Indian Languages Mela 2013 in Mumbai

by Prasad Krishna — last modified Oct 17, 2013 05:04 AM

Centre for Indian Languages in Higher Education is organizing The Indian Languages Mela in Mumbai. Tejaswini Niranjana will participate in the event.

The Indian Languages Mela organized by the recently-established CILHE at TISS aims to celebrate the linguistic diversity of our daily experience and show how our cognitive capacities are tied to that diversity.

The CILHE is interested in strengthening Indian-language resources in higher education. It will do so by undertaking research training, incubating research projects, supporting the production of new curricular materials, and providing opportunities to make the teaching-learning experience more diverse.

The programme for the Mela includes a two-part seminar - Interrogating Pedagogic Practice, and Interrogating Translation Practice; an exhibition showcasing Indian-language scripts, visual and sound artefacts, and new digital interfaces; and cultural events involving theatre and music. The theme languages of this year will be Marathi, Gujarati and Hindi, although other languages will be brought in wherever relevant.

As part of the Mela, the CILHE is calling all TISS students (Guwahati, Hyderabad, Mumbai and Tuljapur campuses) to send in entries for two competitions:

A two- or three-minute audio recording made on any digital device of your choice – the recording could be in a railway station, a bazaar, a street corner, a cafeteria or any other everyday location. Capture an interaction between two or more persons speaking in different languages about any topic. Prepare a poster interpreting what happens in your audio recording. Do remember to add an English translation of the interaction in your recording. Students are encouraged to use free editing software available for both Windows and Linux platforms. Posters can be in English or in any of the three theme languages. Group submissions are encouraged. Submissions over email are accepted.

Creation of a new article on any Indian language Wikipedia (preference will be given this time to Marathi, Hindi and Gujarati entries, but other languages will also be considered). Training workshops on editing Wikipedia will be held at each TISS campus during August 2013. Send us details of your Wikipedia entries and mention your Wikipedia UserName in your email.