Amazon.com is not exactly one of the names you would think of when making a list of “companies working to preserve endangered languages.” After all, the company makes money through sheer sales volume, and a Kindle book written in an endangered language would translate to a very small market.
Recently, though, after catching a slew of unexpected bad press, Amazon caved in to incessant pressure from media and the public, and decided to publish a bilingual Kindle book, “Matthew and the Wellington Boots,” with its Cornish translation, “Matthew ha’n Eskisyow Glaw.”
Cornish, in case you did not know, is a minority language in the UK and is the primary language of just around 500 people in 2011. It is one of the 7,000 languages labeled “endangered” on the Catalogue of Endangered Languages. Certainly, it is not included in the very short list of languages supported by Amazon.com’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform.
But Diglot Books, which published the bilingual children’s story, argued that the book was not written solely in Cornish anyway. “Our title was actually bilingual, and … the alphabet was the same as English, so there were no extra characters needed,” said Diglot director Alison O’Dornan.
Dornan also added that the Cornish translation of the book had been vetted for correctness by the Cornish Language Board.
Still, Amazon.com was not immediately convinced. It took the full force of social media, whose power Diglot harnessed, to compel the e-commerce giant to rethink its decision.
For O’Dornan, this victory is an important step in restoring some life into the dying Cornish language. “The key to truly reviving the language is clearly with the younger generation, and bilingual books are a fantastic way to achieve this as they are easily accessible to both parents and children alike,” she said.
Currently, “Matthew and the Wellington Boots” is available for download through iTunes and Kindle Store. At Amazon.com, two people have already given the Kindle book five-star reviews. Both reviews were written in Cornish, with English translations.
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