Don Bosco sons are active in publishing also in Mongolia
Darkhan, Mongolia, January 2020 --
How many books in Mongolian have you published so far?
A total of 141 titles of books were printed by Don Bosco Media, including also two Don Bosco movies and 8 short animation Bible stories were subtitled in Mongolian. At the present time we are working on the Old Testament in Mongolian on YouTube channel (15 parts), the climate crisis and two short movies for human development.
What is the best-selling book-title so far?
Among our production are 45 titles of catechetical books, 90 titles for general education that are distributed in the rural schools free of charge and another 6 titles of Don Bosco preventive system in Mongolian for the use of the Salesian Family.
How many percent of your books are translations?
Yes, indeed all of our publications are titles translated from Korean (95%), from English (3%) and from Italian (2%). We dream about future Mongolian production.
How are your staff – lay mission partners doing?
We have one full time translator from Korean to Mongolian and another three staff members in charge of English translations (Strenna, Letter of the Rector Major) and graphic PC design and digital video editing (YouTube) specialist.
What is your main satisfaction in the DB Media ministry?
I’m very glad to launch the Bible hand-writing movement within the Mongolia Catholic Church and translation of the deutero-canonical books (Maccabees, Judith, Tobit, Wisdom, Daniel, Baruch). Also our consistent commitment to free distribution of our publications in the poor village schools (teenagers magazine and children’s science textbooks).
What is your main challenge in the publishing ministry?
Within the context of nomadic culture the ‘documentation or storage culture’ is not yet developed and books are not read very often. A great jump from the nomadic culture towards informatics (digital) culture is happening. This nomadic culture is transformed into a digital culture, that is expressed also in the fast YouTube contents transformation. There is also an economic drawback since we are not able to get permission as a publishing house. The translation and publishing activity is just ‘home based’ within our Mongolian social-religious context. Due to the import of the printing materials from abroad, the book price is quite high and most of our books are just freely distributed among the Catholic community with some little contribution.
