NEW DELHI: A parliamentary panel has frowned upon Indian diplomats doubling up as interpreters, a practice which gained momentum due to the need for Hindi specialists when Prime Minister Narendra Modi used the language in conversations with foreign counterparts.
The leg up for hiring additional Hindi interpreters has come from the Shashi Tharoor-led Parliamentary Standing Committee on External Affairs. The observation came on the heels of the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) arguing that IFS officers were being used as interpreters during VVIP visits.
“The Committee… are of the strong view that the present arrangement where IFS officers play the role of interpreters is compromising the quality of the actual performance of IFS officers as well as the job of interpretation,” said the eighth report of the standing committee, submitted during Parliament’s winter session.
Coming down strongly on the MEA, the panel said that it was worried that South Block had “not taken any steps for strengthening the Hindi interpretation facility and the creation of separate pool of interpreters from Hindi to foreign languages and vice versa”. “It (MEA) appears to have made only stopgap arrangements,” it said.
The report noted in 2012, the panel had called for a “time-bound manner” for development of infrastructure and capacity building in Hindi and formation of a pool of interpreters for Hindi to foreign languages and vice versa and make such facility available in Indian missions/posts abroad”.
The PM’s principal interpreter is MEA official Nilakshi Saha Sinha, who is proficient in English and Hindi, but whose main language is French. The other principal interpreter Sinha’s cadre fellow Sipra Ghosh, who is roped in for the PM’s engagements with Russian-speaking interlocutors.
However, for other languages, MEA has to make temporary arrangements. For Chinese interpretation, IFS officers with high proficiency in Mandarin continue to be staple for the ministry. They are much needed, of course, with Modi having met Xi Jinping at least five times in one year.
For meetings with Modi’s best friend in Asia, Japan’s PM Shinzo Abe, a Delhi University professor continues to be the go-to.
Incidentally, a month before the standing committee adopted this report, the ministry had to create a pool of interpreters. A circular was issued in September for recruitment of “Consultants (Hindi Interpreters)” for two years.
When Modi first started his job, the MEA had nominated IFS officers, whose mother tongue was Hindi, as interpreters for the newly-elected PM. Vinay Kwatra, who is slated to be appointed as joint secretary in the PMO, was one of those officers, but had quickly become the firm favourite for interpretation of ‘principals’.
The ministry had also sought interpreters from Parliament’s pool, which was denied. “The reason given was that the legislature cannot be seen working on the direction of the executive,” said an MEA official.