Storytelling Without Borders: The power of translated Australian literature

Description

This presentation discusses the two facets of an interdisciplinary collaborative project. The Trove lists project celebrated its first anniversary in March 2025. It has a simple concept – advocating and promoting Australian work published in languages other than English to readers in and beyond Australia. Australian publications are windows to the soul of the nation. The project team creates language- specific lists of translated Australian fiction and non-fiction on Trove, a free online library catalogue managed by the National Library of Australia (https://trove.nla.gov.au/). The project started with Australian fiction and non-fiction translated into Chinese and soon expanded into 15 lists of translated children’s picturebooks. Picturebooks are a staple of Australian public libraries and the cornerstone of the children’s collection. Picturebooks serve as a springboard for families and children to read, play, and learn through programs such as rhyme time, story time, and other school-holiday activities. In other words, a good collection of children’s picturebooks attracts young readers and their families to the local public libraries. In Australia, the children’s collection includes both English-language and multilingual publications. Our experience is that the multilingual publications frequently showcase works written and illustrated by overseas authors and artists. However, we do not necessarily have translated editions of popular Australian works. For example, we see a picturebook by Tarō Gomi (五味 太郎) in Japanese, but not Mem Fox’s The Possum Magic in Japanese. It started with an inspiration – a Korean official website that celebrates Korean literature translated into multiple languages and published in the four corners of the world. An academic librarian (Website and Systems) suggested trying something similar for Australian literature. A project idea was then brought to the ALIA Multicultural Committee, and an academic in the School of Education joined the team. Sharing the same first language, Chinese, the team agreed to start small with fiction and non-fiction translated into Chinese. When the two Trove lists were published, a well-loved Australian children’s author suggested expanding the project to children’s literature, and this suggestion was taken on. The 2-person team soon grew to 9 (and growing). The number of translated Trove lists also expanded to 39. Within a year, the team collected more than 10,000 items of Australian works translated and published in 22 languages. Translated Australian works provide multilingual windows to understanding Australian culture, and these translated works can be important for the multicultural communities. The team then utilised different dissemination venues (e.g. blogs, podcast, trade magazine, radio interview) to promote the use of these lists to diverse audiences. These lists can be used by librarians to inform collection acquisition, and educators to support multilingual learners and their families. Focusing on the lists of translated children’s picture books, the presentation will present an analysis of the Trove lists, and discuss the interdisciplinary collaboration behind the scenes, arguing that the Trove lists of translated Australian works can be used to reflect our cultural past, yet helping to shape our multicultural future.

Period	3 Nov 2025 → 5 Nov 2025
Event title	The Research Applications in Information and Library Studies conference (2025): RAILS 2025: Library and Information Research: Reflecting on the Past, Shaping the Future
Event type	Conference
Location	Sydney, Australia, New South WalesShow on map
Degree of Recognition	International