Making the story available to a wider audience

It was clear that the story I'd written had limits. It was written in English, and while this is understood by many worldwide, there are lots of people who won't have had an opportunity to learn English. I didn't want the story to only be available for a select group with a privileged background, they already have access to lots of amazing STEM inspiring material. Could this story become something that offered something for every young child, no matter where they happened to be born?

The starting point was to get the story written again, this time in lots of different languages. We tried to find translators who were native speakers so that the flow of the language felt natural for the children who were reading. It's really difficult to read something that hasn't quite been written fluently so online translation sites, while being useful for individual words if there's no bilingual dictionary available, weren't the right option.

Luckily, Space Apps happens around the world, all on the same weekend. There might be people who would be willing to spend a few minutes translating a story to give their brains a break from writing code or piecing together hardware. We might as well ask! We also put out requests on social media sites to get even more people involved.

The explorable story inbox (whyweexplore2013@gmail.com) began to fill up with translations from all sorts of languages. We've got 12 languages so far, but that's not enough. If you know somebody who speaks reasonable English (or one of the other languages we already have,) and could write a version of their own in a different language, please do get in touch. You can find the story in English here along with a description of how to get involved:

All translators are given the option of dedicating their version of the story to a child they know; an idea dreamed up by the children in the team as a way to say thank you for their contribution.

Since the weekend, there has been another exciting idea to use the story to engage a slightly older group of children too and to connect children around the world. But I'll save that for another blog!

Languages covered so far:

Assamese, British Sign Language, Danish, Estonian, English (UK), French, German, Greek, Icelandic, Italian, Latin, Lithuanian, Polish, Romanian, Slovenian and Welsh.