A big round of applause to all the participants for the fantastic response to our contest Retell, Remix, Rejoice 2020, which aims at finding and encouraging translation talent in 10 languages: Bahasa Indonesia, Chatino, Gondi, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Tamil, Telugu, and Vietnamese.

We are delighted to introduce you to the wonderful judges - we are incredibly grateful to them for lending us their expertise and time.

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Bahasa Indonesia - Maharani Aulia

Maharani Aulia has written dozens of stories and translated over a hundred titles from English to Indonesian. Her works have been featured in local and national media, and published as books. 

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Chatino  (In collaboration with Endless Oaxaca Multilingüe) - Emiliana Cruz and Isaura de los Santos Mendoza

Emiliana Cruz

Emiliana Cruz originaria de Cieneguilla, San Juan Quiahije, Oaxaca. Es antropóloga lingüista. obtuvo el grado de doctor en antropología lingüística en la Universidad de Texas en Austin y actualmente es profesora-investigadora en [CIESAS-CDMX]. Ha realizado investigación y campo en el Valle de Yakima (Washington State, EUA) con jóvenes jornaleros; en la región chatina en Oaxaca; y Chiapas. Sus líneas de investigación son diversas e interdisciplinarias destacándose principalmente en el ámbito de educación, derechos lingüísticos, territorio, documentación y revitalización lingüística. Ha recibido el premio Distinguished Community Engagement Award otorgado por la Universidad de Massachusetts. Su trabajo se distingue por una amplia experiencia de colaboración comunitaria, además es parte del colectivo “Diálogos entre Académicos Indígenas”. En sus publicaciones se destaca su reciente publicación “evitemos que nuestro futuro se nos escape de las manos: tomás cruz lorenzo y la nueva generación chatina”, este fue el resultado de un trabajo colectivo con chatinos.

Emiliana Cruz is a linguistic anthropologist originally from Cieneguilla, San Juan Quiahije, Oaxaca, Mexico. She earned her doctorate in linguistic anthropology from the University of Texas at Austin and is currently a professor-researcher at [CIESAS-CDMX]. She has conducted research and field work in the Yakima Valley (Washington State, USA) with young day laborers; in the Chatino region in Oaxaca; and Chiapas. Her lines of research are diverse and interdisciplinary, standing out mainly in the field of education, linguistic rights, territory, documentation and linguistic revitalization. She has received the Distinguished Award Community Engagement Award from the University of Massachusetts. Her work is distinguished by a wide experience of community collaboration, and is also part of the collective "Dialogues between Indigenous Academics". Her recent publication "Let's prevent our future from slipping out of our hands: Tomás Cruz Lorenzo and the new Chatino generation ” was the result of a Chatino collective project.

Isaura de los Santos Mendoza

Isaura de los Santos Mendoza es originaria de San Miguel Panixtlahuaca, Juquila, Oaxaca. Actualmente es una estudiante de doctorado en la Universidad de Massachusetts, Amherst. Su proyecto se centra en la literacidad de la lengua chatino. Asimismo, colabora en el proyecto de documentación de la lengua chatino donde elabora textos y materiales sobre la gramática de su lengua natal.  Su pasión es la enseñanza y traducción de textos a la lengua chatino.

Isaura de los Santos Mendoza is originally from San Miguel Panixtlahuaca, Juquila, Oaxaca. Her passion is teaching and translating texts into the Chatino language.She is currently a PhD student at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her project focuses on the literacy of the Chatino language. She also works on collaborative projects for the documentation of Chatino, where she develops texts and materials on the grammar.

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Gujarati - Jayant Meghani

Jayant Meghani has a postgraduate degree  in librarianship from the M.S. University, Vadodara. He was a librarian for eight years, before starting Prasar, a bookshop  that continues to run. He also works as an off-site editor-translator with Navajivan, Gandhiji's publishing house in Ahmedabad.

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Hindi - Priyanka Gautam

Priyanka Gautam is a Hindi translator and research scholar. She has translated many books with multiple educational organisations.  

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Kannada - Hema S

Hema S has translated articles, stories, and poems from Hindi and English to Kannada. Her translated works have appeared in popular Kannada dailies like Prajavani, monthly magazines like Mayura and Kasthuri, and online literary portal Kendasampige. She is known for translating Akira Kurasova's autobiography to Kannada, and the same has been published episodically on Kendasampige. Hema's published Kannada translations include Abbas Kirasthomi's poems collection titled "Hesarillada Hoo" by Sanchaya Publishers and "Uriva Banada Kogilegalu", published by Srushti.     

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Malayalam - Parvathi Aithal

Parvathi Aithal has translated 40 literary works in 5 languages -  English, Kannada, Malayalam, Hindi and Tulu. She has also written 28 original books and penned short stories, novels, essays, plays, monographs, book reviews.

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Marathi - Meera Joshi

Meera is a veteran journalist and  has been associated with Pratham Books as a reviewer and Marathi language expert for a long time.

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Tamil - Salai Selvam

Salai Selvam is a Tamil writer, interested in education, childhood studies, and children’s literature. Her writings have appeared in several Tamil feminist journals and newspapers. For over three decades she has been working on literacy and gender issues in rural India. Currently, she is with an educational foundation that supports teacher education.

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Telugu - Suresh Kosaraju

Suresh is the editor at Manchipustakam where he manages translation, editing and publication. has been associated with Pratham Books as a Telugu language expert for many years. 

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Stay tuned for the results of Retell, Remix, Rejoice 2020!

The winner(s) will have a one-on-one mentoring and feedback session with an editorial expert. The winner(s) will also receive a print copy of the translated book (only for participants based in India), and the winning translation will be published and highlighted as a Recommended title on StoryWeaver.

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Illustrations by Aindri C, from Shoecat Thoocat, written by Shalini Srinivasan and published by Pratham Books.

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Today (February 21, 2017) is International Mother Language Day,  a worldwide, annual observance to promote awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity and multilingualism.  It also marks the close of ‘Freedom to Read’: StoryWeaver's campaign through which we pledged to help create stories in 15 new languages for children to read and enjoy in their mother tongue languages.  

As a report on mother tongue literacy from UNESCO reaffirmed “children should be taught in a language they understand, yet as much as 40% of the global population does not have access to education in a language they speak or understand”.

Suzanne Singh, Chairperson Pratham Books says, “Mother tongue literacy has a very important role to play in the overall development of a child. And stories in mother tongue languages help children introduce new words and ideas into a child’s world and expand the boundaries of their minds. The ‘Freedom to Read’ campaign was our effort to make many more stories available in languages that are underserved and underrepresented in the mainstream ”.

Languages from around the world

Through the Freedom to Read campaign, we have helped community users, translators and NGOs add stories in 13 new languages in the last 6 months. These languages represent the linguistic diversity of the world: from tribal languages to endangered languages to the mainstream.
 

 

Not-for-profits like The Rosetta Foundation and Translators Without Borders have helped us further our campaign mission with translation support. Eminent linguists like Dr. Ganesh Devy, scholars such as Professor Sukantha Chaudhry and book champions like Sujata Noronha and Jaya Bhattacharji Rose have been instrumental in helping identify languages in need of joyful stories for children.

Community crusaders 

The success of our Freedom to Read campaign wouldn't have been possible without our amazing community! Here are some of their inspiring stories. 

Jèrriais  a Norman language spoken in Jersey, off the coast of France has been in decline over the past century. Anthony Scott Warren, one of the few Jerriais teachers left in the region  discovered StoryWeaver through the All Children Reading Website, and requested that we add this ‘threatened’ language to the platform. Read more about how he and his colleagues plan to use StoryWeaver to teach the next generation Jerriais.

Muhamadreza Bahadur reached out to us to add Kurdish which is categorised as ‘an endangered language’ to StoryWeaver. Muhamadreza shared that he was keen to translate children’s stories to the language for two main purposes; promoting literacy in the languages among Kurdish children, and second, to help populate and enrich the corpus of literature in the language. Kurdish is available in both the Arabic and Latin script and 21 stories have been translated.

“Saurashtra is a language spoken by a group that migrated from Gujarat two centuries ago to cities like Madurai, Chennai and Tanjore. The script for this language is no longer in use and while it does follow the Devanagiri system, many native speakers cannot read Hindi. The only languages available to write Saurashtram are English and Tamil.” wrote Pavithra Solai Jowahar who asked us to add her mother language and has been busy translating stories and creating a book of rhymes in the languages. Read her story here.

Gnanaharsha Beligatamulla was searching the internet for stories to read to his child when he stumbled across StoryWeaver. “I really enjoyed reading the stories and the platform inspired me to want to translate stories to Sinhala for my daughter. If other parents can use the stories too that would be wonderful!” 

Rebeka Gemeinder’s mother tongue is Swiss German (Alemannisch), a language spoken in Switzerland, Austria, Germany and Liechtenstein. Unfortunately the language gets lost more and more everyday as she writes in a blog post for us.  Read it here.

Amelia Bonea  is a historian based at the University of Oxford. Originally from Romania, she has lived and worked in Japan, Australia, Germany and the United Kingdom. When not engaged in academic research, she likes to read and translate children’s literature, most recently on StoryWeaver. Read Amelia's lovely blog post on mother languages, here.   

Maharani Aulia has been one of our most prolific Indonesian translators. An author of children’s stories and non-fiction work, Maharani has written biographies and contributed to anthologies. She has also translated more than 110 children and young adult books from English into Indonesian.Her passion for children’s picture books, and dream of writing one lead her to Pratham Books StoryWeaver. “At first I just downloaded stories in English to learn. But my friend told me that we can also translate stories into our language. So, I translated one story and found I couldn’t stop because I wanted more stories on StoryWeaver to be read by Indonesians, especially children.” Maharani believes that India and Indonesia are similar. “The two countries are multicultural, have many interesting stories that should be spread and shared. So, I will still translate stories on your website. Maybe someday I will contribute with my original stories.”

In the classroom

Here are just a few of the ways in which educators, not-for-profits, librarians and language lovers are using StoryWeaver in the classroom.

Pragat Shikshan Sanstha works with 150 Zilla Parishad in the Phaltan district of Maharashtra where where they have set up community libraries. Volunteers from the community are appointed as coordinators for each library where they facilitate reading, conduct storytelling sessions and activities around the stories. All these libraries have one tablet and a small projector attached to it through which stories are projected. Pragat Shiksha Sanstha regularly downloads Marathi stories from StoryWeaver, puts them on pendrives which are then passed on to the 150 schools. The teachers project the stories via the tablet and the projector and conduct storytelling sessions.  Over 10000 children are impacted through this project.

Professor Sukantha Chaudhry, an eminent scholar and respected translator extended his supporter to our campaign. “I was so taken with the concept of StoryWeaver that I experimented in downloading and sharing some of the Bengali stories to  children in rural state schools. The students were from underserved backgrounds and often first generation learners.” Professor Chaudhry visited a few in schools in South Dinajpur district and in Birbhum district. “The response is overwhelming -- the children love the stories, in the utterly novel on screen digital format (which they are often seeing for the first time in their lives) and respond articulately with great enthusiasm. Their teachers indicated that it was certainly helping them hone their reading skills and, more importantly, acquire a love of reading.” Professor Chaudhry is working on a plan to make such offline reading sessions a regular practice in schools across the state of West Bengal through active teachers' networks.

Taking stories to children around the world

As all content on StoryWeaver is openly licensed, many organisations around the world have discovered, adapted, translated and used content from the platform. Little Thinking Minds has created the first ever online reading platform to advance Arabic literacy in schools. Read how they are using StoryWeaver, by clicking here.

The Asia Foundation’s Books for Asia program is selecting and adapting content from StoryWeaver’s collection of children’s books for local language e-book initiatives. Read more about their work here.

A big, big, thank you to our amazing community across the world who have translated and created stories and shared them with children. See you soon on www.storyweaver.org.in! Here's to more stories in more languages for more children to enjoy! If you'd like to translate stories in your mother tongue, and can't find it on StoryWeaver write to us at [email protected] and we'll add it!   

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The language referred to as Saṃskṛta, "the cultured language" has long been venerated as a sacred, philosophical and classical literary language. A lingua franca in Greater India, today it is listed as one of the 22 scheduled languages of the country.

The 2001 Indian census reported that 14,000 people identified Sanskrit as their mother tongue and in 2010 Uttarakhand was the first state in India to declare Sanskrit as an official language.

Long looked upon as a classical language, in recent years a movement to revive Sanskrit and introduce it to a new generation of learners has emerged. Podcasts, blogs and websites are attempting to take a language that traces its origins to approximately 1500 - 2000 BC and make it relevant to a generation that is plugged in to Google and YouTube. StoryWeaver is proud to play a small role in the efforts of one organisation working in this realm.

StoryWeaver’s Sanskrit Journey

When StoryWeaver launched in September 2015, the digital open source repository of children’s stories had 24 languages. Within weeks of the launch, requests for new language additions began trickling in. One of them was for Sanskrit.

The request came from volunteers at Samskrita Bharati, a not-for-profit organisation, with its headquarters in New Delhi, and branches in Bangalore, India and San Jose, California. The organisation has been working to revive Sanskrit, in a number of ways. Their  10-day spoken Sanskrit classes are extremely popular and routinely organized all over India and in many major countries worldwide. Students learn conversational Sanskrit in a two hour class every day over a ten-day period and develop the ability to start having Sanskrit conversations.

Vikram Gakhar and Sreenivasan Chakrapani, both volunteer their time and efforts at Samskrita Bharati. It was at Vikram’s behest that Sanskrit was added to StoryWeaver, and in the 10 months since StoryWeaver’s inception, a growing community of Sanskrit enthusiasts have helped created a repository of children’s stories in the language on the site.

Mr Chakrapani is a former electrochemical engineer with a flair for languages. Fluent in English, Tamil, Hindi, Kannada, Italian and German, he chose to pursue the study of Sanskrit post retirement.

“An  inner urge took me to Sanskrit soon after retirement. I studied full time and set a target to myself: to be able to write in Sanskrit in two years and teach in the third year. I then volunteered to work for Samskrita Bharathi. They trained me, despite my advanced age, to conduct spoken Sanskrit camps. Since then I am doing my part on a small scale.” shared Mr. Chakrapani.

Mr. Chakrapani has conducted 10 spoken Sanskrit camps so far, and was introduced to StoryWeaver by his colleague at Samskrita Bharathi: Vikram Gakhar.  

Vikram is a full time engineer and a part time Sanskrit student/teacher/translator. “I teach Sanskrit to a group of 10 students at my workplace and try to create new material in Sanskrit whenever I get time. I came to know about StoryWeaver from the Pratham Books team at a storytelling session I attended in 2015.”

Both Mr. Chakrapani and Vikram use StoryWeaver to translate stories to Sanskrit with the intent of sharing them with students to help them improve their spoken Sanskrit skills.

“Translating stories on StoryWeaver serves a number of purpose. Creating simple reading material is useful to new students of Sanskrit. It's a fun and effective learning tool for my students which helps them exercise their knowledge of grammar to form sentences.  Also, since the stories are available in multiple languages on the platform, one can read and understand the Sanskrit version first and then read the same story in a more familiar language to find out what they didn't get the first time.” shared Vikram.

74 year old Mr. Chakrapani  admitted to not being very tech savvy, but found himself using StoryWeaver to translate with ease, thanks to its simple and intuitive user interface.

“We have a large student group and we circulate the translated story link via emails. Even the elders on the group have responded well, with grown ups wanting to read these children’s stories!” enthused Mr. Chakrapani.

Sujatha, another active translator, traces the origins of her translation work on StoryWeaver back to Samskrita Bharati too. An alumnus of the 10 day speaking course, she started reading children’s stories to improve her language skills before progressing to novels in Sanskrit.

“Translating stories for kids is a good way to start one’s learning journey as the language is simpler and helps one gain confidence. StoryWeaver has been a wonderful place for me to practice and hone my skills. ”

Sujatha shares how a dedicated group of Sanskrit enthusiasts get together every evening to converse in Sanskrit and share resources.

“Our group logs on to a Google Hangout every night at 9pm. Whoever is free can join in. We speak to each other in Sanskrit about everything from current affairs to what we are reading. We also use a Google group to document and share the translations we create, including the ones on Storyweaver. This way, it’s easily accessible to everyone.”

 

 

 

StoryWeaver is proud to have collaborators like Mr. Chakrapani, Vikram, Sujatha and their fellow language lovers Suneesh Namboodiri, Govindraj Kasul, Sini Mukundan and Anand Viswanathan. We look forward to seeing more translations by them on the site, and hope that we can be instrumental in sharing them with more people across the world.

Further reading and listening

Sudharma, is the only Sanskrit newspaper in publication today. Printed in Mysore, Karnataka, you can read an online version here.

Balamodini is a podcast of Sanskrit stories read by Samskrita Bharati volunteers from the Sambhashana Sandesha Sanskrit Magazine.

 

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