The Global Book Alliance and Global Digital Library Translation Sprint
The research is clear: children learn to read better in their first or home language. Still, about 40% of children around the world attend classes in a language they do not speak, and many children do not have access to books in their first language. The Global Book Alliance (GBA) is working to address the global shortage of high-quality children’s books in underserved languages and ensure that children around the world have reading materials at the right levels and in the right languages.
In Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Peru GBA-trained teachers are closing the book gap by translating early reading material from Spanish into indigenous languages including Kaqchikel, Miskito, and Quechua through the GBA’s Translate a Story initiative.
Girl reading aloud with her book. Photo by Jonathan Gomes, World Vision
The Translate a Story initiative allows Ministries of Education, higher education institutions, youth-led or youth-serving organizations, NGOs, and individuals to create high-quality reading materials in local languages at low cost. Translators range from university students and professors to professional translators and linguists, all with a passion for language and a desire to increase access to reading materials for the benefit of the next generation.
In 2021 the Translate a Story initiative expanded to Latin America and the Caribbean with trainings of professors, students, and government officials in Peru, Guatemala, and Nicaragua. Tony Llorente, a monitoring and communications coordinator in Nicaragua and a Translate a Story participant, expressed his desire for students to learn to read and write in their native languages from a young age. “In the territory that we work in, we have found that there are no digital resources for teacher or student trainings or for the national curriculum, and even fewer for materials in the native language of Miskito.”
Rodia Andrina Sisimit Guitz, a Kaqchikel language teacher in Chimaltenango, Guatemala, is leading the Kaqchikel translation team. According to Sisimit Guitz, teaching Kaqchikel in schools and initiatives such as the GBA’s Translation Sprint helps combat the myth “that [speaking] the regional language is a weakness, as language permits new opportunities and intellectual development.”
In addition to the participation of translators in Guatemala and Nicaragua, the Ministry of Culture in Apurímac, Peru, and the Micaela Bastidas National University of Apurímac are working with the GBA and the GDL to translate materials into Quechua.
Hilda Huayhua, a professor at the Micaela Bastidas University of Apurimac and leader for Quechua translators, said the GBA initiative to translate reading materials into indigenous languages “is an excellent opportunity for teachers from the Apurimac region that speak Quechua and are looking to promote the use of our language.”
The translated materials are uploaded to the Global Digital Library (GDL) where, with the use of the Creative Commons license, they are accessible for anyone to read, use, and download. The GDL, a flagship initiative of the GBA, is an open education resource funded by GBA partner, the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad). The GDL hosts more than 6000 digital books and activities in more than 90 languages and works with governments, donors, implementing partners and translators around the world to increase access to free, high-quality, early-grade reading resources in languages that children use and understand.
The addition of Miskito, Kaqchikel, and Quechua materials will represent the first three indigenous languages from Latin America on the Global Digital Library.
In 2022, the GBA team will continue to support the work of the GDL to upload, translate and provide access to reading materials in underserved languages.
If you are interested in participating in the Translate a Story initiative, please reach out to Admin@GlobalBookAlliance.org for more information.
By: Rachel Dyl