Language, Listen

Photo credits: Jacaranda Literary Agency

India is a country with so much linguistic diversity, where every hundred kilometres, dialects shift. While the world is much more open and yet closer than ever before, linguistic borders feel more divided and divisive, even as they overlap in reality, and in spoken word.

While International Translation Day is only one day that celebrates linguistic inclusion and diversity, this Language, Listen reading event will be a meeting of writers, translators, and readers, and in languages from all around India and eventually, the world.

Language, Listen prioritises readings over panels and talks, focusing instead on the practice of translation and the sound of languages. Beyond the often-insular discussions at literary festivals, this event is an invitation to all to be part of a more immersive and active experience of linguistic complexity and diversity, through the act of listening. 

With an introduction by Vivek Shanbhag, and translators and writers from across the spectrum—voices that are both fresh and new, as well as those that are leaders in the industry. The line-up includes luminaries such as Anurag Basnet, Arunava Sinha, Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar, KR Meera, Narasimha Kumar, Pasha Bhai, Sayari Debnath, Sonam Kalra, Suchitra Ramachandran, Sunandini Banerjee, Mehdi Khawaja and Vidya Pai. We aim for this to be a unique literary and linguistic endeavour that brings readers, writers, and translators together in a shared love for and celebration of languages and translation.

This is presented by Jacaranda Literary Agency in collaboration with MAP and supported by the  New India Foundation.