Young Turks Take On a U.S. Library
By Mark W.F. Condon, Unite for Literacy vice president
The Unite for Literacy team had the distinct pleasure and honor to work with English Literature majors and their talented and inspirational professor from the Hacettepe University, in Ankara, Turkey. They worked very hard on making sure that the youngest children in their communities had an abundance of picture books in their homes.
Professor Sinan Akilli, PhD, of the English Language and Literature Department, and his students heard about Unite for Literacy’s library of children’s picture books for new readers in a newsletter that had been sent out through the Gates Global Library Initiative. His program is a member. He contacted us via email and asked if he and his students would be welcome to add Turkish translations and narrations to our library.
We were totally delighted, responding that we would love their contribution. His students—30 in all—were fluent in both English and Turkish, so they were the perfect candidates for making sure that every young child in Turkey could have hundreds of books to read and enjoy with family and friends. In addition, every teacher in a Turkish-speaking school and every Turkish-speaking family with young children can have these resources to celebrate literacy, reading, and books. It was a dream come true for Unite for Literacy.
The university students were divided into teams that set to work creating Turkish-appropriate versions of our English language books. They worked in groups so that when questions arose about words or meanings in English, they could determine what made the clearest sense in Turkish (which often happens when translating text). With their professor serving as the final arbiter of high-quality work, once he gave their translations his “okay,” the students took turns recording narrations for 110 books to share with the world.
To check them out and hear the voices of these marvelous students, go to the Unite for Literacy digital library, click the narration button, and select Turkish. You’ll see the books available with English text and Turkish language audio narrations. It’s a beautiful language!
We are humbled that these serious scholars and their talented professor have invested their precious time to make an important and permanent contribution to Unite’s digital book collection for Turkish-speaking families and children everywhere.
If you or your group wish to inquire about creating a gift of literacy for children in your language community, please contact Mark.Condon@UniteforLiteracy.com to start that conversation.