from regional languages can also be translated into English and Hindi and then taking them into other regional languages.  As for expanding the reach, we can always join hands with the schools and NGOs working for children.

Q: Can you tell us a bit about the xx translation community?

A: Marathi has a long tradition of translated works. Many known authors have translated very good books from both regional and foreign languages. For last couple of decades many versatile translators have come up in Marathi and they have effectively translated both fiction and non -fiction work from variety of languages. The number of youngsters interested in translations is also on rise. Translation as a profession is also blooming with speed for last few years.

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

A: In my opinion, a sensitive and creative person having literary skills will be able to translate children’s stories.

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

 A: I would like to suggest them that keep reading, keep writing and keep rehearsing until you are able to bring the intensity of the original work in the translation. Let translation become your passion, before it becomes your profession.

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

A: Stories by Hans Chistian Anderson. He is a Danish author. And his enigmatic fairy tales are translated into English by H. P.Paull and some other writers. Some of his stories have also been translated earlier into Marathi. But there is surely much scope to retranslate those and take up some more. They are really mesmerizing.  

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Jaya Bhattacharji Rose is an independent international publishing consultant based in New Delhi. Her blog has had over 4.6m visitors and continues to grow. Jaya has written columns for BusinessWorld and the Hindu and her articles, interviews, comments and book reviews have also appeared in Frontline, The Book Review, DNA, Outlook The Guardian, BBC Radio, Radio France and The Independent. She has also been a judge for the Crossword Awards for Children Literature. 

Q:  Some time back the Guardian ran a piece asking "Where are the new translated children's books?" Why do you think translation is a necessity, especially in children's book?

Translation is very important to make literature available in its amazing variety and diversity for children. Recently, I was chairing a panel discussion at the launch of the Scholastic India KFRR report. The school children on the panel were discussing animatedly how much they enjoyed reading Tintin, Asterix and even Gopi Gain Bagha Bain by Upendra Kishore Roychowdhury. Yet they did not know they were reading translated literature. But as KFRR says "more than three-quarters of children (77%) believe reading books for fun is extremely or very important." If that is the key then introducing children to translated literature will also make them hopefully sensitive as adults to other communities and cultures too.

Q: What are the biggest challenges for translators and translated works today?

I think the challenges vary from project to project and region to region. Having worked on such projects in the past I would say that it would be translating as accurately as possible in the destination language without losing the cultural connotation and relevance. It is not always easy to find the equivalent word for the language of origin into the language of destination. A good example of this is "Apple, Bear, Pear" by Emily Gravett is a lovely simple picture book that won the Kate Greenaway medal. Immediately there were translation offers. It is a play on English words using the comma as evident in the title but in a European translation  it became a lengthy line that even messed up the layout.

But much of this is going to change rapidly and will be reduced to mere academic discourse. If you have been monitoring the news recently you would have heard of Google's Neural Machine Translation ( GNMT). This technology is going to change the game of translations in publishing just as the recent announcement by Amazon India to launch Kindle in multiple Indian languages. Once technology comes into play and moves from being a culturally sophisticated skill to a functional skill the market will explode and new unforseen and unheard of challenges will emerge, most of which I hope will be moving in the positive direction.

As reported by technology blog Tech2:

"In September, Google switched from Phrase-Based Machine Translation (PBMT) to Google Neural Machine Translation (GNMT) for handling translations between Chinese and English. The Chinese and English language pair has historically been difficult for machines to translate, and Google managed to get its system close to human levels of translation by using bilingual people to train the system ... Google planned to add GNMT for all 103 languages in Google Translate. That would mean feeding in data for 103^2 language pairs, and the artificial intelligence would have to handle 10,609 models.

Google tackled this problem by allowing a single system to translate between multiple languages ... When the translation knowledge was shared, curious Google engineers checked if the A.I. could translate between language pairs it was not explicitly trained on before. This was the first time machine based translation has successfully translated sentences using knowledge gained from training to translate other languages."

In other words, Google Translate's A.I. actually created its own language, to enable it to better translate other languages.

Q. Following from the above question, while we do have stories being translated from English to other languages for children, is enough being done in reverse? How many original language books are being translated to English?

This really depends on the availability of funds and human resources (skilled translators,editors, designers, illustrators, production teams). English is a powerful language and has funds available since it is a language of social aspiration, legal engagement and finance. So it is relatively easier to make literature available from it for translation into other languages. It is certainly not easy to assess how many "original language books" are being translated into English. This kind of a database does not exist in India. Remember much of the literature published in India is self-published so details are not easily available.  

Q: While there are somewhere around six or seven thousand languages on Earth today, about half of them have fewer than about 3,000 speakers and experts have predicted that even in a conservative scenario, about half of today's languages will become extinct within the next fifty to one hundred years. What, in your opinion, does a death of a language imply?

The moment there are no more younger speakers left and no literature available in a language it is the death knell. Language is always living and evolving. No language cannot be allowed to die. And this is possible by according respect to one's language and culture by introducing children to these languages and scripts via books, storycards etc. The marvellous work you do with StoryWeaver is a brilliant start.

Q. There is a huge demand/need being expressed to learn English these days, often at the cost of one's own mother tongue. What will the effect of this be on multilingual publishing and what can be done as an antidote?  

As I mentioned in the previous answer, English is the language of commerce, legalese and finance. So it has a clout like no other language in today's world. The effect on multilingual publishing will that there will be minimal resources available and yet this very same diversity will be appreciated.  

Q.You once mentioned how few inclusive spaces there were for children's books... what does it mean for a space (digital or otherwise) to be inclusive ?  

To be 'truly' inclusive is once again challenging. Pratham Books is doing a very good job by being inclusive in terms of the number of languages you are creating books in, inclusive by keeping your books affordable and inclusive by  addressing different aspects. I’ve written about ‘Literature and Inclusiveness’ on my blog.  

Q. Tell us about your childhood reads?

Oh my goodness! This is tough. I read everything that came my way. My mother told us stories including of the books she was teaching. So we were introduced to Shakespeare when we were small. But then there was much, much more. As I grew older I inherited libraries. So childhood reads would include a lot of English literature.

Q: Looking back, what else would you wanted to read but couldn’t because of the language barrier?

I am not very sure since I only read English and Hindi. I cannot possibly regret not knowing languages. If a good translation exists so be it.

Thank you Jaya for taking the time to answer our questions. You can following Jaya on Twitter here.

Ps. StoryWeaver had a twitter chat with Jaya in early December about books, translations and reading. If you missed it, you can read all the tweets here.

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