Translation workshop for tribal communities in Bengal to protect languages

Several members of two tribal communities from West Bengal will spend most of the next week in Calcutta to take part in events held with the aim of saving their languages ​​from extinction.

The six-day event, which starts on Monday, November 17, 2025 and includes a translation workshop, is part of a University of Calcutta-led project on endangered languages, particularly Lodha and Toto, the only ones in the state to have recently received central funding.

“A translation workshop on endangered languages is a rare event in India. About 40 people from both the Lodha and Toto communities will be here for the event. The Government of India and UNESCO have placed special emphasis on their languages. This is part of our community partnership-based research sponsored by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) and the ICSSR-Eastern Regional Centre,” event organizer Mrinmoy Pramanick, Founder-Coordinator of the Center for Translation and University Literature. Geography, said.

“There will also be almost 50 people representing the Bengali language, and that is because there are some texts written by the Lodha and Toto people, but in Bengali script. We will discuss the translation of their texts into English. In addition, there will be performances such as a Lodha performance of their indigenous theater form, and also an exhibition,” Prof. Pramanick said.

“Our research will also be discussed with the community people for transparency and achieving better goals. We are dealing with Particularly Vulnerable Tribal Groups (PVTG). There are 75 PVTGs in India, and of them three are in West Bengal. The ICSSR every year calls for funding applications for various schemes for their benefit, and this year 34 projects have been funded across the country; we are the only one from Bengal to have received this funding,” he said.

The workshop, titled ‘Field to Folio’, will be held at the Asutosh Siksha Prangan, the College Street campus of the University of Calcutta, and the exhibition, which Prof. Pramanick said will include “craft manuscripts of community-produced literature, and photographs collected from our fieldwork”, will be held simultaneously at the Asutosh Museum of Indian Art, also located in the university premises.