Blogging the WSF

Mumbai, Jan 18 - Day three of the WSF, Mumbai. Interpretation problems plagued the first session of the day once more - ironically the session was on issues of communication: "Media, Culture and Knowledge". Speakers included the Director of Le Monde Diplomatic who insisted on speaking in French even though there were translation problems, only about 5% of the crowd spoke french, and his english was perfect... After three tries he began his speech in English finally giving into a request from the moderator.

Nikhil Wagle (Waagh-lay), a prominent journalist/activist from Maharashtra was also speaking. He was terribly offended at having to speak in English because the translation system had failed (as far as I could tell, the translators were only equipped to translate into French, Spanish and Japanese anyway). Wagle angrily asserted that at the WSF forum he should have been able to speak in his own language of Marathi or the Indian national language of Hindi. He launched into a diatribe about the colonial language of English pervading all of Indian society. I found it amusing however, that his Hindi was sprinkled with English words such as "media", "values", "social", etc. As an aside, should we really fight against a language being spoken simply because it is a colonial language? Aren't languages simply tools of communication? Should we not emphasize content? Wagle said he would like for future forums and future alternative media to enable speakers to all use their own languages such as French, Spanish, etc. But what of the majority of peoples of Latin America speaking Spanish or Portugese, also languages of their colonizers? And the Tunisians and Algerians speaking colonial French? Where does it end? Perhaps the use of language should be assessed by the accessibility of information rather than the origin of the language. Is it worth fighting the use of English simply because it is the language of the colonizer, or should the struggle not be based on the fact that English may be leaving out large numbers of people from understanding information transmitted in that language. For that matter, the Indian states of the south are largely Hindi-free. A Tamilian or Madrasi in the audience today may have entirely missed Nikhil Wagle's points made in Hindi.

The highlight of the session was the announcement in 4 languages by the interpreters that they wanted to be active participants in the WSF, and not passive workers. They are apparently working on new technology based on free software which would eventually solve the WSF problems of translation. In my last weblog, I raised exactly this question.

On another note, I had the chance to interview Maude Barlow this morning, the elected chair of the largest social movement in Canada - the Council of Canadians. The conversation about water privatization was detailed and informative, linking issues of globalization, corporate power and food and water sovereignty. Maude also explained how the WSF events have been instrumental in furthering the connections between groups world wide on the issue of water privatization and how the real work of the WSF is invisible at the large WSF-organized plenaries which generally are rhetoric-rich with little to no specific suggestions on how to make this other world possible. As a radio journalist I have to tape the large plenaries as small interactive workshops are logistically painful to tape. But the activist in me may win out and take me to a smaller workshop some time today.