Children’s books get student’s year back on track

project on time and it was perfect,” said Zhang.

“Students and teachers from all the majors at the institute — English, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Arabian and Spanish — passionately contributed their professional skills to the global COVID-19 resistance. It was the first time we had witnessed such a collective endeavor from students and teachers,” said Wu Gang, deputy dean of the graduate institute and chief of the expert team which offered consultation for the project.

Students and teachers of the ChineseJapanese translation group were among the first to finish their tasks.

Yokote Junko, a Shizuoka native and a student majoring in Chinese and Japanese interpretation at the institute, was responsible for proofreading the drafts for her group.

“The subtle feelings expressed through the children’s stories were quite novel for a foreigner like me. It was my first time to learn how a child with both parents as medical workers was feeling during the COVID-19 outbreak in China,” said Junko.

Li Yuanfei, a French language teacher at the institute, said the volunteer project also gave her students an opportunity to have a practice run.

“In the past several months, we as teachers offered online education to our students, which was quite a novel thing for us. And the volunteer project offered the students a chance to hone their translation skills,” Li said.

Eighty member countries of the international board are now promoting the books in their own countries.

In addition, publishing houses from Malaysia, Pakistan and Mongolia have expressed their interest to join the translation project and translate the picture books into their own languages.

Over Drive, a world-leading library content supplier, has included the picture books in its database and offered free access to them for readers of its 45,000 membership libraries in 78 countries and regions.