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World YWCA's Podcast
World YWCA's Podcast
Episode 8: Decolonising Language
In this episode of RiseUp! We talk about talking - how do we decolonise our language to make it more feminist, and inclusive?
The first guest to join host Chhavi Sachdev is Virisila Buadromo, from Fiji, who is a co-lead of the Urgent Action Fund, Asia and the Pacific. Next Nanako Tojo joins Chhavi from Kyoto, Japan, where she is a Youth leader implementing the RiseUp! Model with the YWCA in Japan. The conversation concludes with World YWCA Director for Global Engagement and Impact, Dr. Suchi Gaur returning to the podcast. She shares insights on some key questions- How are the very words we use an agent of feminism, or of patriarchy? How can we make better choices, when speaking and translating? Listen to find out …
This podcast is brought to you by the Australian Government under the RiseUp! Young Women’s Leadership and Advocacy initiative in Asia-Pacific region.
Guests: Virisila Buadromo, Nanako Tojo, and Suchi Gaur
Host: Chhavi Sachdev
Team: Dr. Suchi Gaur and Nirmala Gurung at World YWCA
Podcast production: Chhavi Sachdev and the team at Sonologue: Sharad Joshi & Deepa D.
From smartphones to translation apps, young women across the world are using modern tools and technologies to talk to each other and connect with each other, transcending barriers of language, location and culture. I'm Chavi Sajthadev and this is the 8th episode of Rise Up, the latest podcast from the world YWCA. I'm going to talk to women and young women leaders from many different nations about the concepts and philosophies that help them choose the parts of community building that they do. We'll hear from them about what drives their leadership in various spaces on various themes. We believe the stories these leaders share will provide you resources for advocacy and training, because we believe that growing feminist leadership is one of the most powerful ways to effect change for this planet.
Speaker 2:I'm speaking in English to you today, which is the language my three guests will use to communicate their ideas on the topic of this episode Decolonizing Language. How do we do that in a way that makes language more accessible, less patriarchal and more people powered? How do we remove the effect of colonization, especially around English, a language that connects so many of us? We turn first to Virisila Boadromo from Suva. She is one of the co-leads of the Urgent Action Fund Asia and Pacific. Virisila is an indigenous Fijian woman born only a year after Fiji gained independence from the UK, and so colonization has had a huge impact on her linguistic experience.
Speaker 3:My dad was the educated one. He was a doctor. My mom basically grew up in a village and then moved to Suva, couldn't speak English, never learned to speak English. Only she understands it but doesn't speak it. At home we communicated to her in her dialect and we communicated to my dad in English. I remember that Dining Table was always the space where my dad would always correct our English. I do speak Fijian, but I speak a very obscure Fijian which is like a dialect Onoilal dialect which is where my mom is from. It's like a really small island. Other indigenous Fijians would make fun of me because of the fact that my dialect is so kind of obscure.
Speaker 2:Like many multilingual children, Virisila grew up with a complicated relationship to her mother tongue, which she explains through a poignant analogy about the school lunches her mother packed for her.
Speaker 3:She's always made these traditional food for us for lunch and it was always kind of smelly and it was always hot food and I would be in class, like when I was like six and seven, I'd open up my lunchbox and of course the food smells. Then you see all these other kids were sitting around you and there'd be my friend, farad Maz, who'd have roti parcel, and then I would have this other friend who'd just have sandwiched. All I really wanted was a bloody sandwich and I had all this smelly food. That was exactly like the. I used to be embarrassed for it and then kind of try and exchange your lunch to kind of get rid of it so you can get the basic sandwich, which is basically what English is.
Speaker 3:English is like the basic sandwich and that my smelly food was actually my indigenous language. And like now I'm embarrassed to say I did it. But that was like that shame that I felt. And that's really what colonization does to you is it makes you feel the shame for identifying as an indigenous person or identifying as someone other than being white. When I was young I was really embarrassed, but now that I'm older I'm like God. I yearn for the days and my mother used to make me those lunches. I do not want to be having this stupid chicken sandwich.
Speaker 2:Many of us can resonate with the grief and sadness associated with losing access to the languages spoken by our parents and grandparents. The languages and the accents we use are part of our political identities. Marisela experienced a different facet of this after a coup in 1987. The coup was supposed to be about indigenous Fijians' right to break free of the shackles of British colonialism.
Speaker 3:But actually that wasn't really what it was. It was about ethno-nationalism. So when I started high school, a lot of the European teachers and a lot of Indo-Fijian teachers lost their jobs and in their place, indigenous or Itaokei teachers took their place. So it gave me I mean, I recognized the privilege that I had, but I also recognize that it put me at a disadvantage as well, because it immediately othered me. I think for a lot of those students and teachers you know, the perception was that you know that I or my family were a sellout because of the fact that we spoke you know, english well, without a pronounced Itaokei accent.
Speaker 2:A third layer of complexity to Marisela's experiences, being judged for how she spoke, came when she started working in the international development and nonprofit organization sectors, sectors that are often positioned to be for the diverse world but often remain dominated by certain languages.
Speaker 3:I recognize that for a lot of funders and donors, my ability and my resource mobilization team's ability to be able to speak English, to be able to come across non-confrontational because they recognize our language and the way that we present ourselves or the way that we show up opens up, so you know, it's become so much more accessible Because of because we are able to speak in the language of the colonizer and communicate to them what we're seeing on the ground.
Speaker 2:So, with all her experience in development work and as a feminist, Marisela recognizes the importance of language justice in her field.
Speaker 3:And then, for me, language justice is not just about decolonizing language, but just recognizing that there are other kinds, there are other ways that people, that individuals, communicate, and if we are able to address any kind of inequality or address all inequalities, then we have to enable, we have to give people the voice, and their voice needs to be whatever language or form that they would like to prioritize or that they're comfortable with to be able to communicate their experience and we can understand their experience and to be able to move forward together.
Speaker 2:Marisela makes language justice central to her own work by making sure that all the grant application paperwork is translated into seven languages of the Asia Pacific region.
Speaker 3:However, we've also communicated to to the cons, to two movements, that they can apply to us in whatever language that they feel comfortable in, and it doesn't even have to be a written language, and they can just speak it and we will. We will then translate the you know, translate their information and and to understand what they're trying to say to us. So that so, for us it's about saying that no, english is not the priority language here, even if it makes our lives a little bit more difficult and it will take a bit longer. If we're going to be a feminist fund that is going to be accessible, then we need we need to be the ones that translate that information and don't put that burden of work on the defenders, who are already kind of already overburdened and already under resourced.
Speaker 2:Another aspect of language justice is paying attention to linguistic details. As an example, Varisula talks about the way an indigenous Fijia word, tala noa, has been misused in a way that reflects the power hierarchy affecting their community.
Speaker 3:In its truest form, it's about dialogue. It's about recognizing power dynamics. It's about creating space or a container where, whatever your power and privileges are, when you're in that space, everyone is equal as equal as they can be, and everybody can shift the conversation or shift the dialogue in whichever way, irrespective of their status in the community or in that village or whatever.
Speaker 2:But Varisula has seen regional bureaucrats, like the regional versions of the United Nations, capture this word to describe any conversation involving Pacific Islanders.
Speaker 3:The power dynamics is still there. That bit has not been, it's not interrogated or not even doesn't even play a part, which is so different from the way the original understanding of tala noa in the Fijian traditional context is understood, and so for me that is like. It's like language has been hijacked, the same way that the far right has captured human rights language, a progressive language, and they have interpreted it in a way that's kind of warped and not what was the attention of that language?
Speaker 2:As much as the micro details of word and translation choices matter. Varisula is careful to say that merely policing people's verbal choices isn't the end of the work of decolonizing language.
Speaker 3:I don't want it just to be like a discourse that's you know, that's like just being said for the sake of saying it, and for some people it's like it's pretty safe, right, like why would you want to, why would you want to interrogate any of these things? And so I think that you're going to try and unlearn some of that behavior, and some of it is actually going to be quite, quite painful, and even that whole conversation, that process, can be quite traumatic. We have these catchphrases and it actually doesn't capture all the experiences of what it means to understand that. What that you know you being colonized, had an impact on your life and it made you become someone in a particular way.
Speaker 2:Our next guest, nanako Tojo, joins us from Kyoto, where she is a rise up youth leader at YWCA Japan.
Speaker 1:I have been both empowered under this power, this empowered by language.
Speaker 2:Nanako experienced a feeling of empowerment when she read the first edition of the World YWCA's Rise Up Leadership Guide, and she saw how it defined leadership as each individual's strength or value. But the same word, defined as a traditional, heroic and masculine kind of leadership, left her feeling inferior when she took part in a business leadership program. She deep dives around the literal translations that happen when languages are translated, when a product is drafted in one language and then shifts meaning when it is reproduced in another.
Speaker 1:So this means that the wide leadership both can be empowering and disempowering.
Speaker 2:Another factor changing the context of what a word means is culture, and literal translations across language often carry very different implied meanings. One example of this that Nanako offers is that of the words husband and wife. According to her, in English the words imply an equal relationship between a couple, but when she compares it to the various words in Japanese, that these terms get translated to a different hierarchy is implied.
Speaker 1:Variety of translation. In Japanese for wife are shins such as kanai, and ka means house and nai means when inside. So that word kanai means women should be inside the house, and also okusan is sometimes used in trying to mention wife, and oku means behind or back, and the son is like Mr or Mr English. So again, this translation means women should be behind the man. And another translation is yome. In Chinese character, this has the meaning of female and house, and on the other hand, a husband is translated into shujin or danna, meaning he is the owner of the house or a family. So these are these translations, based on the power structure and implies priority.
Speaker 2:Nanako tries to avoid using these Japanese terms when she's translating from English terminology during workshops, and she often gently suggests other word choices to people.
Speaker 1:So when I talk to my managers, for example so they are talking on age 40 or 50s or 60 and they use word kanai or okusans to mention to introduce their partners, and they kindly tell them that wording is not correct or can be changed. And when I talk to them I always say that I always choose the word partner to mention their wife.
Speaker 2:Another example of how translations can fail is the Japanese translation for the English term girl power. In English, girl power has come to mean something feminist and progressive, a statement of the strength of girls who have been traditionally described as weak.
Speaker 1:But in Japanese it means how much a person behaves like traditionally defined girl or how cute they are. Yeah, so girls power literally means Joshi Yoku and it means how much a person behaves like a girl. So, for example, your girl is good at making up, making up or dating, they are told they have pretty much girls power. And also if a maid has, for example, a handkerchief, or who is good at cooking, they may be told they have girl power.
Speaker 2:As Nanako points out, words acquire different meanings depending on the context they are used in, and the space and the people around you make a huge difference to how the words are understood.
Speaker 1:And another. The difference is that whether the space is safe or not, so I believe by the wish is the safe space, and it was the first space for me and the first one phrase or word can make the safe space into unsafe space. I always pay very careful attention in choosing the words, especially when I am in the safe space, and I always keep in mind that I am also the very person that's creating the atmosphere.
Speaker 2:The way our word choices and our language influences the atmosphere around us is also something that our third guest has thought deeply about. Suchi Gore joins us from Geneva, where she is the director for global engagement and impact at the World YWCA.
Speaker 4:So power and language and conditioning I mean there is a strong linkage between these three things globally, and especially when I see, as women, we go through a lot of that, when we are told, we are told that you know, you cannot do this, you should not do this, you don't have that much energy, you, I don't think you will be able to, which results very often in conditioning that we don't have the power to do these things. We cannot even if we want to. We will not be able to, even if we try, and if we fail we will be reminded.
Speaker 2:As Suchi points out, when you work across languages, even the tools you use can have political implications that influence language.
Speaker 4:And I work with a lot of international spaces where women from many different countries operate with us and everyone says please don't Google Transfit, because it's not what we are trying to say and it's tough, you know, there, but it's a great space to look at and question that all these tools, all these products are being created in spaces which are funded or operated by white or western, you know countries and very often they miss, but they miss the true intention of the meaning behind those words that are being said.
Speaker 2:The demand for communication in English has meant that people are judged for how they speak English against the standard of British upper class English accents and styles.
Speaker 4:Somebody said to me oh, your English is not perfect. And I said you know, coming from who defines which English is perfect? You know, the colonialism led to English reaching so many countries around the world. Now everyone has their own forms of formats of English, and how we use English, even if grammatically correct, how we speak, how we write English might be because of the meaning and gestures that we are trying to put into it, which are not the way colonial history looked at it.
Speaker 2:When colonization is wrapped up in every word we say or think, then the project of decolonizing our language is much more complicated than removing a few words from our go-to vocabulary.
Speaker 4:Decolonizing language is actually a lot of behavioral change work amongst all of us and there's nobody who can say I've been managed to decolonize everything I say. There's a lot of mistakes that people make and there should be space for us to acknowledge that we need to break through these things. We need to look at terms and words and how sentence formation happens, to understand how language impacts psychology of people.
Speaker 2:When institutions as a collective try to practice decolonization, decisions often get dictated by the funding agencies.
Speaker 4:We still have donors that are very colonial, right. We have donors that are partners, that are coming from those approaches, but our communities are not. That I keep on questioning that within our spaces. Within spaces, I meet international players and partners and I ask them these questions very often that you know, but whom are we talking to? Who are you talking to and is your language suited to them?
Speaker 2:Kanchi points out that it's very challenging to decolonize when you are working in an intercultural organization where everyone has different histories and intent, but she suggests frankness, honesty and openness are a good place to start.
Speaker 4:Can we acknowledge that we have made mistakes in speaking the wrong language? Can we can put a disclaimer when we are putting things out that are the way we have written, might hurt somebody's sentiments or trigger somebody's trauma? In recent publications of World Wide WCA we have written very categorically that we have tried to make it as simple, as jargon-free, as inclusive as possible. But if we have made errors and if you have suggestions for us, please reach out to us because we will be happy to make those changes.
Speaker 2:Still, Suchi observes that a number of organizations are unwilling to admit to mistakes or remain closed off to correction.
Speaker 4:So organizationally, I mean, it's challenging and I see small organizations still manage to do it, but large organizations with a lot of capacity, a lot of goals, a lot of funding available to them, they actually struggle more. We need to look at them as leaders and not those who are getting multi-million dollar grants because they are writing the language of the donors all the time.
Speaker 2:Suchi says she thinks the only way to really change this culture is by calling organizations out and holding them accountable.
Speaker 4:And as community, feminist communities or humanitarian communities, we need to just call each other out and be okay with it. I think there's a scare, there's a fear there. Everyone is competing with each other. Nobody wants to with funds, nobody wants to be in bad books with each other. But if you're truly a community-driven organization and you're there for the people, why will you not do it? I mean, you are accountable to the community and the community will ask you that question, and I think that's the beauty of it.
Speaker 2:At the World YWCA. Decolonising language has meant developing a host of tools for the young women who are at its forefront, from translating research into local languages to co-creating resources with terms that make sense for the community they are working with. Young women are at the forefront of the efforts to reclaim their languages in a more power-neutral way. It is time we open the space and look at it from a lens of gender equality and equity. The World YWCA is a global women's rights organization engaging millions of women, young women and girls around the world each year, across cultures and beliefs, to transform lives and the world for the better. Where the presence in over a hundred countries.
Speaker 2:Our work is grassroots driven, grounded in local communities and rooted in the transformational power of women. We provide support and opportunities for women, young women and girls to become leaders and change makers who not only protect their rights and impact their communities, but inspire their peers to do the same. We are focused on building a strong intergenerational network of women and young women leaders, with programs led by and for women and young women in response to the unique needs they see in their communities. Our goal is that by 2035, a hundred million young women and girls transform power structures to create justice, gender equality, human dignity, freedom, a sustainable environment and a world free from violence and war. Leading a vital YWCA movement inclusive of all this podcast series has been funded by the Australian government under the Rise Up Young Women's Leadership and Advocacy Initiative in the Asia Pacific region. You can find out more about our work on our website. Our handle is WorldwideWCA on all social media.