Language Liberation and the Climate Emergency
One of many “invisible” penalties of the climate crisis is the loss of the world’s diversity of languages. The global temperature is rising, and so are the sea levels. Floods and hurricanes are wiping out some islands. Climate change is negatively impacting agriculture and many traditional occupations, leading to an upsurge in climate refugees. As a result, many Indigenous cultures have fallen into the trap of urbanization, leaving behind their unique cultural identities.
Language keeps our cultural identities alive. But the climate crisis is attacking our languages. Near the Pacific Ocean, some Indonesian languages are almost extinct. With the growing global dominance of English, native languages have been expulsed from educational institutions and the media. Now, in addition, the climate crisis is threatening our language richness.
Recently the organization Sustaining All Life participated in a Climate Week. The event was conducted virtually due to the COVID pandemic. Climate activists from multiple countries of both the Global South and the Global North participated. Various crucial topics were handled through workshops.
Something special about the Sustaining All Life workshops that is not usually found in the wide world was interpretation into native languages and overall sensitivity about language liberation.
The workshop content was interpreted into multiple languages—like Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Spanish, French, and Italian—after each English sentence, using a Zoom application. It was fascinating to see so many languages become visible!
Many non-native English speakers find it hard to comprehend the accent of native English speakers. Recognizing this, a team of typists typed every English sentence as it was spoken and made it visible for the audience. And all the messages in the chat box were interpreted into a minimum of two languages.
In some workshops, panelists from across the world shared their experiences in their native languages. What they said was interpreted up front into English, for others to understand.
Every twenty minutes, new people became the interpreters or typists so that nobody would get fatigued doing this giant work. And everyone took a one-minute break, so that minds could rest and process the information.
Listening exchanges in pairs or trios allowed people to think, share, listen, and pay attention to each other. People were encouraged to connect with each other even if they didn’t speak the same language.
In one of the workshops I was a Hindi interpreter, so I knew the “behind the scenes” picture, too. The interpreters and our work were never taken for granted, and the organizers supported us in every possible way.
Here are some of my personal insights from the week:
1. Language liberation is a movement against our collective and individual distresses about language. It is a huge fight against the threat of language extinction posed by the climate crisis.
2. The capitalist fast-paced life does not encourage us to pause and notice what is happening around us and what we feel. But we must pause for a moment to reflect and act on the climate emergency. The breaks during interpretation were practice for our minds to rest, slow down, and notice.
3. Today my dialect is cluttered with many languages—my mother tongue; the other regional languages spoken in my country; and the colonial language, English, which has always been imposed. This clutter is so strong that today my every sentence is of mixed languages; I don’t speak one consistently. While interpreting, I realized that I was thinking and speaking in a single language.
4. In one of the workshops, I was listening to the Arabic interpretation just for fun. I don’t know Arabic at all, but when I heard the word mushkil be interpreted into English as “difficult,” I was happily surprised because the same word is used in my regional language, Hindi. It was a joy. It made me realize how we humans are connected to each other beyond geographical boundaries.
5. When panelists shared their experiences in their native languages, sometimes I could see tears in their eyes. Their native languages were unfamiliar to me, but as a fellow human being I could empathize with their emotions. This reassured me about my ability to connect human to human.
The fight against the climate crisis is not a linear matter. We must fight on multiple levels, and language liberation is a significant part of the fight. It is a resistance to how the climate crisis threatens the extinction of native languages. It is also an opportunity to come together and reconnect as humans by eliminating language-based oppressions.
Indian saints from the Bhakti tradition have said, “All the divisions and separations among humans are evil.” We need to act on that now. The situation demands it.
Pune, Maharashtra, India
(Present Time 205, October 2021)