The barriers of copyright have been pulled down, and a Wikipedia-like transformation of children’s literature is on the anvil.
In perhaps the first attempt of its kind in the country, publishing group Pratham Books has thrown open their content for the public to view, translate, edit, and even publish.
StoryWeaver (www.storyweaver.org.in), which is being launched on International Literacy Day, is an open source platform of multilingual children’s content, where over 800 stories – including 150 original stories and translation in 26 foreign and Indian languages – as well a bank of over 2,000 images can be accessed.
The digital platform will allow people to take the stories, most of which come from Pratham’s catalogue of works, and either translate it to the language of choice (under the translate option which lists 22 languages in unicode) or modify the language to cater to older or younger children (under the relevel option).
Suzanne Singh, chairperson, Pratham Books, said copyright had made it harder to take children’s books across languages. “There are hundreds of languages and it is impossible for a single publisher to be present in all. We want people to repurpose the stories into their language and even publish them. For instance, an African organisation has published our stories and distributed it in a village there,” she told The Hindu . With the opening up of the stories, she hopes languages such as Ladakhi, Sanskrit and Konkani among others will finally see activity in children’s publishing. “The more eyes there is on a story, the more errors can be rectified,” Ms. Singh said.
StoryWeaver, which is being launched on International Literacy Day, is an open source platform of multilingual
children’s content
