[Publib] Storytelling in Native Languages

Mon Sep 4 11:10:40 EDT 2006

Hello you wonderful people:

I am sending all the responses of the query I had about how to organize native languages storytelling in the library I work in, Biblioteca España de las Artes. This is a sort of public library (at least that is how I consider it because it functions in a Cultural Center (Centro Cultural de San Marcos) in downtown Lima, in a XVIII century building. The public will be mostly adults but also young peopple. I will send information about this event as you as it is finished. 

Is any you interested in receiving this information?

Thank again you for this help.

Gustavo von Bischoffshausen
Director
Biblioteca España de las Artes (BEA)
Centro Cultural de San Marcos
6127000/5213

RESPONSES

We have done short picture books bilingually for children here in Toronto. Basically the sentences are translated page by page n this case into English from Italian. Ad lib and make the reading fun and entertaining. Counting books and counting games can be done in an entertaining way using the same method. I have done this for classes during school outreach and a Spanish speaking staff came with me.  Having two voices makes the reading more interesting.

Elizabeth Lai

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Your program sounds tremendously exciting!  I tell Swedish stories for English-speaking audiences.  A thing I've gotten great response on is to tell the audience I am about to tell them a well-known fairy tale, but it will be completely in Swedish.  Their job is to guess which tale it is.  As I tell it, I make sure, through appropriate, large, descriptive movements and facial expressions, and through pointing at items on display or in the environment when necessary, that most listeners are able to make the connection within the first minute or so of the 10-minute story.  Of all the stories I tell, that one is the favorite of both me and most audiences.  It's my favorite because, since I was enchanted by trying something like this but personally hate to be left out of things, I made very sure that the story was very recognizable and that the audience could be successful right away.  It's a favorite of audiences because they get to listen to a strange language and falso eel successful at understanding a little about it.

Good luck!  I'd love to learn more about your program, and to hear how it turns out.

 Karen Carlson

Children's Program Specialist

Youth Services Division

Austin Public Library

(512) 974-3944 or (512) 974-3949

karen.carlson at ci.austin.tx.us

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I am Maggie Wright, the grand-daughter of Harold Bell Wright, an American
writer who in the late 1910s began gathering the legends of the Papago
Indian of the Sonoran Desert around Tucson.

His publishers, Harpers, published a book of about half of these tales in 1927 (Long Ago Told). We recently found the entire set of the original handwritten legends and I have started posting them on a blog for all to read and especially hope Storytellers will be interested. (The original translations have been donated to the University of Arizona to join most of HBW's other papers.)

You can view them at:
www.longagotold.blogspot.com.

I'd be very interested in your thoughts and suggestions.
Maggie Wright

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Hello Gustavo,
I think this is a wonderful idea!  I wonder if you could find speakers of  the aboriginal languages (maybe even storytellers) who could present the  story in an interesting and perhaps animated fashion, maybe with native dress too? (to prevent the boredom) one page at a time, then the Spanish version of that same page and back and forth.  We have done that with Spanish and English.  It gives everyone the flavor of the aboriginal  language, while they can follow along with the story in the language they  understand.

I would say, in regard to the suggestions you mentioned below, that a live person  dramatizing the story might be more fun than a written leaflet, or  a tape.  But a tape would at least let the people hear the language, if  you can't find a native speaker.

Good luck with this project.  Let me know how it goes!

Cyndy Gartside
Phoenix Public Library
Mesquite Branch 
(602) 534-1434

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don't know if words from the aboriginal languages are familiar to your audiences, but here in California we often tell stories in English using Spanish words periodically.  the first time the Spanish word is used it is explained in the context of the story and after that it is used as part of the text.  Depending on the audience and their familiarity with English and
Spanish we use more or less of the unfamiliar language.  In this way, we get the sense of the story's original language and can tell stories to an audience that is mono-lingual or bi-lingual.  And we use the words from the story's original language that are most important -- names, sounds, actions  and listeners hear not only the story, but the poetry and sense of the
language.

Hope this is helpful

Jeanne Kelly O'Grady
Youth Services Outreach Librarian
Santa Cruz Public Libraries
Santa Cruz, California 95060

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once saw two storytellers tell the same story, taking turns, to show how the same story existed in both african-american and jewish-american folk tales.  One would say a sentence or give a brief incident, and then the other would give the parallel.  It wasn't boring at all, in fact it was fascinating because you were able to see the similarities and differences in the tales right away, and you didn't lose the thread of the story.  Would something like that work for your stories?  You could alternate lines and work out gestures to be similar.

If no storyteller speaks the aboriginal language, I have two more ideas that assume someone can work out a few phrases: 

Perhaps you could use the aboriginal language to give dialogue, and repeat in spanish?  "So and so said 'aboriginal language phrase' [pause] 'spanish language phrase'"  

I have seen storytellers very effectively teach the listeners to repeat a line in another language, and put parts in the story where the listeners use that phrase, or have a call/response at the beginning of the story where listeners use a phrase in another language.  There is an interesting discussion of this at
http://web.cocc.edu/cagatucci/classes/hum211/afrstory.htm.

Often stories are told in translation with names and significant phrases in the original language.  This honors the original language, introduces young listeners to the sound of that language, but lets the storyteller maintain the flow of the story.  Would that work in your situation?

sawyer at noblenet.org

Gustavo, I think you could get some great answers to this from the storytelling community. The National Storytelling Network http://www.storynet.org/ might be a good start (and really they are international).  The most successful bilingual storytelling concerts I've attended (English/Spanish and English/American Sign Language, mostly) have essentially used two tellers, who generally practice together. 

One teller, in the original language, tells the story for about 1 or 2 minutes.  The second teller, the interpreter, then translates the first language in a storytelling way.  Occasionally, this will be the same person.  The alternating telling can be quite moving.  But it does, generally, take practice or at least interpreters who are very familiar with storytelling. 

Transcribing all the stories would be a labor of love and a wonderful thing.....but I think you would lose the "storytelling" flavor by having only a second printed versions of the stories.

Dale, formerly involved on the edges of professional storytelling..

DaleMcNeill

dale.mcneill at gmail.com

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