Calcutta University opens centre to bring dying languages on Bengal’s literary map

Calcutta University's new Centre for Translation and Literary Geography connects rural West Bengal languages with literature for social empowerment.

Calcutta University has opened a new centre that aims at connecting rural areas of West Bengal that have languages of their own with the literary landscape of the State.

The Centre for Translation and Literary Geography, which opened last month, will — in the words of the university — “initiate a dialogue between geography, culture, and the concept of space, with the long-standing tradition of translation in India”.

“We will use translation for social empowerment, justice and peace. We will be working on the languages of particularly vulnerable tribal groups of West Bengal as well as of India. We will prepare grammar and primers for children and translate literature into those languages. This will create a dialogue between centre and periphery, and our objective is to provide literary tools to the communities for their self-sustainable development,” the centre’s founder-coordinator Mrinmoy Pramanick, a professor at the university who recently got the Sahitya Akademi award for translation, said.

“On one hand we fight for the status of classical language and on the other we aren’t bothered about languages dying. If languages die, the entire epistemology dies. Therefore, we will use translation to bring to the map unheard-of literature from marginal languages that do not have an official status or placed in the 8th schedule of the Constitution or are recognised as medium of instruction,” Dr. Pramanick said.

West Bengal, according to him, is a repository of such languages. He gives the example of Jhargram where, apart from Bengali, some people speak Subarnaraikhik. In Malda, Shershahbadia is a language that is still used, even if it is by a small population. In north Bengal, there are languages like Toto, Sadri, Lepcha, Limbu, Bhutia and, of course, Nepali. Sundarbans too has several languages, like Santhali and Sadri.

“What we plan to do immediately is to prepare the grammar of Toto language, and translate Toto music into English and Bangla. We will also translate Lodha and Birhor folk texts. These three are particularly vulnerable tribal groups, and these communities will benefit from the activities of the centre,” the coordinator said.

He said that while there were quite a few centres on translation in the country, this was for the first time translation and ‘literary geography’ have been combined. “The centre will also prepare a future generation of translators by attracting students and equipping them for translation. Literature and translation are organic, they are very effective in real life,” Dr. Pramanick said.