The Language Friendship Bridge:
The Indian Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) has envisaged a project called ‘The Language Friendship Bridge’, which aims to expand cultural footprint in neighborhoods with whom India has historical ties.
- The project aims to enable India to translate its epics and classics, as well as contemporary literature, into these languages so that people in both countries can read them.
- The Project will create a pool of experts in languages spoken in countries like Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Uzbekistan and Indonesia to facilitate better people-to-people exchanges.
- It will train five to 10 people in the official languages of each of these countries.
- As of now, the ICCR has zeroed in on 10 languages: Kazakh, Uzbek, Bhutanese, Ghoti (spoken in Tibet), Burmese, Khmer (spoken in Cambodia), Thai, Sinhalese and Bahasa (spoken in both Indonesia and Malaysia).
- Though a number of universities and institutes offer courses in these languages, only a handful teach any of the 10 languages on the ICCR list.
