screenshot from pokrig.org

Pokrig.Org: Online Fairy Tales in Western Armenian: Video Report

1562
0

ISTANBUL – The website pokrig.org is a “heqiataran” or an online portal of fairy tales that are combined for Armenian pokrigs (children) of two age groups: four to seven and eight to eleven year old ones. The stories are in Western Armenian.

“The portal contains both classical Armenian fairy tales (of Tumanyan, Khenkoyan, Agayan and many others) and translations from William Saroyan, Oscar Wilde, Cervantes and others, as well as stories composed by modern authors,“ Sarin Akbas, the translator of the site said in a interview over Skype.

The site was established in 2014 by the Karagozyan School of Istanbul, which was celebrating its centennial that year. With Karagozyan being the sponsor of the website for the first three years, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation later joined the effort. Turkish-Armenian teachers and community activists also contribute to pokrig.org.

The fairy-tales have voice-overs and come with beautiful animations. Most of the site visitors are from Istanbul, but there are others also from Armenia, U.S., Canada, Argentina, Australia, Middle East and even the Far East. “People from the Philippines visit our site,” Sarin says. Considering that the stories are in the Armenian language this may imply that some Armenian-speaking people should live in the Philippines.

Sarin says that they added a glossary list to the fairy tales to explain potentially unknown words.

Get the Mirror in your inbox:

Get the Mirror-Spectator Weekly in your inbox: