By Jim Elwood
The completion of two more language editions of ISIL director Ken
Schoolland's award-winning fable The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
has in recent weeks brought the total of print and on-line languages to 35!
In India, ISIL Rep Barun Mitra and his Liberty Institute
in New Delhi have just published the Bengali book edition. He also very recently published the Asian
Commentary edition in localized English, which is an annotated edition inspired by Janette Eldridge's
UK Commentary edition (published in South Africa in early 2004). A Hindi edition is due out very
shortly.
In Nigeria, ISIL Rep Agwu Amogu has just published the Pidgin English
edition (see photo above).
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey is
a humorous illustrated fable about a boy from a libertarian land who gets shipwrecked on a statist
island and observes all the strange customs. Each of the 39 little chapters illustrates a basic
principle of economics.
It has been a great hit with students, and has garnered educational
awards such as the Leavey Prize and two George Washington Honor Medals from the Freedoms Foundation at
Valley Forge; the Leonard E. Read Book Award from the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE), and
from the Association of Private Enterprise Educators. It has been endorsed by Nobel laureate Milton
Friedman, and is now being spread through the international organization of Students In Free
Enterprise.
It has been published both through ISIL's network and via other contacts
of Ken's. These have been locally translated, published, and distributed; and have had the added
benefit of providing the fledgling publishers with valuable business experience. ISIL has provided
seed money for quite a few of the projects in Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa.
The earlier 32 languages in which the Jonathan Gullible book has been
published are Albanian, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croation, Czech, Dutch, Farsi, German, Greek, Hungarian,
Italian, Japanese, Kiswahili, Korean, Kyrgz, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Mongolian, Norwegian,
Paluan (Pacific islands), Piedmontese (regional dialect in Italy), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian,
Romany (Gypsy), Russian, Serbian, Slovenian, Somali, Spanish, and Urdu.
Louise Zizka's French translation makes 35 languages, and is available
on-line at the official Jonathan Gullible site.
A book publisher for a French version is still being sought.
Projects in various stages of progress include Arabic, Bosniak, Cebuan
(a regional dialect in the Philippines), Hebrew, Malaysian, Montenegran, Sinahalese (Sri Lanka),
Slovakian, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Ukrainian.
International Society for Individual Liberty
> Jonathan Gullible Now in 35 Languages
