Union Minister delivers 10-minute-long speech in Hindi without an interpreter in Madurai

At an event organised by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in Madurai on Saturday, Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Virendra Kumar delivered his 10-minute-long speech in Hindi, sans Tamil or English interpreters, leaving the audience perplexed. 

At an event organised by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in Madurai on Saturday, Union Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment Virendra Kumar delivered his 10-minute-long speech in Hindi, sans Tamil or English interpreters, leaving the audience perplexed. 

The event, organised in collaboration with the National Institute for Empowerment of Persons with Multiple Disabilities, was meant for the distribution of welfare measures to persons with disabilities.

A language interpreter and a sign language interpreter were, in fact, present on the stage, but the Hindi-Tamil interpreter was unable to accurately translate the speeches of other Hindi speakers who came before the Union Minister, the organisers said. She was asked to step down at the beginning of Mr. Kumar’s speech, as they felt she was not equipped to translate what the Union Minister was saying.

Mr. Kumar, therefore, delivered the entire speech in Hindi without a Hindi-Tamil interpreter. The sign language interpreter, familiar only with Tamil, could also not explain what the Union Minister said to the audience. Persons with disabilities made up a majority of the audience, and they said they could not understand what the minister and other Union Ministry officials were saying.

The organisers of the event and the Press Information Bureau (PIB) officials said they were not informed of the need for a language interpreter beforehand, as a result of which they had to find a Hindi-Tamil interpreter at the eleventh hour. 

The said interpreter, however, struggled to translate Hindi to Tamil — and most of her translations were wrong, the organisers felt. She was, therefore, removed at the beginning of the Union Minister’s speech.