'Interest in Indian art is on the rise in Korea,

India is the guest country at the Korea International Art Fair 2009 (KIAF) that begins today in Seoul. KIAF director Cheong Jong-Hyo

, who is also a known expert on the Korean art market and ran his own gallery in Osaka, spoke with Romain Maitra : What do you wish to achieve from this year's KIAF? Due to the economic downturn, almost every art fair is suffering from poor participation and disappointing sales. South Korea's recovery rate has been faster than that of other countries. From this positive aspect, the Korean art market is looking bright and our so-called 'young' (economically active age group between 30 and 40) collectors' consistent passion for art is one of the merits of the Korean art market. The Korean government is supporting us actively in order to achieve quick recovery from recession. So the main objective of this year's fair is to revitalise the Korean art scene and also become a role model that brings positive effects to neighbouring art markets like in India. What are your objectives to have India as the guest country this year? Contemporary Chinese art has drawn significant attention from the international art world in the past few years. So there is more interest in Asian art as compared with western art. Many experts share the opinion that India will rise as a new centre of art and culture in Asia. India has a potentially huge market besides its culture and history. Public interest in Indian art is gradually increasing in Korea. Hence the KIAF decided to invite India as the guest country and organise a special exhibition of artists who are representative of contemporary Indian art. The prime reason for having India as a guest country was to introduce and emphasise contemporary Indian art and its effect on the current international art scene. What is the status, or position, of contemporary Indian art today in the Asian art market? I agree with the opinion that the 21st century is more about the East than the West in almost every aspect, including art. Lots of Indian artists are already enjoying huge popularity around the world. But at this stage, it's about time art institutions in India the government, galleries, museums and individual curators became proactive and enlarged their market. This year India has been appointed as a guest country in ARCO in Spain and KIAF in Korea but the low interest of local institutions has resulted in poor participation in both the fairs. In my opinion, art associates in India should grab such opportunities. Long-term strategy is likely to determine the state of Indian art in the global market in the next 10 years.

INDIAN INTERPRETERS A MASTER

LANGUAGES
High speed drama
S. RANGARAJAN
Indian interpreters have mastered the art of bilingual interpretation despite many difficulties.
The improvements and advances in the audio communication services enabled the adoption of simultaneous interpretation …
Photo: Courtesy Shrikant Oak Equal to the task: Madhu Vinayak Oak (centre) interpreting for Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev.
Bilingual interpretation is a highly skilful and a very demanding profession. The era of interpretation started in 1919 after the First World War at the Paris Peace Conference. The American President, Woodrow Wilson and the British Prime Minister, Da vid Lloyd George challenged the monopoly of French as the international diplomatic language and successfully campaigned for the adoption of both French and English as the official languages in the League of Nations, the Permanent Court of International Justice and the International Labour Office (ILO) thereby sparking the demand for conference interpretation services.Dual act
Initially it was an age of consecutive interpretation when the speaker and the interpreter were seen side by side on the same podium. The two spoke in tandem; the interpreter rendering an oral translation of fragments of the original speech. The whole process was a long and time-consuming affair until 1925 when Edward Filene suggested a simultaneous interpretation system at the League of Nations. The improvements and advances in the audio communication services enabled the adoption of simultaneous interpretation when the interpreter finished seconds after the original speech.
Over the years Indians and Africans are unfortunately at a disadvantage in international conferences because of the restriction that one of the languages at the United Nations must be the mother tongue of the interpreter. But Indian interpreters have knocked out this restriction by their brilliant performances in bilateral talks of Indian leaders with foreign dignitaries.
In 1954, a junior official in the Embassy of India in Beijing gave bilateral and bilingual interpretation a dramatic push. V.V. Paranjpe, a Sanskrit scholar who had learnt Chinese during the World War II, was in the right place at the right time. Prime Minister Nehru was visiting China and, in the absence of a Chinese Ministry interpreter at a particular moment, Paranjpe filled in at short notice. Amazed by his performance, Zhou en lai is reported to have told the Indian Prime Minister that the interpreter’s Mandarin Chinese was perfect. Paranjpe’s star began rising in the diplomatic firmament and he rose to become India’s Ambassador to South Korea in Seoul, a vantage point to observe political developments in the region.Uphill battle
Nehru noted that the interpreter’s service in the Ministry of External Affairs must be developed and improved, but it took nearly three decades of uphill battle for this task to be achieved. Madhu Vinayak Oak and Santosh Kumar Ganguly successfully proved that Indian interpreters were equal, if not superior to any in the profession from any other country. Both worked in the Indian Embassy in Moscow.
Both had learnt Russian in New Delhi in the 1950s and early 1960s when facilities for learning foreign languages were very limited if not negligible. Madhu, as Oak was affectionately called, broke the barrier that only Russians could interpret for both Indian and Russian leaders during bilateral talks. He managed to attract Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s attention during her visit to Moscow in the late 1960s and went on to become a permanent feature of Mrs. Gandhi’s talks with Mr. Kosygin and Mr. Brezhnev.
During Narasimha Rao’s tenure as Foreign Minister, Santosh carried the battle forward successfully to gain interpreters due recognition in the diplomatic service, refuting the bureaucratic belief that interpreters were only messengers. By becoming India’s first Consul-General in St. Petersburg, Ganguly established that the interpreter’s role implied as much analysis and observation as that of the diplomats.
Around the same time in Paris, Pushpa Das (called Pouchappa Das by the French) was making a name for himself. A native of Pondicherry, Pushpa Das could easily claim French as his mother tongue, though the French would not accept this as easily.
The facilities for learning Arabic and the demand for Arabic interpretation are far more in India than for other foreign languages. The Ministry of External Affairs has a large cadre of Arabic interpreters, some passing out of the prestigious Al Azhar University of Cairo.
Bilingual interpretation can sometimes be a tricky affair. To highlight the need for resumption of diplomatic negotiations with Russia in several fields, Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State, presented a button with “peregruzit” inscribed on it to the Russian Foreign Minister, Lavrov. The Americans thought “peregruzit” meant “to reboot” or restart; whereas, unfortunately, the real meaning was “to overload” or “to overstrain”, as Lavrov pointed out. Both Clinton and Lavrov laughed over the gaffe and “peregruzit” has come to be accepted to mean restart giving an unexpected push to U.S.-Russian talks. Fortunately so far the Indian interpreters are not known for such diplomatic and linguistic faux pas.
The writer is a former Editor/Information Officer of the Embassy of India, Moscow.