Episode 3
How do different languages influence children?
Janey Verney is a poetry writer and artist. She is very much concerned with languages and interaction. In our project, too, she was able to help design our books in a wonderfully playful way and developed the most wonderful English stories for children. Today we will talk about why languages are important and how they influence our children.
Here you can listen to this PodCast episode:
Can you tell us something about you?
Janey Verney
HeartClown
It is a great pleasure to be invited into the dance of translation for this project, to bring the German translation of Lubina Hadjuk’s stories through into English . Nowadays a computer app can equate words between languages , so my job is to iron out all the mistakes or clunky bits that don’t sound right . Partly I use my knowledge of language structure , for example the different word order in these 2 languages ; and partly I use my intuition and the familiarity of my mother tongue . How would I really say this bit ? Sometimes I cant find the settling place until I have worked through the story several times . A little change here , a tweak there , and suddenly it is in English … I hope. And some bio – Words have always been important to me , I grew up in a big house with loads of books . My mother taught me to read when I was very young , and both my parents read to me too . The words of the songs which were part of my mother’s music making introduced me to other languages too . In my adult life I have also explored the languages of visual art and of movement . This latter led me to training as a sacred clown , where I met Lubina , and it is a delight that her magical stories have led me back to childrens books again . My own work as a poet , artist and clown can be seen on my website: http://www.heartclown.com