Historical fiction has long been a wonderful way to dive into times and places that are unfamiliar to us. This makes it the perfect genre for this month’s FART challenge – to channel our inner Fleur Delacour and read a book in translation (originally written in a language you don’t speak). Here are six historical fiction novels translated to English from around the world.
Tonight Is Already Tomorrow by Lia Levi – Translated from Italian
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Inspired by true events of WWII, Tonight Is Already Tomorrow follows a Jewish family living in Genoa, Italy in 1938 and beyond, the years in which Italy’s infamous racial laws were passed. It is the story of a genius son, an eccentric grandfather, an indecisive father, and a mother who is full of regret. Above all, Tonight Is Already Tomorrow looks at how ordinary people react to extraordinary circumstances. How do they, as individuals, face some of the most troubling periods in history?
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez – Translated from Spanish
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From one of Colombia’s most famous authors comes One Hundred Years of Solitude, the story of the mythical town of Macondo. Through the rise and fall of the community, Márquez follows, in particular, the Buendia family and looks at the never-ending tension between the need for solitude and the desire to be part of a community. Humorous, sad, and full of unforgettable characters, One Hundred Years of Solitude is a staple in the genre of magical realism.
The Court Dancer by Kyung-sook Shin – Translated from Korean
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Set during the final years of the Korean Empire, The Court Dancer is the story of Yi Jin, a woman of the emperor’s court. When a French diplomat comes to Korea and gains an audience with the emperor, he is amazed and enthralled by the beauty of the Joseon Dynasty’s culture. But more than that, he is taken by Yi Jin when she arrives to perform the traditional Dance of the Spring Oriole. He is given permission to take her back to France with him, where she has more freedom than ever before. But even with her newfound freedom, Yi Jin lives a complicated life – one full of love, sorrow, literature, and betrayal.
My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante – Translated from Italian
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Set in Naples, Italy in the 1950s, My Brilliant Friend spans nearly 60 years of friendship between Elena (the narrator) and Lila. Beginning with their fateful meeting as ten-year-olds, the story follows the two women as they navigate life, husbands, leaders, and as always, friends. While simultaneously focusing on the details of their relationship, My Brilliant Friend is also the story of a city, a country, and a neighborhood as it transforms through time.
Guano by Louis Carmain – Translated from French
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French Canadian award-winning author Carmain brings a strange, funny, and beautiful story of love, war, and fertilizer. It’s set in 1862, when Spain is reluctant about giving Peru its independence, particularly because of their “white gold” (a.k.a. guano) on the Chincha Islands. Guano follows the story of Simon, who is the recorder on a Spanish military expedition, and his lust for a mysterious woman named Montse. As military tensions rise, so do Simon’s feelings, though he can’t seem to bring himself to act on them.
Chronicle of a Blood Merchant by Yu Hua – Translated from Korean
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From acclaimed Chinese author Yu Hua comes a portrait of life under Chairman Mao. Xu Sangaun is a cart-pusher in a silk mill struggling to make ends meet. When his mill salary will no longer meet the needs of his family, he begins visiting the local blood chief to bring in extra income. As his visits begin to become lethally frequent, he suffers another blow – he learns that his favorite son is actually the result of a liaison between his wife and a neighbor. As his wife is publicly shamed, Xu Sanguan also suffers until he can find strength in his blood family.
I know that my TBR pile is beginning to tower with all these new FART recommendations, and I hope yours is too! Don’t forget to tag us in your monthly reads and to use the hashtags #FARTchallenge (Twitter), #FARTreadingchallenge (Facebook and Instagram), and #AYearofMagic to join in the conversation.
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LAWRENCE – By creating an online trilingual dictionary with a grant from Humanities Kansas to the local Centro Hispano, applicants hope to help descendants of immigrants from the Mexican state of Guerrero preserve their heritage and maybe even speak to their grandparents back home in the indigenous language Meꞌphaa.
That is Philip Duncan’s hope, anyway. The University of Kansas assistant teaching professor of linguistics serves as project director for the newly announced $3,500 grant titled “Preserving the Meꞌphaa Language in Kansas: A Collaborative Online Dictionary.” Duncan is one of several collaborators on the project, which also includes Eutropia Rodriguez, community member and Meꞌphaa speaker; Sylvia Fernández Quintanilla, a public and digital humanities postdoctoral fellow who serves as project consultant; Lydia Diebolt, executive director of Centro Hispano; and Tamara Falicov, associate dean of the KU’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences and professor of film & media studies.
“This project will not only preserve important details about the Meꞌphaa language but also make accessible personal narratives, histories, songs and traditional texts from this community,” said Julie Mulvihill, Humanities Kansas executive director. “People in Lawrence and across Kansas will be able to learn more about the language and culture shared by fellow Kansans.”
Rodriguez has spoken Meꞌphaa since she was young, and her parents never taught her Spanish at home. She said that it’s beautiful for Meꞌphaa people to continue teaching and learning Meꞌphaa “so that we don’t lose our culture.” She wants her “children to understand the importance of speaking many different languages, not just English and Spanish.”
Although a written glossary of Meꞌphaa exists, Duncan said, there is nothing like the online “talking dictionary” they have proposed for this language – including not only written definitions of words in which the reader can “toggle back and forth” between English, Spanish and Meꞌphaa, but also audio files of native speakers pronouncing the Meꞌphaa words, like a̱ꞌma, which translates as “bee” in English and “abeja” in Spanish.
There will also be an opportunity to record and include longer stories told by local Meꞌphaa speakers, Duncan said.
It all springs from the immigrant community’s desire to preserve its heritage, Duncan said, and they aim to build on that energy.
“We're first coordinating a meeting where people can give us input on the base of words they feel would be meaningful to start with,” Duncan said. “We're going to be building a website together, with the community driving the content in the sense that maybe there's certain domains of words, like words for plants, for example, or family, and maybe those are the ones that they want to start with.
“In addition to that, we also want to do some audio or video recordings where people tell personal stories or histories, of whatever nature that they feel comfortable with, told in Meꞌphaa. The entire resource, at the end of the day, would be trilingual; it would be in Meꞌphaa, English and Spanish, and they can toggle between the languages, basically.”
“Este diccionario muestra el potencial que existe dentro de las humanidades digitales de llevar a cabo un trabajo interdiciplinario, colectivo y comunitario con el fin de preservar un lenguaje de herencia entre las generaciones de latinos en Lawrence con sus familaires en Guerrero, México,” Fernández said. [Translation to English: "This dictionary shows the potential that exists within the digital humanities to carry out interdisciplinary, collective and community work in order to preserve a language spoken among generations of Latinos in Lawrence with their families in Guerrero, Mexico."]
The grant is for one year, and the hope is to complete the project in that time frame.
While he has studied the endangered language for over a decade, Duncan said it’s not yet fully known how Lawrence wound up with an immigrant community of Meꞌphaa speakers from the mountainous, eastern part of Guerrero — the state extending inland from the Pacific Ocean beaches of Acapulco.
He said he's excited about the project.
“It's definitely a new thing that needs doing,” he said. “I think that, oftentimes in linguistics especially, there is this notion of focusing on where the community starts, and we don’t necessarily think about the value and authenticity of the communities in diaspora.
“A lot of people here are really interested but not connected to the same resources that they would have access to back home. And here now they’re taking the opportunity for us to build what we hope to be a truly collaborative, community-led project to support people. It’s cool.”
Image: Eutropia Rodriguez (left) gives a guest lecture in Philip Duncan’s capstone typology class, teaching some words in Meꞌphaa. Credit: John Lowry.
NIRVANA has been sued by the heir of a British artist who drew a map of hell for a translation of Dante's "Inferno", alleging the iconic rock band ripped off the image and used it on its merchandise. "Inferno" is the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri's 14th-century epic poem "Divine Comedy".
Jocelyn Susan Bundy on Wednesday (April 28) sued Nirvana LLC, Live Nation Merchandise LLC and its Merch Traffic LLC unit, along with Silva Artist Management LLC, saying NIRVANA had been using her grandfather C.W. Scott-Giles drawing since 1997 on shirts, mugs, vinyl records, and other merchandise sold at stores including Walmart, H&M and Hot Topic. The drawing depicts Dante's circles of Upper Hell.
The complaint states: "On or about January 20, 2021, Plaintiff discovered that Defendants NIRVANA and Live Nation Merchandise are (and have been) licensing, promoting, selling, manufacturing, and distributing vinyl records, t-shirts, sweaters, hoodies, key fobs, mugs, patches, buttons, and other merchandise items depicting an image virtually identical to the Illustration both in the U.S. and abroad.
"On or about March 11, 2021, Plaintiff discovered that, sometime after
February 13, 2021, Defendant Merch Traffic also started promoting, licensing, selling, and distributing Infringing Products in the U.S. and abroad."
"Finally, in documents filed in two other copyright actions before this Court, Defendant NIRVANA has implied that Kurt Cobain created the Illustration or, in the alternative, that the Illustration is in the public domain in the United States, and that, therefore, NIRVANA and its licensees are free to use it without authorization or compensation. NIRVANA and some of the other Defendants have maintained this position in their responses to Plaintiff’s continuing requests to cease their wrongful conduct in the U.S. and abroad."
This is not the only copyright-infringement battle NIRVANA is currently involved in. For the past three years, NIRVANA has been embroiled in a long-running legal clash against fashion company Marc Jacobs over its "happy face" t-shirt designs. NIRVANA's dispute with Marc Jacobs centers on a design featuring a squiggly yellow smiley face, which is very similar to the trademark owned by the band since 1992. The Marc Jacobs version features an M and a J instead of Xs for its eyes (as in the NIRVANA version), and it reads "HEAVEN" instead of "NIRVANA" in a typeface similar to the band's font.
Earlier this week, I was editing subtitles for a show in Mandarin. Which was quite an achievement for me, given that I pretty much don’t speak the language.
How did I do it? With diligence, effort and Google Translate.
I told the producer of this show that I don’t speak the language. That he should get somebody who knows both Mandarin and English to do this work. But he said it was more about fixing the grammar of the already-translated subtitles rather than doing something from scratch.
Yet, when I began to feed the lines through the software to better understand the context, I saw that it had in places been significantly over-translated (ie, they had included more information than the original text), so I cut back on the words to make it more correct. Thank you, Google.
A recent report by a news outlet about the recent Asean Special Summit on Myanmar in Indonesia could perhaps have also benefited from some artificial intelligence-powered translation. It stated the Malaysian Prime Minister said the meeting had succeeded in addressing the Myanmar crisis, quoting him as saying, “We have succeeded. It’s beyond our expectations in getting the outcome from today’s meeting”, and “Myanmar responded well and did not reject all the three proposals by Malaysia”.
However, according to a tweet by Shahriman Lockman, director in the chief executive’s office of the Institute of Strategic and International Studies, Malaysia, what the PM had actually said was: “Ya, di luar daripada jangkaan kita. Bukan kita tidak confident, tapi tak jangka bahawa mesyuarat berjalan dengan baik; usul yang dikemukakan diterima; dan respon daripada Myanmar menerusi jeneral yang telah hadir tadi tidak menolak. Ini satu kemajuan yang amat menggalakkan, boleh dikatakan kejayaan mesyuarat ini.”
Forgive me for the lengthy passage in Malay, but if you are bilingual, you can see that this is quite different from what was reported. A more accurate translation would be to begin, “It was beyond our expectations. It wasn’t to say we were not confident, but we did not expect the meeting to run so smoothly”.
What should have been cautious optimism was reported as an outright success.
In one way, there is no excuse to not use a freely available translation engine given that even a 10-year-old can use it. I know that’s true because I already have Year Three pupils telling me that they use Google Translate if they see something in Malay they don’t understand (or, as is more often the case, they need to write something in Bahasa Malaysia).
But I always stress that it’s better to use the dictionary (I recommend the online one at prpm.dbp.gov.my), because Google sometimes doesn’t get it right. There is subtlety and context to be considered when translating. Also, if you use Google Translate, all you are learning is how to copy and paste text rather than really understanding and appreciating the language.
Still, it can’t be denied that its use has become widespread. I already know of people who use the software when drafting letters to the government (which usually have to be in BM), and somebody I know who is a certified translator uses Google Translate to help with some of her work.
Does that mean that being bilingual (or multilingual) is easier now than ever?
Of course not. Translators don’t use a machine in lieu of their skill. Rather, it is an aid, and they use it to generate a first draft quickly, which then gets fine-tuned.
Even though AI has improved remarkably over the last few years, it still fails to translate gracefully. There is just something a little “off” about the resulting end product.
For example, Google Translate generates the following suggestion for the Prime Minister’s quote: “Yes, beyond our expectations. Not that we are not confident, but do not expect that the meeting goes well.” Not wrong, yet not quite correct either.
In fact, sometimes the wrong translation is the right one to use.
Take for example something like the translation work done by Anthony Burgess of the French text Cyrano de Bergerac (both the play and the highly-acclaimed 1990 movie starring Gerard Depardieu). In one sense, the translation in places is just wrong – no computer would ever suggest what he writes. But much of the dialogue is originally in verse, and remarkably, the lines in the English version also rhyme. You can imagine how difficult that is, and it’s an indication of how far machine translation has yet to go.
Nevertheless, there is power at our fingertips that wasn’t there before. I have thought that given the state of technology, there is now less of a need to translate quotes into another language for the reader (or at least give access to the original). Then, people who understand that original language can still understand the full context, and those that want to use the engine can also look for themselves.
You can imagine, for example, that with a click of the button, you can see the actual original quote by the PM, and then compare the two side by side.
There is, of course, the risk of hubris, that we believe we know a lot from the little that we have learned. That is the risk I took when relying on Google Translate to edit the subtitles – but my producer is Chinese so I am relying on him to fix my English where necessary. If it’s wrong, then at least we’re wrong "together-gether".
In his fortnightly column, Contradictheory, mathematician-turned-scriptwriter Dzof Azmi explores the theory that logic is the antithesis of emotion but people need both to make sense of life’s vagaries and contradictions. Write to Dzof at lifestyle@thestar.com.my. The views expressed here are entirely the writer's own.
An Oklahoma City businessman who reads his Bible every morning wants to help others around the world do the same by helping them connect to God's holy word in their own language.
Mart Green, ministry investment officer at Oklahoma City-based Hobby Lobby, is helping to promote an ambitious Bible translation campaign that aims to make the Bible accessible in every "heart language" around the globe by 2033.
Green is sharing information about illumiNations, an alliance of leading Bible translation organizations, that has begun the "I Want to Know" Bible translation campaign. It's goal is to reach 1 billion people with little or no access to scripture.
The new campaign was fittingly launched in the days surrounding the Easter holiday in early April. Green said he has made it his mission to be a part of such efforts ever since he attended a touching ceremony where a man was surprised with a Bible that had been translated in a language he could read and comprehend.
Green said it typically takes about seven years for a New Testament to be translated, but it had taken 40 years for the man of the hour's New Testament translation to be completed.
Green saw firsthand how important it is to have a Bible translated into an individual's "heart language," a language that a person's speaks and understands more than any other language.
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"I went to a Bible dedication and saw a man weep over a Bible he waited 40 years to get. It just impacted me, and I realized that I'd taken God's word for granted," he said.
"The next day, I made a vow to the Lord that I'd get up first thing every day and read God's word for the rest of my life. I've done that every day since 1998."
Green said he learned at the Bible dedication that there were many more people around the world who don't have Bibles they can easily read and comprehend.
"In that exact moment I went from 'Why are we doing this?' to 'How are we going to make sure that everybody on planet Earth at least has access to the Bible?'"
The business leader has financially supported efforts like the new Bible translation campaign over the years, and he knows there are people in the community who want to help do the same.
The “I Want to Know” campaign gives people the opportunity to sponsor the translation of one or more Bible verses. In this way, they can aid in the translation of one of the 3,800 language communities worldwide that don't have a complete Bible. According to illumiNations, more than 2,000 of those languages don’t have a single verse of Scripture yet.
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The partnering agencies that make up illumiNations are: American Bible Society, Biblica, Deaf Bible Society, Lutheran Bible Translators, Pioneer Bible Translators, Seed Company, SIL International, United Bible Societies, The Word for the World and Wycliffe Bible Translators USA.
Green said by partnering together, the organizations can get the translations done much more quickly than if they were working separately.
"What we're doing is we're collaborating all together. They did the research, and it was going to be the year 2150 before the last translation got started, and that's just unacceptable. So we thought what if we came together," Green said.
"We're going to cut about 120 years off. Instead of the year 2150, our goal, an ambitious goal, is that by 2033, everybody on planet Earth will at least have some scripture."
He said one of the campaign's challenges is that all of the easiest languages to translate were translated first. This leaves translators to work on translations for small people groups living in remote areas of the world which can be challenging but not impossible.
Green said coming up with the finances for the translation projects can also be challenging, but he thinks this isn't insurmountable.
He said the campaign's first line of business was prayer because the project's participants believe in the power of prayer. He said a special prayer has been created for the campaign.
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Meanwhile, Green said the rewards outweigh the difficulties of such a major Bible translation effort.
The gratefulness expressed by those who receive newly translated Bibles is reward enough.
From a donor's point of view, he said most people don't know that there are many languages that have yet to be targeted for Bible translation.
Green said people interested in being part of the project, may pray the prayer created for the campaign. They also may sign up to help financially sponsor a verse of scripture or do more to sponsor the Bible translation effort.
He said the campaign has garnered positive responses.
"People are excited. They want to be a part of history.
"We want 95 percent of the world to have a full Bible."
To learn more
For more information and to see illumiNations "I Want to Know video vignettes, go to https://ift.tt/3eboSCp
Mark Lee is a simplified and traditional Chinese translator from Richmond, B.C., who has aided in translating COVID-19 information to seniors during the pandemic.
Even prior to COVID-19, there was already a high demand for translation aid in Vancouver’s Chinatown — seniors needed medical appointments translated, for example.
“Once COVID hit… We already had that understanding that this was something people needed,” he said.
Lee is also a member of C19 Response Coalition, a group that has continued to aid in translating material to Vietnamese, Tagalog and Chinese dialects with the support of federal COVID-19 grants.
He says he understands allocating the grants to grassroots groups working on the ground, but when these groups are already spread thin and don’t have the resources to make the system change, it’s more of a “band-aid solution.”
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“They’re giving us money, and we’re having to build a parallel system,” he says, adding that if it’s not going to be integrated at a federal level, it feels like there is no point.
“Essentially we’re doing their job, but at a lower rate, and without any of the types of resources that they have access to. It’s really frustrating.”
The lack of multilingual, culturally competent resources available to racialized communities has been a historic and ongoing issue that has only been exacerbated amid the flood of COVID-19 information, and advocates are calling for increased support.
In March, the Canadian federal government presented the Vaccine Community Innovation Challenge, aimed at encouraging individuals and/or groups to propose a campaign “to help promote vaccine confidence in their communities.” 20 finalists are expected to each receive $25,000 for their proposals with one receiving a grand prize of $100,000.
Amy Yee is a member of Ottawa’s Chinese Canadian Collective (CCC), a non-profit organization dedicated to examining Chinese Canadian experiences, issues and representation. The CCC was one organization that received an email from the Federal Anti-Racism Secretariat on submitting a proposal.
Read more: COVID-19 exposes gaps in language education — why there needs to be increased support
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But Yee says the challenge is problematic, as creating a proposal in such a short window, on top of loaded tasks advocacy groups are already facing during this tumultuous time, only creates more work for them.
“This whole year we’ve just been chasing things, and if the government had a structure beforehand, this wouldn’t have happened,” says Yee, adding the initiative itself is late considering the pandemic has been happening for over a year.
Prior to COVID-19, Yee says the CCC was already advocating in Ottawa for translation resources in places like recreation centres, where people encountered difficulty in understanding things like changes in scheduling.
Advocacy groups have pushed for language access for decades and if officials don’t take action, groups can only do so much, Yee adds.
“We’re actually very new to this fight. But when you look at the history, it’s nothing new. History is repeating itself and it’s being erased and wiped from public memory,” she says.
Lee adds health authorities are not culturally aware, and there’s a lack of understanding in navigating communication with racialized communities who don’t speak English.
Keeping track of COVID-19 vaccinations in Montreal’s racialized communities
Keeping track of COVID-19 vaccinations in Montreal’s racialized communities – Mar 9, 2021
He points to an example of when the C19 Response Coalition and other groups reached out to authorities ahead of time to ask what their plan was to aid seniors in Vancouver’s Chinatown.
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“Then they have a pop-up clinic and they didn’t tell anybody about it,” he says.
He says he and his group ended up frazzled the day before, knocking on elderly neighbours’ doors to translate information to them and bring them to the clinic.
Lee adds being on the ground and doing work for these communities has been traumatic.
“Through this person being oppressed, you are now experiencing it as if you were them, because you have to relay their information… You’re their voice, you’re their ears,” he says.
Samya Hasan, executive director of the Council of Agencies Serving South Asians (CASSA), says the agency immediately saw gaps in services for vulnerable South Asian communities when the pandemic began — from food insecurity to precarious housing situations.
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In September 2020, CASSA introduced a COVID-19 helpline to provide live and recorded information on health and safety, government benefits, vaccinations and more in Urdu, Hindi, Tamil, Bangla and Punjabi.
“Our goal through that helpline was to support people that have technology barriers and language barriers,” Hasan says, adding that CASSA has received calls of help from different groups, including seniors, international students and women seeking support in domestic abuse situations.
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In addition to the helpline, CASSA also started creating videos and infographics about COVID-19 relief, debunking myths and more.
“There’s a lot of misinformation about the virus and vaccines floating around on social media and communication apps like WhatsApp,” she says.
“(We’re) creating content that targets misinformation and provides accurate and real information to people so that can make informed decisions.”
Hasan also points to partnerships CASSA has with member agencies like Punjabi Community Health Services and the Tamil Canadian Centre for Civic Action, which have been doing a lot of work on the ground.
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CASSA says there has been a lot of frustration in the communities they serve, especially in terms of understanding COVID-19 information, which is rapidly changing and usually in English.
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“We’ve been hearing a lot of South Asian seniors that are trying to get vaccinated… having a lot of trouble accessing the system,” says Hasan.
Hasan says websites are in English and often involve navigating multiple windows before ending up in a waiting space. Even younger, more tech-savvy people are having trouble booking appointments, she says, so it’s even more difficult for people with technological and language barriers.
“That accessibility piece is huge. And we’re getting a lot of people providing us feedback that they don’t understand how that system works,” she says.
“South Asian communities have some of the highest rates of COVID-19, along with other racialized communities, and so I think there could have been a lot more done to support those communities earlier on.”
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There could have been a lot more resources when those trends began to help racialized communities come out of the pandemic stronger, but many of the initiatives now are coming in sporadically and late, adds Hasan.
Rufaida Mohammed, co-chair of the Canadian Muslim COVID-19 Task Force, says the group has partnered with other organizations to help deliver information through hosting events and webinars, as well as developing multilingual COVID-19 resources accessible to Muslim communities.
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Additionally, the group has been working with Toronto Public Health and Peel Public Health to build connections in hot spots that the health units didn’t have before.
Forming alliances with other organizations has also allowed the group to readily share its multilingual resources and material, says Mohammed.
“It is really critical for us to be able to stand up in solidarity, not only for Muslims that are going through the pandemic, but for all Canadians that are going through the pandemic,” says Mohammed.
“The task at hand is to make sure that people in the red zones get access to these clinics,” she says, adding that this may look like recruiting translators to be present at mosques, for example.
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She says the group has also aimed to ensure cultural acuity and considerations are in place about fasting and Ramadan, and that there are multilingual Muslim doctors at these vaccination sites if someone feels ill after a dose.
For the second time during COVID-19, Muslim communities are experiencing one of their holiest months when they fast.
“The Muslim world is doing this right now, and fighting a pandemic and having loved ones that are not well, having extreme amounts of loss of social status, loss of financial stability, loss of identity,” she says.
Mohammed says she finds this Ramadan has been a deep reflection of not only the pandemic, but also inwardly who the community is as a nation.
“We give up a lot of things just to be more inwardly present spiritually. And that’s the resilience, that’s being developed within us as the days go by,” she says.
“That is a parallel for us with the lockdown. And it’s been a deeply reflective and a deeply spiritual one for a lot of Muslim-Canadians. And it’s even through this month that we find greater strength to withstand the pandemic.”
Read more: ‘Tired of the word resilience’: Canada’s racialized communities navigate ongoing pandemic
‘It’s not fair to them’
Working towards language accessibility has a lot of layers, Lee says, but one way to implement better support is having staff who have language competency. While there are racialized staff in offices, Lee emphasizes it’s important to not lay the extra burden of translating on them.
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“It’s not in their job description to be the token Punjabi speaker… It’s not fair to them and they don’t get paid extra to do the type of work that falls on them,” he says.
Lee says government officials and health authorities reaching out to multilingual media outlets to ask for their help in disseminating information could also aid in building connections.
Like Lee, advocates emphasize the importance of continuing to foster working relationships with groups that are already established in the communities that government officials are targeting.
South Asian community members work to dispel myths around COVID-19
South Asian community members work to dispel myths around COVID-19 – Feb 9, 2021
Mohammed says reaching out to shelters, food banks, immigration and cultural centres can help in disseminating information on accessing vaccine clinics and necessary information to populations who may not be digitally literate.
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“And for multi-generational homes, a cultural piece is that there’s a dependency on younger members of the family to really look after the elderly,” she says.
“We know that a lot of those younger members are precarious workers trying to do their part to sustain the family,” she says, adding that increased support for this could look like recruiting volunteers to aid in vaccine bookings.
Looking at health and socioeconomic disparities, as well as factors like location and computer literacy, can help identify what determines one’s ability to access these resources and how we can fill those gaps, Mohammed adds.
Similarly, Hasan says it is essential to look into how funding and resources are being distributed.
“I think what we need to get past is this colonial way of distributing funds to community organizations,” she says.
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She says when money is passed on to smaller organizations to do translations and community work, they’re expected to work off of pennies.
Hasan says moving forward, it is important to look at what has been the most effective in supporting racialized communities.
She points to grassroots groups, volunteer groups, COVID-19 relief groups and more who have been doing work with little to no funding.
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“(They’ve) really connected to the community, have trust with the community and are on the ground literally talking to people, whether it’s about benefits, helping them sign up or register for their appointments,” she says.
“They’ve been really working day in and out, and other organizations, large mainstream organizations, have not been able to do the same.”
It’s time to look at who is really supporting the best interests of these communities, Hasan says, adding that large multi-million-dollar organizations don’t have the trust or full knowledge of what they need.
“Going to people that have all that knowledge have all that trust, and giving them the resources is building their capacity to serve the community,” says Hasan.
“As opposed to doing things like the way that they’ve been done for many years and, frankly, failing in a lot of aspects.”
Nous aimons les livres! That’s right – it’s a new month, so that means we’ve got a new FART challenge ahead of us. For May, we’ll be reading books in translation and specifically books translated from a language we don’t already speak. So in the spirit of that, here are a few fantasy series that have been translated to English from other languages. Have a look and let us know what you’ll be reading this month.
Legends of the Condor Heroes by Jin Yong – Translated from Chinese
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Set in the invaded Song Empire of China, Guo Jing, the son of a murdered Song patriot, was raised in the Mongolian army of Genghis Khan. He has been fated all his life to one day face a formidable enemy: one who has been raised in privilege and trained flawlessly in martial arts. On the way to meet his destiny, Guo Jing must return to China across the war-torn country, facing tests of courage, strength, and loyalty at every turn.
One of the most popular books in the Chinese wuxia genre, A Hero Born, the first in the Legends of the Condor Heroes series, is a worldwide bestseller and was one of Time’s 100 Best Fantasy Books of All Time.
The Witcher by Andrzej Sapkowsi – Translated from Polish
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Geralt of Rivia is a Witcher – one of the few remaining magical assassins whose task in life is to rid humans of the fantastical monsters who have roamed the earth since the convergence of the spheres. The Last Wish is a collection of connected short stories that follow Geralt’s exploits as he searches for paid monster-killing work and the beasts he finds along the way. Hint – not every monster is as terrible as it seems, and just because a thing is beautiful doesn’t mean it’s good.
You may already be familiar with some of the stories from Sapkowski’s The Witcher collection – in addition to being a bestselling book series, they were recently made into a Netflix show as well as a mega-hit video game from CD Projekt Red. The Last Wish is the first book in the series.
Inkworld by Cornelia Funke – Translated from German
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Meggie’s father, a traveling bookbinder, is reading aloud from one of his books – a story called Inkheart – when the villain from the tale slips out from beneath the pages and lands in the middle of their living room. Meggie is swept into an adventure the likes of which she has only ever read about – but now it’s up to her to get the villain back into the story and out of their lives.
Another worldwide bestseller, Inkheart is the first book in the Inkworld trilogy, an upper middle-grade series set in Italy. It was made into a film in the late 00s, though less is perhaps more when it comes to talking about this adaptation.
Saga of the Borderlands by Liliana Bodoc – Translated from Spanish
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A fleet of ships is approaching the Remote Realms, but even the best Astronomers of the House of Stars can’t say whom they are bringing – the long-awaited Northmen returning from war? Or are they sent by the Son of Death, bringing the end of life itself? An emissary from each of the tribes is sent to form a Great Council to prepare for the coming. But one of the seven sent will not survive. Regardless of who is on the ships, the Great Council knows one thing: The era of light is at an end.
The Days of the Deer is the first novel in Argentinian author Liliana Bodoc’s world-acclaimed epic fantasy trilogy, Saga of the Borderlands.
The Twelve Kingdoms by Fuyumi Ono, Illustrated by Akihiro Yamada – Translated from Japanese
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Yoko Nakajima is just a regular high school girl – that is, until a mysterious being whisks her away from everything she knows and returns her to a magical kingdom she doesn’t remember belonging to. Left only with a magical sword, a gem, and many, many questions, Yoko must confront her destiny and embark on the adventure of a lifetime.
Sea of Shadow is the first in this seven-book fantasy series set in modern-day Japan and the otherworldly land of the kingdoms. The novels were also made into a popular anime TV show by Studio Pierrot.
Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko – Translated from Russian
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In a modern-day Moscow where shape-shifters, vampires, and sorcerers roam the streets, there are two worlds: the Dark and the Light. All of the Others, an ancient race of supernatural humans, must swear to one or the other, both of which expect to one day face down against each other when the supreme Other arrives. That day comes when Night Watch agent Anton stumbles upon an uninitiated Other with unbelievable potential. The battle that promises to follow will not only rock Moscow but also the world.
Night Watch is the first in Lukyanenko’s world-famous Watch series. The first novel has been adapted into a film with a follow-up, Day Watch, as well as a video game from Nival Interactive.
There you have it – so many great fantasy stories are waiting to be read. Make sure you tag us in your FART reads and use the hashtags #AYearofMagic and #FARTchallenge (Twitter) or #FARTreadingchallenge (Facebook and Instagram).
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That is Philip Duncan
