St. Aloysius College

Innumerable languages have found their way to Karnataka, and to one another, along its coast. The coastal city of Mangalore, with its gentle, inviting sea breeze, proved to be the perfect place for Hyphen to begin its student outreach programme.

St. Aloysius’ sprawling campus welcomed us and our literary ambitions with open arms. As we spoke with students about their experiences with translation and writing, our belief in the project, which, until then, had existed largely in plans, schedules and mock trials, became a tangible reality.

From students who astonished us with their polyglotism (one student, for example, spoke Sadri, Kurukh, Hindi, English, Bengali and a little Nepali!) to others who displayed a nuanced understanding of the challenges of translation, we encountered immense enthusiasm, curiosity and generosity of thought.

The learnings were two-way. We listened to Beary, Konkani and Tulu — how different do they sound from other ‘mainstream’ languages, what idioms and attitudes do they carry, how do each of these languages have dialectic subtleties that vary across caste and religious groups, and much more. Some students shared their experiences of working on small projects of their own that involved engaging with oral literature in their languages that do not have scripts. They are both transcribing and translating these stories.

The tumult and multiplicity of the coast create a labyrinthine linguistic landscape that literature and dialogue reflect upon, and slowly begin to unravel. Hyphen Connects is not an intervention; it is an invitation to connect literatures, not by looking beyond their differences, but by cultivating an awareness of them.