No takers for Hindi and Regional Languages

Ray · 22-06-12, 03:21 PM

A GAP THAT IS DIFFICULT TO FILL

Some of the most popular billboards in the Hindi heartland, which includes both Haryana and Rajasthan, are advertisements to teach English language skills “in two months with money back guarantee.” Why have there not been similar billboards for teaching Hindi, or why has there not been any decline in English language publishing in absolute terms? In fact, it continues to expand, with the Indian publishing industry several steps behind the English publishing industry in terms of finance, organization, editorial and production standards, and marketing.

Three basic reasons have been given for the dominance of English language publishing. First, a substantial number of English language publishers were subsidiaries or allied to wholesale distributors, and even to retailers of imported British and American books. This collaboration provided Indian publishers with a solid financial base to expand their own publishing programme, which consisted the initial stages of reprinting established textbooks that were copyrighted with the wholesalers/distributors.

Second, elite Indian schools, colleges and universities continue to recommend English language texts in the absence of suitable alternatives in the regional languages, especially in Hindi. This lacuna was particularly noticeable in professional courses of science, technology and medicine. Third, all public service entrance examinations were conducted in English with an option in the regional languages. But English remained, and continues to be, the more popular option because of the vast body of literature available in it.

Of the three reasons, it is the second — the availability of many options for suitable literature in English — that is the basic reason for regional languages lagging behind. But the key question still remains why regional languages have lagged behind when the market for them is huge and concentrated in large urban centres — unlike the market for English, which is scattered — and the money for publication is more easily available from Sahitya Akademi and other bodies.

The gap, for academic books, can be filled in two ways. First, by identifying the core areas that need to be filled up. And second, by a crash programme in translation. Autonomous school boards, especially the NCERT and SCERTs, have filled in some of the requirements in the core areas for schools, though not nearly enough for the highly competitive school-leaving study needs. University-level texts have much longer gestation periods, which can be shortened with the help of translation until material is available in the regional languages. But this is a dismal picture, in spite of several programmes by the University Grants Commission and individual universities to push through standard British/American translations of textbooks.

It wasn’t a question of money— which was available both for payment of copyright fees and for the translators — but the dropout rate continued to be high. A few translations sponsored by private publishers have come through, but they are hopelessly inadequate. The question often asked is how the Chinese and Japanese publishers managed to produce the most sophisticated scientific publications within a year of the Western publication (almost 50 per cent of Japanese scientific publications are translations) and why can’t we do so here?

Some Indian publishers who have survived by selling translation rights have discovered that they have translation bureaus dedicated only to time-bound publication programmes. Why we can’t do so with all the funds available is not hard to guess.

RAVI VYAS

http://www.telegraphindia.com/112062...p#.T-Q_VbUtjCA

Is it because there is availability of many options for suitable literature in English and is not there for the vernacular which is the basic reason for regional languages lagging behind.

No takers for Hindi and Regional Languages

Ray

Similar Threads

Jaipur lit fest to focus on Indian languages

Net domain names in Indian languages soon

Ban assures of making Bangla one of UN official languages

Foreign Languages Fade in Class � Except Chinese

Listen up, 196 Indian languages are dying