Got an opportunity to
participate as a translator in the Asian Festival of Children’s Content (AFCC),
Build Your Book Hackathon 2023. The hackathon was organized by Pratham Books
and the Singapore Book Council. The event happened on the 13th and
14th of May.
Pratham Books initially sent
us guidelines and articles about translation. I was supposed to translate the children’s
picture books in the hackathon into Tamil.
On the 13th, the
organizers, author-illustrators, and translators joined a Zoom Event. After
introducing ourselves and talking about our favourite authors, the
author-illustrators and translators went into separate online rooms to discuss
their roles. Then the author-illustrators had to build their storyboards and the
text of the story. The translators were asked to join again on the 14th.
On the 14th, we translated
the stories. One translator each for Chinese, Malay, Vietnamese, Hindi, and
Tamil participated. The MS Word manuscripts of the six stories by the
author-illustrators were shared with us. And all the people involved could edit
and review the documents.
We wrote the translation of
each line of the picture book below the original language line. One original
book was in Chinese. For the story Snooze, it was funny to invent sounds in Tamil made by sleeping animals. For the story Owen the Wise, it was a challenge to find a Tamil word for the term Ignorts (meaning ignorant people). For the story Father's Hobby, for some fruits, we retained the English names and for other fruits, we wrote the Tamil words. For the story Tara and the Magic Glass, we had to give a gender for the magic glass as the original story was written that way. I gave a male gender to the Magic Glass. We had to translate the blurbs also. After, we completed
the translation, a reviewer in Pratham Books reviewed our documents.
I learned a lot from the
review comments. While translating, at least in the first version, we tend to
stay close to the original. This makes us bring in few literary or poetic words.
The reviewer used simple words and did not use an exact match for the original words. The
output was really lucid and good for children. I also made some changes based
on suggestions from the reviewer.
The translators were asked to
verify the final drafts of the picture books. After making a few suggestions,
the translations were good to go online on the Storyweaver website.
Here are my verified/official translations in Tamil and the links to the picture books on the Pratham Books Storyweaver website.
Are you looking for a
website where you can create your own children’s picture books in many languages,
have your name as the author of the book, and include images from award-winning
artists in your book? Then, check out the Pratham Books StoryWeaver website.
I first heard about the
StoryWeaver website in 2015. But, got interest to explore the website only in
September 2020. It has been a very interesting hobby and I have so far written
125+ children’s picture books – 40 original stories, 74 translations, and 12
re-levels.
To start with, you can
register your details on the website and select a display name or user name.
You can include a short profile of yourself if needed. Then you are ready to
create stories in StoryWeaver.
Creating Stories: It is good
to write down your story first in a Word document. You can plan the arrangement
and sequence of screens. Then, you can create a new story in StoryWeaver in a
horizontal or vertical format. There are many layouts available for the image
and text arrangement for the pages of the book. You can choose the one that is
most suitable for your story.
The website has more than 47165
images drawn by famous artists, cartoonists, amateurs, and professionals. So,
you can select a suitable image for each screen of your story from the existing
image bank. Alternatively, you can ask an illustrator you know to draw images
based on the storyboard you write in Word. Sometimes, I have drawn images and
also taken photographs for the story. You can upload your images in PNG or JPEG
format.
Sometimes, you get ideas for
a story when you look at the existing images. One method is to select an
illustrator and look at all the images they have drawn. Then you can combine a
set of similar images and make a new story. I created few stories like Mala and
Nila, and Arun goes to the market like that.
Once you publish a story, it
will appear under your name on the website and will also be seen under New
Arrivals when you select Read stories. The books are from Level 1 to Level 4
based on the number of words and difficulty of concepts. A new level for
emergent readers also has been introduced.
A few of my popular stories
are Chef Meena makes vegetable salad, A Giving Christmas, What Colour is this?
and New Year Resolutions. I have written two gamebooks and my friend's son
played the games with her for few weeks.
Few of my stories have been
translated by others into Hindi, Gujrathi, Spanish, Bahasa Indonesia, Korean,
and Esperanto.
Translations: You can
translate stories. If a translation already exists, you will get a message that
a translation exists. But, you can continue to create your version of the
translation. To translate from English to Tamil, for example, you can use
transliteration of changathi.com website. You can type the sound of the Tamil
word in English and you get the actual Tamil word as the output. Alternatively,
you can use Google Translate. But, in Google Translate sometimes there is confusion
between he and she. The meanings of some words are wrong and do not fit the
context of the story. So, you have to rework the text that you translate. There
are in-built translation suggestions in StoryWeaver.
I have translated books from
English to Tamil and Tamil to English. A few of my popular translations are Good
Habits, Will a Lion Brush its Teeth, and Natural Foods.
Re-Level: You can re-level
an existing story to a higher or lower level. You can retain the essence of the
original story. Or you can change the story when you re-level. You will be
using the image sequence of the original story but will give your twist to each
page/screen.
A few of my popular re-levels
are Buttermilk or Nimbu Pani and Zoya’s First Letter.
Audio-Visual format of my
stories: I have joined hands with Funtist Mani to make the audio-visual
versions of my stories. I’m one of the voice artists and another voice artist
is Archana Annampedu, a school student from the United States. You can view all the videos here.
Children’s Picture Book
WhatsApp Group: I have a small whatsapp group for sharing my stories. I have
joined hands with a few of the child illustrators in the group to create new
stories. Two of the young illustrators are 9-year-old Julakanti Ishitha Sree and
8-year-old Aanya Guntupalli. The children were very enthusiastic and completed
the drawings quickly and I was very happy working with them. The children have
also gone on to create their own stories in StoryWeaver.
My Book in the BookSpring Website: My picture book, "Why you need a Job" has been featured in the BookSpring website of Austin, Texas, US for a weekly theme of 'When I Grow Up' for 6 to 8 year olds. So happy about it.
De-activated Stories: There
are some copyrighted images on the website. If you accidentally use a
copyrighted image in your story, during the review process the image and your
story will be pulled down. But, they give you an option to change the image and
re-publish your story again. If an image does not meet the standards of the
website, the stories using the image are de-activated. You get mail from them
whenever your story is translated or your story is pulled down.
CC BY 4.0 License: The
stories and images created in StoryWeaver have the Creative Commons CC B Y 4.0
license. The license allows users to share, remix, transform, and re-distribute
even for commercial purposes. The attribution to the source from StoryWeaver
has to be mentioned. You get the attribution text when you download a story
from StoryWeaver.
The news of StoryWeaver has
spread far and wide and my friends in Ireland Muthamizh Mandram are exploring
the website to teach Tamil to Indian kids in Ireland. With 33380 stories, 11176568
reads, and 289 languages, StoryWeaver is no wonder going places.
I have few regular and eager
readers and that motivates me to continue creating new books. If you would like
to draw illustrations for my books, please send your samples to annieblogs74@gmail.com. I can send you
a storyboard that suits your style. Happy Reading!
Happy Ugadi, to all those who celebrate. The audio-visual of the children's picture book 'Happy Ugadi' is shared below. The illustrations for this book was by nine-year-old Ishitha Sree. While writing this book, I learnt about the significance of the Ugadi Pachadi and a life lesson out of this dish. Are you curious to know? Listen and view the story.
Planned to write a
Children’s picture book for Christmas titled “A Giving Christmas.” After
writing the storyboard, I pinged my friend Malathi who is in the USA and asked
her if she can draw the pictures. She readily agreed. Malathi has used oil
pastels, watercolors, crayons, photos, and digital art to draw and paint.
Synopsis: Alex is excited
about the upcoming Christmas season. He got a red car-shaped backpack as a gift
from his father for Christmas. What did he do next? Did he live up to the Christmas spirit of
loving, giving, and sharing? Read to know.
The
story is a Level 2 book and has simple concepts. It is suitable for children
between the ages of 5 and 10. The story has a total of 11 pages or screens
including the cover.
I wrote a children’s story
titled “Chef Meena makes Vegetable Salad". The story was created in the StoryWeaver website. After writing the story, I was able to pick and choose beautiful images drawn by different illustrators in the website.
Synopsis: Chef Meena wants
to make a healthy dish for her kids. She decides to make a vegetable salad and
opens the fridge. The vegetables like Cathy Carrot and Otto Onion introduce themselves to Meena and tell about
their nutritional values and benefits to the body. What all vegetables did Chef
Meena choose and why? Read the story to know more.
The story is a Level 2 book
and has simple concepts. It is suitable for children between the ages of 5 and 10. The story has a total of 12 pages or screens including the cover.
