We're very fortunate to have such an wonderfully enthusiastic community of readers, authors, translators and illustrators. This International Translation Day, we'd like to share with you the reflections of a group of translators who attended our Bengali Hackathon earlier this year. The contributors to this article all belong to the student community. While Sreejita Majumdar did her schooling from Patha Bhavan, graduation from Calcutta University and post graduation diploma in Public Relations and Multimedia. She has also done an internship with the news channel 24 Ghanta and is currently learning Spanish from JU. Her hobby is painting and her passion lies in football, films and animals. Ankita Basu has done her schooling from B.D Memorial and is currently pursuing her graduation from Calcutta University. She's passionate about films, books and writing. Banhi Sarkar has done her schooling from Gokhale Memorial and graduated from Calcutta University. She loves films and books as well and is interested in writing. 

A bunch of us got the unique opportunity to take part in a translation workshop as arranged by StoryWeaver on the weekend of 30th June and 1st July, 2018. The group included people from diverse backgrounds, such as school teachers, students, college professors and language enthusiasts. We had a great time translating quite a few stories over the two days and decided to give a feedback on the same so that it helps in further improving the translation workshops to be held in future.

It was a very unique experience in terms of both learning and working on the given stories set to translate. Even for participants in the group who have been to other translation workshops before, this one was more engaging and enjoyable with a much more prompt delivery of the assigned work. We all got to meet a lot of new people with the same interests and passion in the field of translation. The fact that the participants ranged from school teachers to college professors to students made it a very dynamic group to work with. The coordinators provided a very free and relaxed environment, which made the experience all the more pleasurable.

It was definitely a challenge to work on children’s stories. None of us had realized previously that translating for adults and translating for children could be two completely opposite poles of the same spectrum. But working in small teams and pre-assigned two to three stories eased the way. We could engage in discussions, ask for advice when in confusion and help out others, all within the stipulated time. The two days period seemed to fly by, and though it was tiresome, it was equally productive and satisfying.

However, we did face some challenges in the way which led us to discussions on ways to improve the experience even further for future translators. There were certain aspects we all agreed on regarding the difficulties we faced. We realized since our target audience is children, care needs to be taken to make sure that the words we choose not just have literal significance but that they are both easy and understandable and can fall under the regular vocabulary of a child. For example, in this story there were quite a few words that had to be translated keeping in mind the vocabulary of the children of level 2 in the Bengali translation of  The Louse's New House.

The Bengali language is so vast, rich and diverse that it becomes a further challenge to aptly translate all kinds of work from English to Bengali across the entire expanse of its existence. Throughout Bengal, there exists numbers of dialects and forms of the language. As a result, it is important to keep in mind that the translated work should be universal in the sense that it can appeal to a child of both the urban city and the rural village within the same state. For example, we faced situations where a particular word may sound totally innocent on hearing at first, but on further probe, we discovered it may have a negative connotation in a different dialect. So a detailed knowledge about such contradictory words and situations need to be there within the team for effective translation. Also, in the following story for example, there was much pondering over the correct translated word of ‘smooth’ in Bengali that could rightfully carry over the intended meaning from the English to the Bengali version of the story Stick Your Tongue Out!  

There were quite a few words related to sound that more or less all the teams came across in one or all of their stories during translation. One such example is Miss Laya Starts Her Fantastic Motorbike in Bengali. That’s when we faced difficulty to find the exact word in Bengali that would correspond to the one already used in English. Since it’s quite common to come across such words in children’s stories, we feel it would be great if there was a reference book where all commonly appeared sound words could be listed along with their regional counterparts and their varying connotations. That would save a lot of time and confusion the next time we translate any story containing such words.

Since this is truly a one of a kind endeavour, it would be highly appreciated if more publicity could be done regarding this platform. More schools need to be aware of it so that they can include the exercise of reading translated stories to their children across different classrooms and thereby lead to a much wider readership. As already discussed at the end of our workshops, many teachers who participated in it decided to take it forward to their schools and start a curriculum based on reading of these translated stories to their students.

It would be very effective if the future workshops could involve people from varying regions and state, in short a cross-regional/national workshop where teachers, translators and writers could participate and interact on a much wider scale to bring about more and more significant children’s stories to light. This could lead to a discovery of more unique works, which usually remain confined within the geographical boundaries, and can reach more children beyond language and cultural barriers.It’s important to keep a balance between the variety of stories being translated and worked upon for children. New ideas and concepts are always welcoming, but we could also work on the classics in each language which may be quite famous in that particular language and thus known to the children of that mother tongue but perhaps remain unknown in other languages. This could help translate the works of authors in regional languages as well.

 

In short, it was a beautiful and cherishable experience that we all hope to continue beyond the workshop in future. We wish all the very best and give our warm wishes to the entire team of StoryWeaver and Pratham Books for their future endeavours.

You can read all the stories translated at the hackathon here. 

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Post by Purvi Shah, Director - StoryWeaver

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We must admit, we’ve been watching the number next to Reads with bated breath for the past few days.

One crore. Ten million.

However you interpret the numerals, it’s tens of thousands of reads, and it puts a massive smile on our faces to think of children across the world enjoying reading books on StoryWeaver.

It’s also a very, very special milestone to cross.

 

Special, for children like Manisha who speak Gondi (an Indian tribal language), but until recently had no access to books in their mother tongue, and who read their very first storybook in Gondi, which was created on, downloaded and printed from StoryWeaver.

 

Special, for teachers like Gangadhar, who keep their students spellbound and build their reading and pronunciation skills with Readalongs.

 

Special, for partners like Room to Read and Asia Foundation who help underserved children read.

 

Special, for community libraries like The Community Library Project in Delhi, who help dozens of children read and enjoy these books, even during difficult times during the pandemic, when they were unable to visit the physical library.

 

Special, for young readers like Vaishnavi, who haven’t been to school for months due to the pandemic, but are continuing their reading journey using books from StoryWeaver.

 

And special for us, because it captures everything we stand for: Joy, Inclusion, Empowerment and Integrity.

It’s been five thrilling years of creativity, innovation, and collaboration. And the best part? 10 million is already in the rearview mirror, as we fly on towards the next milestone.

Thank you for reading this far, and if you like our work, do consider partnering with us, and supporting us— there are millions of children still to discover the joy of reading.

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Help us continue to give children free access to books. Click here to support StoryWeaver.

If you are part of an organization that promotes reading and learning among children, and you would like to partner with us, write to us at [email protected].

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UPDATE: 'The Elephant Bird' is available to read in  Assamese , Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Odia, Sanskrit , Tamil , Telugu , Bengali, Malayalam, Punjabi, Konkani  and English .

Pratham Books' One Day, One Story is back! The nationwide storytelling campaign is in its 5th year. Through the campaign, we encourage our community of volunteers to use one book to conduct reading sessions, free of cost with children from under-served communities. For more details about the event click here.

This year's chosen story is The Elephant Bird by Arefa Tehsin, Sumit Sakhuja and Sonal Goyal. The story about a magical bird, and a brave, curious child is also the tale of an unlikely friendship and rare courage. We totally love this one!

Last year 2500+ storytellers joined us to take The Boy and the Drum across India (and some other parts of the world!). This story was translated to 7 languages on StoryWeaver. The more languages a story is translated in, the more it will travel to be read and enjoyed by children.

This is where we need your help. 

Yes, you guessed it right - we need translation volunteers for this year's story. The Elephant Bird' is already availble in English, Hindi, Kannada, Gujarati, Telugu, Urdu and Marathi. Your contribution to add a version of this story on StoryWeaver will go a long way in multiplying the number of PB Champs' reading sessions and in turn, help reach more and more kids. Wouldn’t that be lovely?  

We need all the translations to be on the site before 20th August, 2016.

If you have any queries please write to us at [email protected]

Here's a quick and easy video tutorial on how to translate stories on StoryWeaver. Once you've seen it, you can head over to the site to start translating 'The Elephant Bird'

P.s: If you're interested in joining us as a PB Champ this year,  click here to enrol.

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