JOIN USThe Tuesday Interview | ‘Fight the notion that English is superior, not the language itself’
When there is awareness about learning in local languages, Anuvada Sampada, a repository of translated academic resources, puts into focus how sparse these texts really are and the pedagogic need for original conversations, deliberations and knowledge creation in native languages. In a conversation with DH’s Varsha Gowda, Hridaykant Dewan, the head of the Translations Initiative at Azim Premji Foundation explains why India’s push towards translation has slowed down. Excerpts:
Language discourse has become increasingly common in Karnataka in public signs, advertisements etc. Academically, why do you think it is necessary to make resources available to students in native languages?
We have been talking about children getting to learn in native languages. The National Education Policy has even reiterated this. Teaching children in a native language means making signage, advertisements, instructions and other resources linguistically available to them. While there are cultural, political and social reasons, there are also pedagogical reasons behind teaching children in native languages. However, it is a long journey to students being able to absorb concepts and ideas in their own language. To build this capability in understanding, there need to be conversations around disciplines and conceptual ideas in Indian languages so that it becomes a part of people's everyday life. All the reputed journals which get you marks for UGC NET everything, all those are journals, are in English. This is a vicious cycle in a sense because there is no support and recognition, there is nobody who is writing in these languages. And those who do write feel like there are no resources available.
Why has there been a paucity of academic resources or original deliberation and discourse in native languages?
There are both historical reasons and more immediate factors that have caused this. As human societies become literate, they move on from modality (verbal and visual modes) to literacy. For India, this coincides with the colonial period. A lot of knowledge available at that time in our languages did not get put into words or in print as there was an increasing emphasis on English. The development and sharing of ideas shifted and the development of academic conversations in Indian languages gradually started waning.
In the present day, as a large entity, India has a diversity of languages. As the administration is central, it makes it easier to work in one language. There is a challenge in India on what language that should be. Unless we start respecting the fact that knowledge actually is best in multiple languages, and that cross-fertilisation of ideas in multiple languages should be the standard of Indian knowledge development, there will be no support for writing in Indian languages. Attempts were made immediately after independence to actually start translating. Translation was not well understood at that time. If I have to translate philosophy, I must be able to understand philosophical concepts. Only then can I actually put them in a different language. These translations were poor and therefore the demand was poor. The conclusion drawn was people do not want materials in native languages. There is a need to, therefore, consider translation as an academic discipline.
Has an increased awareness about the use of native language awareness resulted in a corresponding increase in interest, with more students opting for courses taught in native languages?
If you look at the data, 65% of the students who come out of high school have gone through native language education in their high schools. There should have been universities which cater to this audience. However, if you look at all the leading institutions in the country, whether it is the IITs or IIMs, they all teach in English medium. Even if there is teaching in Kannada or Hindi in these universities, it is out of compulsion. In recent years, in spite of the policy to adopt native languages, all state governments want to start teaching in English. However, our problem is that we do not prepare children to understand English or Indian languages comfortably enough to read academic texts in these languages. With English, it becomes difficult for children coming from not privileged backgrounds to cope with the shift in language in understanding conceptual ideas. In the ‘80s there was a big struggle for somebody to submit a PhD in Hindi, but now I think there are many people. It is growing gradually but in terms of the majority, I don't think there is awareness on why we should opt to learn in native languages.
I also don’t think we need to be fighting English all the time. We certainly need to fight the notion that English is superior. I think everyone in India should learn one language from South India and one from North India.
How does learning in one’s native language impact the learning process?
As my contemporary from Punjab University said, a student has a lot of insecurity when they encounter a different environment. There is so much alienation. You're struggling with reading materials, you cannot communicate with your peers, and you're struggling with what the teacher is saying. This is not so true of a native language. Even if you don't know the lexicon, it is a language you recognise, there are at least a few words that you understand.
The second thing is that conceptual structures are formed through daily interactions. When you do have the knowledge you feel that you own it and can apply it outside. In the absence of this, knowledge becomes dry and limited to passing exams. There is no relevance and purpose which is a big challenge for higher education. Even Mahatma Gandhi talked about how education has to lead to something that is socially and economically productive.
Coming to the Anuvada Sampada, could you tell us a little bit about it? How did you determine that there was a requirement in the space?
At the university level, we made the decision to make admissions available more to students from geographically and socially disadvantaged areas. We realised that students who were otherwise academically smart were struggling with assignments and participating in class. They were strongly hampered by the fact that they couldn't read English. This is when we felt that we needed translations for our classrooms. Those in the university working with the department of education see this need live in schools.
When I was working with another organisation, we were struggling with material to expose them to newer ideas. Talking can only do so much. We needed independent study material. We went to the Central Institute of Education, Delhi and they had just one shelf and all of the material were guidebooks. Where is the possibility of a student or educator to engage with concepts beyond definitions?
We realised that if we wanted to change this direction, they must have materials in native languages. Not just for our university, these reading materials must be available to a larger audience. This is why we thought of the repository.
How do you plan to scale up the initiative?
The aim is to translate all the material we use for academic programmes. To date, we have translated about 2,000 texts to Hindi and 1,300 to 1,400 to Kannada. At the undergraduate or postgraduate level, we have been able to translate few, largely because of copyright permissions. In order to make it freely accessible, we must have copyrights. We have been struggling for the last 10 years with this issue at the university level. There have been some people who are generous, most publishers do not communicate. Some want $50 for each user who downloads the file. When it is an open resource, we cannot count these things. In terms of scaling up, we are trying to popularise the fact that we have a repository through workshops and seminars across different universities.