Watching policy dialogues originated from Nepal in youtube has become my routine since last few years. I find time to watch such debates as much as I can. Sometime I add them to my “watch later” list on youtube if I do not find time to watch them. As a Nepali citizen policy debates about issues in Nepal are interesting to me. These discussions further help me to find a new research topics that I am interested in.
Lately, hosting policy debates in English has become a popular trend. Some of the debates are interesting to watch. Most of them throw me off within the first thirty seconds for several reasons. First, most of the speakers are not comfortable in expressing their thoughts in English language. They are forcing themselves to speak and trying to find words that literally translate into Nepali language syntax. Host and speaker both think in Nepali and speak in English–they literally translate Nepali sentence into english version. Their oration sounds like they don’t belong to either languages because two languages follow different grammatical pattern and syntax. Questions from host and answers from speaker become unclear to listeners due to language barriers. Second, the flow of conversation become interrupted making conversation less meaningful and boring. For example, most of the speakers tends to pause and add words like “You know!”, “Ahh!”, “The”, “A” when they are irrelevant during conversation. More than that, it’s virtually impossible for listener to understand the message they are trying to deliver. These are just a few reasons among many that I wanted to mention.
I am assuming that the goal of such debates is to deliver the message to policymakers. If they listened, they would implement policy suggestions made by expert speakers during the talkshow. I am assuming that the targeted audiences of such policy debates are Nepali people from Nepal. It also includes those living outside Nepal. If so, those who are interested in policymaking debates in Nepal are more comfortable in listening and speaking Nepali language. They prefer Nepali because it is their native language. Nepali citizens living outside Nepal understand and speak Nepali even though they are comfortable in non-native languages like English. And, more importantly, speakers and host can deliver their message in Nepali language far better than in English.
Having such policy debates in Nepali language would really become appealing to Nepali citizens globally. There are more Nepali citizens in Nepal who are interested in policymaking but lacks english competency. Having talk shows in Nepali language would attract Nepali language speakers and listeners nationally and globally. There are several such policy talk show hosts, without mentioning their names, who rarely—if not never—used a single English word. Despite this, they are hosting excellent national debates in Nepali television history. They have hosted incredible shows which were always interesting to me, at least, as a listener.
I am not against having policy debate in English language. This is acceptable if both the speaker and the host are comfortable. They must also create a talk show that is appealing to listeners. But creating something that sounds so non-natural and forced talk sounds really weird to me. Producing talk shows in English provides an opportunity to reach a broader audience. This is only possible if the discussion can deliver a clear message to the listeners.
I wrote this post to positively influence the incredible work of policy talkshow hosts. I hope that this article can make a positive change that I wish to at best. At worst, I hope that it won’t offend the incredible hosts of Nepali policy talk shows. They have the right to advance their vision just like what I am doing here through my blog posts.
Keep up the good work! I like to listen to your talkshows more often than not.
