More Stories, More Joy: Read & Translate 'The Story of Stories'
9 years ago
Who doesn’t like more stories? We certainly do and we know you do too :)! With all the love pouring in for the four published stories for the ‘Weave-a-Story’ campaign, we decided to add four more fantastic stories from four awesome authors. All of October, every week, we will bring a new story for you to read, translate, share and tell. The aim is still the same, taking these 8 stories far and beyond by translating it in as many languages as possible, to be read by thousands of children. 8 stories -100 translations!
This week’s edition of ‘Weave-a-Story‘ is an intriguing tale of a journalist Bear called ‘The Story of Stories’, written by Roopa Pai and imaginatively illustrated by Prashant Miranda for the #6FrameStoryChallenge.
“In a happy, happy, happy forest lives Journalist Bear who is sad because he can’t find a ‘BREAKING NEWS’ story. A Journalist Bear without a ‘BREAKING NEWS’ story, can you imagine! Then comes along Singing Sardarji who helps Bear see who he really is. Read this story which celebrates the power and magic of stories, and the people who weave them into being.”
Click here to read the story and translate it into a language you love.
Note for Translators:
Author of the story, Roopa Pai has a few thoughts and tips for translators as they get on to translating this story. A note from her:
In this story, there are certain phrases that could be tricky for translators, because it was written by someone who thinks in English. However, I’ve tried to keep much of it pan-Indian, even universal, in context, so that it would work in any geography or with any language.
Here are my thoughts and tips.
1. Forest-By-The-Sea and Somewheristan should be translated into whatever language, and not retained as such, even though they could be viewed as ‘proper nouns’ and therefore untranslatable. Somewheristan in my mind would translate to ‘Yello-ond-kade-istan’ in Kannada, or even better, because ‘istan’ doesn’t sit as naturally in Kannada as in Hindi, as ‘Yellowondooru’, In Hindi, ‘Kahindooristan’ would work. Forest-by-the-Sea in Hindi would be ‘Dariyabaajuban’ or something similar, and in Kannada could be Kadalakaadu.
2. ‘Breaking News’ could remain as Breaking News – I think everyone in India understands that concept!!
3. The messages that Telephone Voice people say are eminently translatable into any Indian language, since people of that state / region are very familiar with recorded phone messages in the local language. If the story is to be translated into a language that is not an official language of any state, the translator could go with Hindi – yeh number maujood nahin hai, krupaya jaanch le – which everyone has heard on the phone at some time.
4. At one point in the story, Bear is thinking he should be a Sweeper Bear, or a Waiter Bear, or a Telephone Voice Bear. The Telephone Voice Bear has to stay, but translators could choose professions other than Sweeper and Waiter for Bear, which are more natural to the context of the language. Whatever profession you choose for Bear, it should be something that doesn’t require any particular education or skill – something anyone at all can do.
5. The song that the Singing Sardarji sings need not be translated word for word, as long as the sense of the song is conveyed.
We hope armed with this knowledge, you are ready with your keyboards and language expertise to take this story to the many children eager to read this in their own language!
The 4 stories launched till now include- Anushka Ravishankar & Priya Kuriyan’s ‘Its All the Cat’s Fault’ , ‘Ammu’s Puppy’ by Sowmya Rajendran and Soumya Menon, a Hindi story ‘???? ?? ??? ?????? ?????’, by Rukmini Banerji and Kaveri Gopalakrishnan and a Tamil story, ‘??????????? ????’ written by N Chokkan & illustrated by Megha Vishwanath. Read and translate these and many other stories on StoryWeaver : an open source multilingual platform for children’s stories.
