Translating this "CID Course for Children" from English into Japanese has been my desire for these 20 years since the initial stage. The big volume of the documents, however, stopped me from the task. It is my great pleasure to complete the 1st volume of the Japanese Edition and to publicize it in this Web site.
In February 2013, in fact, Toshio Takahara voluntarily contributed to me his manuscript of Japanese translation of the 1st volume of both Guide book and Workbook. At that time, I was so busy that I could not brush it up for posting. And, to my regret, the translation work did not appear publicly.
In October 2018, Chiharu Fukuda, being impressed with the English Edition, made a draft of Japanese translation of the 1st volume and send it to me. She is a qualified patent attorney and currently raising two daughters and a son at home. For not diminishing the efforts by the two volunteers, I have carefully brushed up the whole manuscripts of the 1st volume. We are now posting the 1st volume of the 6-volume set publicly here. Please read it and use it in your educational or everyday life situations. We are going to keep the Japanese translation work of all the 6 volumes.
Our policies of making the Japanese Edition are summarized as follows:
(1) Structures and contents of all the volumes and chapters are kept as are in the Russian and English Editions, by faithful translation into Japanese.
(2) In the Guide books for teachers, we paid much attention to express the concepts of TRIZ and CID correctly in our translation and inserted some notes wherever appropriate.
(3) In the Workbooks for children, we try to make the course material understandable by children, by carefully selecting expressions/terms and using easy Kanji characters, and attractive and interesting for the children. For instance, the name of the Course is shown as "CID Course for Children: for Learning to Think and Imagine Something New", without using the term "Creative Imagination Development".
(4) In the original text, there are a lot of stories, verses, proverbs, etc., reflecting Russian culture. Relying on the English translator's notes, we try to keep such atmosphere. In cases of riddles and word-plays, however, the Russian words are replaced with different Japanese words, after leaving translator's notes, so as to keep the original intention by the author. Chiharu contributed much in this aspect.
(5) In the Guide book, 3 kinds of information are clearly distinguished; i.e., actual talks and actions to children in the class (in black fonts), instructive descriptions for teachers (in blue fonts), notes by the author, by the English translator, and by the Japanese translators (in green fonts). (Some confusions in the original texts in this distinguishment are corrected.)
(6) Expressions of terms and concepts in TRIZ are often difficult for children to understand. Especially, the definitions of important concepts enclosed in boxes in the Russian/English Editions seem too difficult for children. So I often revised the expressions with wording easier for children, while keeping the author's intention.
(7) In posting the English Edition in the Web, I made HTML pages separately for individual chapters, and put many hyperlinks for referencing. In the Japanese Edition, however, I have chosen to make the texts handy to use in schools, groups, and at home in the shape of booklets. So I am posting the Japanese Edition in a PDF file for each volume. By downloading the PDF file and printing it in the 'Pamphlet print' mode, you can easily make pamphlets for yourselves. In future, we are planning to publish the textbooks in printed and bound booklets.
(8) It is most important to have experiences of teaching children with these textbooks. For such situations, the Author repeatedly advise us that teachers should be friendly to communicate with children and flexible in the contents and style of class activities, without trying to stick to the original plan. With various trials, we should keep improving our style of class activities and contents of our texts, etc.
(9) Chiharu Fukuda tried to teach some contents of the 1st volume to her 2nd-grade daughter, and found quite difficult to teach, she says. A group of several children or a class of around 15 children may be more suitable to teach pleasantly, instead of 1 or 2 children.
(10) To teach children with the present theme of "Creative Imagination Development (CID)", the teacher not only should master the thinking ways/techniques with TRIZ, but also should have ability of rich imagination, flexible and joyful mind, child-like heart, etc., I suppose.
(11) We wish you, people in various positions, to try to educate children in this CID course, for “Learning to Think and Imagine Something New", in various occasions.
(12) On making the Japanese Edition, we wish to express our sincere thanks to the Author, Mrs. Natalia Rubina, and the English translator, Mrs. Dr. Irina Dolina, for their valuable works and efforts.
(13) We wish to have several more colleagues who would volunteer to work for the completion of the Japanese Edition, particularly for translating from English into Japanese and for editing in a printable form. Please access to the Editor: Toru Nakagawa: nakagawa@ogu.ac.jp
Creativity education: CID Course for Children, Top
