Are you ready for Chinese New Year? It doesn’t feel that long since we’ve celebrated the Gregorian New Year but I’m still very excited for the Year of the Rabbit. This is the first CNY that AJ will be able to eat dinner with us and our family have a big reunion dinner planned. I’m really looking forward to sharing more of our cultural heritage with AJ and his dad.
To kick start our preparations, AJ has been reading ‘Busy Chinese New Year’ by Campbell Busy Books. It’s a colourful, interactive board book which acts as the perfect introduction to CNY for toddlers. The book is in English so I’ve created a quick Cantonese translation of the text to up our Cantonese exposure at home.
Translation Printable
The original text in English has a delightful rhyming cadence, however, I feel the charm would be lost if I tried directly translating each sentence. Instead, my translation roughly describes the scene on each page and the intent of the writer. I’ve stuck to very simple sentence structures seeing as the book is aimed at toddlers and doing so mimics how I speak to little AJ at home.
I recommend printing out the translation on adhesive paper to make the process of sticking in each phrase quicker (see this post for more detailed instructions). The printable is designed to be printed on A4 but check your printer settings to ensure the text is the right size for your book. As the pages are quite busy, you may have to get a little creative with where to stick in the text.
Please let me know if you have any suggestions to improve my translation. Happy reading!
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Mama Bear Cantonese 