(“I love you, Daddy!” in Telugu)

While I was certainly happy with the Telugu twist we were able to add to father’s day last year, I was jumping out of my skin for this year’s idea!  We finally gave it to nana on Sunday and he loved it.  It even had him on the verge of getting emotional, but he held strong.

I had a last minute fear that he’d be upset that I had written in a book!  He’s chastised me in the past for writing in the margins of some of my books, (in a sort of conversation with the text), telling me his upbringing revered books so much he couldn’t imagine defiling it with any sorts of marks (we could take a lesson on revering education here in the states!!).  Thankfully, I think his daddy brain won over, and even after I mentioned it, he didn’t seem phased. Phew!

As you’ve probably guessed by now, we translated “I Love You, Daddy” into spoken Telugu!

I employed the help of a friend (thanks, YS!) because there was no way I trusted myself to get it all correct, and then wrote the spoken Telugu translations directly into the book, anywhere I found space within the illustrations.  I don’t have the best handwriting, but it does the trick.  Next time I might try printing out the translation onto labels, but for this particular gift, I preferred handwritten.

I chose the book because it was a daddy book with high Amazon ratings, but had I known the amount of text in the book, I may have looked for another option.  Each of it’s eight double pages has a four line stanza, meaning 32 lines of text to translate, and then somehow fit onto the page in a relatively neat fashion. Don’t get me wrong, the book is great!  I just mean that I may have opted for a more age-appropriate, shorter book, and kept this book for next year, when peanut’s attention span has grown.

Personally, I alternate between reading it in English and spoken Telugu, and I encourage nana to read it only in Telugu.  When I try the spoken Telugu, I probably sound like a 5 year old learning to read, but at least I’m trying!  And the beauty is that I’m learning Telugu right along with our chinni papa.

Lastly, part of the reason for the delay in posting this is that I’ve been reading up on copyright law, particularly as it pertains to translations.  While I think I’m OK in referencing the book because I link to Amazon which gives all the source info (not to mention a bit of free marketing, making it easy for readers to purchase it for themselves), I don’t think it’s appropriate to post our “spoken Telugu” translation.  That said, if you’re looking to do this yourself, you can contact us and we can compare notes on our translation attempts, if you’d like!

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