StoryWeaver Turns 4: Thank you for being with us every step of the way
Posted by Remya Padmadas on September 09, 2019Here’s a post by Purvi Shah, Director – StoryWeaver, to mark a special time in StoryWeaver’s world: Our 4th birthday
Say hello to Manisha, a young girl from the Mudia community that lives in Central India. The Mudia community speak Gondi, an indigenous language with 2 million speakers. Despite the large population, surprisingly, this is the first book Manisha has ever read in her own language!
The world has made an ambitious commitment to the goal of universal literacy by 2030, where all children will be able to read. For this to be achieved, having high quality reading materials in languages that children use and understand is essential. But the global book gap means that millions of children like Manisha lack access to these critically needed reading resources.
StoryWeaver was launched 4 years ago on International Literacy Day to address the inequities that exist for children’s books: not enough books, in not enough languages, and very poor access. When we launched, our goal was to create a participatory framework where content creators and users could collaborate with each other to create joyful reading material in multiple languages. We believe this will have a multiplier effect to address the scarcity of multilingual reading resources that exists in India and globally.
The book that Manisha was holding was created on StoryWeaver by a group of 20 educator volunteers who translated 300 books into Gondi, reviewed and published them on the platform in just a few days. The books were then printed locally and distributed in Manisha’s village as part of a community literacy programme.
Today, the platform hosts 15,500 books in over 200 languages of the world. This scale would not have been possible without the power of collaboration:
Publishers like Room to Read amd Pratham Books, who have open licensed their content at scale. Linguists and translators who have introduced us to new languages. Educators in every nook and corner of the world who have welcomed us into their classrooms and the hearts of their students.
With millions of users from over 150 countries, StoryWeaver is harnessing the power of open licences, collaboration, and technology to create a societal platform that is providing open access to thousands of books in local languages to nurture the next generation of readers and learners.
None of this would have been possible without your support. Thank you. Times 4!
(We would love for you to join the conversation by leaving your thoughts in the Comments section, or on social media: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
comments (3)World Book & Copyright Day 2020: Celebrating the wonders of open licensing and collaboration with a very special new book
Posted by Pallavi Kamath on April 23, 2020World Book & Copyright Day is an international initiative to promote the enjoyment of books and reading. By championing books and copyright, UNESCO stands up for creativity, diversity and equal access to knowledge.1
Aparna Kapur, Editor at Pratham Books, writes about the making of ‘The Novel Coronavirus: We Can Stay Safe’ - made possible through an amazing collaborative effort.
‘The Novel Coronavirus: We Can Stay Safe’ is a book aimed to help children better understand what they can do to stay safe during this pandemic. The book isn't just special because it was created in ten days, or because it's available in five languages. What makes this book remarkable is that it involves thirteen of India's best children's book writers and illustrators, and characters from seven of Pratham Books' most popular books - all released under the CC BY 4.0 license, and free to read on StoryWeaver.
Above everything else, artists define themselves by their work. Their words, their pictures, their design -- these are closest to their hearts. So when creators agree to release their work under Creative Commons, it is their way of showing their trust in the publisher, and a commitment to a common goal. In our case, that goal is 'to see a book in every child's hand'.
For the last 15 years, Pratham Books has been working towards this goal by publishing affordable openly licensed picture books, and making them available for free on StoryWeaver - ensuring they can be accessed and enjoyed by children all over the world, some of whom may not otherwise have had access to books. This has helped us create a sense of community with our creators. Which is why when we asked them to be a part of this project, nearly everyone responded within minutes, telling us that they would be happy to.
In the current state of things, when everyone needs to stay indoors as much as possible, the value of digital content is hard to ignore. The internet is helping all of us stay connected to each other, but also to things that give us joy and comfort. By openly licensing content, we aren't just removing the locks from our doors, we are throwing the door wide open and welcoming everyone in.
The book is already available in five languages. And with the CC BY 4.0 license, and the community-based StoryWeaver platform, people all over the world will be able to translate it, or use the images to make their own posters or books, or download a PDF and share it with people.
Multilingual. Generous. Collaborative. Worldwide.
When open licensing is done right, it can do wonders.
Read, download, translate ‘The Novel Coronavirus: We Can Stay Safe’ on StoryWeaver here.
A big thank you to the wonderful team of creators and experts who made this possible.
The book is written and illustrated by Bijal Vachharajani, Deepa Balsavar, Jayesh Sivan, Lavanya Naidu, Maegan Dobson Sippy, Meera Ganapathy, Nimmy Chako, Priya Kuriyan, Rajiv Eipe, Renuka Rajiv, Sanjana Kapur, Sheena Deviah and Sunaina Coelho. Thank you to Anirban Mahapatra, Dr N S Prashanth, Shambhavi Naik and Dr Tanya Seshadri for their help with fact-checking.
Bringing more Tibetan storybooks to children
Posted by Remya Padmadas on October 04, 2019Tenzin Choedon is a teacher, who is presently working as the headmistress at Mewoen Tsuglag Petoen School run by Sambhota Tibetan Schools Society under the Department of Education, CTA, Dharamsala. She loves reading and writing poetry. Her husband, Tenzin Dorjee has been working as the head of Traditional and Modern Academic Section, Department of Education, CTA since June 2016.
In this blog post, the husband-wife duo write about being part of a translation sprint to translate storybooks into Tibetan for Pratham Books.
Our relation with Pratham Books had been really wonderful and we owe this to MES (Manjushri Educational Services) for providing us the opportunity to translate 5 of their STEM stories. Our relation became stronger later after the interactive session we had in the Tibet Fund office at Mcleod Ganj followed by another informal meeting at Dhauladhar, Dharamshala. Just recently we translated four of the stories on the theme 'Water' for Pratham Books. We are grateful to the Pratham Books team for believing in us for this important translation work.
On 3rd September, I along with five teachers and 25 students from our school had the opportunity to be part of a translation sprint during which we translated a total of 15 level 1 storybooks from Pratham Books with Mr. Buddha Kyab and Mr. Ngawang Tsetan (MES Team members). It was a wonderful experience.
Pictures from the Tibetan translation sprint conducted by MES with teachers and students of Piteon school in Dharamshala.
Before being part of the translation team for the translation of STEM stories into Tibetan language, my husband and I had no experience of translating stories. Only after being involved in the translation work, many facts about translation work gradually unfolded for us. The translation of children storybooks may appear to be easy one for those who are not involved in the process but our past experiences had made one thing very clear - writing and translating children stories is not at all an easy task. It requires a lot of thoughtful considerations and patience to draft, reread, review and edit the story at your end as the translator before making the final draft to be reviewed by the reviewing team.
The most difficult part in translating a story from English to another language is deciding on a child-friendly language which does not affect the grammatical structure of the language or the flavour of the story. The most challenging part is the time you have to devote for the translation work but if you are interested then you will be able to meet this challenge happily. Moreover, to be able to do well in translating children stories one has to have a good understanding of children's language and their taste.
Stories translated by Tenzin Dorjee into Tibetan
Being a part of the translation team for STEM stories and our experience thereafter with Pratham Books had really changed our outlook towards children literature besides giving us a very rich learning experience. We are highly indebted and grateful to everyone involved in our journey as translators (beginners), though not full fledged. We are also grateful to our daughters for reading each of our translated stories as a trial for further changes before our final drafts, on behalf of the rest of the children. Their reading of the stories reflect their understanding, and this has been really very helpful in making the necessary changes that we as adults might have failed to see.
We thank Pratham Books for this wonderful initiative and for your contribution towards Children Literature. Lastly, we wish the whole team of Pratham Books a very Happy Translation Day!
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