In a heartening cultural development from Muzaffarpur, a meaningful initiative has once again brought attention to the rich linguistic heritage of Bajjika, one of the oldest and most deeply rooted regional languages of Bihar.

A special programme was recently organized at Theosophical Lodge, Naya Tola, Muzaffarpur, under the banner of Bajjika Vikas Manch, where Mahavir Jayanti was observed as Bajjika Diwas. But this was not merely a ceremonial gathering. It carried a larger cultural message: that Bajjika is not just a spoken dialect of everyday life, but a language with deep historical roots, civilizational continuity, and emotional connection to the people of the region.

Speakers at the event stressed that the importance of Bajjika goes far beyond local identity. According to Uday Narayan Singh, Vice President of the Bajjika Vikas Manch, the language spoken in the Bajjika region during the time of Bhagwan Mahavir was Prakrit, which was then the common language of the people. He emphasized that present-day Bajjika is essentially a developed form of that same Prakrit tradition. This is a very important point, because it connects Bajjika not merely with regional usage, but with a long civilizational journey stretching back more than two thousand years.

That cultural continuity was echoed by several other speakers. Dr. Hari Kishore Prasad Singh noted that while the formal credit for the naming of the language as Bajjika goes to Pandit Rahul Sankrityayan, the language itself is far older and had already existed as a people’s language centuries before. In fact, it was pointed out that this linguistic tradition was alive even around 600 years before the Common Era, and continued as a jan-bhasha, a mass language, among ordinary people.

This distinction is crucial. A language may receive a formal name at a particular moment in history, but its lived existence often predates that recognition by centuries. That is exactly what makes Bajjika so significant. It was not artificially created. It grew naturally among the people. It lived in households, in local speech, in emotional vocabulary, in community memory, and in cultural expression.

Dr. Vinod Kumar Singh also underlined that although the naming of Bajjika as a linguistic identity came in 1936, its roots are much older, extending back to the periods associated with Mahavir and Buddha. In other words, Bajjika is not a recent linguistic assertion. It is an ancient voice that has survived through time.

In the presidential address, Chitranjan Sinha Kanak gave perhaps the most striking cultural description. He said that Bajjika is the daughter of Prakrit. He also referred to the meaning of Prakrit as something natural and unbound, and observed that such languages grow through life itself rather than rigid grammatical control. That expression gives emotional depth to the discussion: Bajjika is not merely a subject of scholarship, but a living inheritance.

Another important intervention came from Devesh Thakur, who said that until Bajjika finds a place in the Eighth Schedule, the movement for recognition should not rest. This reflects a growing consciousness in the region that preserving a language today requires both cultural pride and institutional support.

The presence of individuals such as Dr. Munna Gupta, Prem Kumar Verma, Rajesh Prasad Shahi, Ramesh Prasad Srivastava, Ashok Prasad Chaurasia, Sunita Soni, Anil Shankar Thakur, Dr. Usha Kiran, and others added further weight to the event. Their participation shows that the effort to protect Bajjika is no longer isolated. It is slowly becoming a wider cultural movement.

What makes this especially encouraging is the larger message behind such programmes. In a time when many regional languages struggle for space, dignity, and continuity, initiatives like these remind us that language is not just a tool of communication. It is identity, memory, history, and belonging.

And that is why this development from Muzaffarpur matters. It shows that people in the Bajjika region are becoming more aware, more organized, and more determined to preserve and promote their linguistic heritage. That awareness itself is a sign of revival.

Bajjika has survived because people carried it in their speech, their homes, and their everyday life. Now, with conscious efforts like these, it may also find the recognition it deserves in public and cultural discourse.

This is not just about remembering the past. It is about securing the future of a language that has lived for centuries and still continues to thrive.

Dear Colleague, 

FIT Asia has published Issue No. 4 (December 2025) of the FIT Asia Bulletin (attached).

This edition includes event reports and reflections from across the translation and interpreting community, and it’s a great read for language professionals who want to stay connected with what’s happening in the region.

📌 Please read and share it with your networks, colleagues, and fellow language professionals.

✨ Call for Contributions (March 2026 Issue):
FIT Asia is welcoming submissions for the next issue — including:

• Articles
• Event reports
• Upcoming event announcements
• Opinion pieces related to translation/interpreting

If anyone from our Modlingua Language Forum would like to contribute, this is a strong opportunity to share your work and voice with a wider professional community.

Click here to download the FIT ASIA Bulletin

Warm regards,
Ravi Kumar
(Modlingua Language Forum)

WhatsApp Channel: https://whatsapp.com/channel/0029Va5Tm7lKLaHn35QMPQ0Y

Understanding Wikipedia’s Dark Matter: Translation and Multilingual Practice in the World’s Largest Online Encyclopaedia

Hong Kong Baptist University

15-17 December 2021 | Online via Zoom

(Second Call for Papers) 

Background

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online encyclopedia. It has 303 active language editions, which were accessed from 1.7bn unique devices during October 2020. Now over twenty years old, the encyclopedia has been studied by academics working within a range of disciplines since the mid-2000s, although it is only relatively recently that it has started attracting the attention of translation scholars too. During a short space of time, we have learned a considerable amount about topics such as translation quality, translation and cultural remembrance, multilingual knowledge production and point of view, the prominent role played by narratives in articles reporting on news stories, and how translation is portrayed in multiple language versions of the Wikipedia article on the term itself. However, translation largely remains Wikipedia's ‘dark matter’: not only is it difficult to locate, but researchers have so far struggled to map out the full extent of its contribution to this multilingual resource. Our aim in organising this international event is to allow the research community to take stock of the progress made so far and to identify new avenues for future work.

Topics

It is thus hoped that the conference will serve as a platform for interdisciplinary exchange on the latest developments in this area. Topics to be considered include but are not restricted to the following:

-          Research methodologies (e.g. identifying translated material; exploiting the Wikipedia ‘research ecosystem’; comparing content across multiple language editions; use of digital tools for data collection, analysis and visualisation; sentiment analysis);

-          Collaborativity vs. self-motivation among Wikipedia translator-editors, including the visibility of translator-editors on article Talk Pages;

-          Theoretical frameworks that have proven valuable for the study of Wikipedia translation (e.g. narrative theory, affect theory, critical discourse analysis);

-          The use of Wikipedia in the translation classroom;

-          The use of Wikipedia by translation professionals;

-          Research ethics and Wikipedia;

-          The nature of Wikipedia translation and how it differs not only from other more traditional types of translation but also from other newly emerging types;

-          Translation quality in Wikipedia;

-          How research into Wikipedia translation contributes to the digital turn in translation studies and/or to digital humanities;

-          Interdisciplinarity in research into Wikipedia translation, as well as research into the multilingual Wikipedia that makes no explicit reference to translation issues.

The conference will be one of the main research outputs from a research project funded by the Hong Kong Research Grants Council (https://wikipediasdarkmatter.wordpress.com/). It is organised by the Centre for Translation and the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University. We believe it will be the first major academic event dedicated to Wikipedia translation and hope that it will provide a strong basis for future collaboration and discussion.

Submission

We welcome proposals for paper and poster presentations in the form of an abstract of no more than 300 words. Please supply names, affiliations, e-mail addresses, and short biographies (around 100 words) for all authors and specify a maximum of six keywords.

Submission deadline (extended): Wednesday 30^th June 2021

Notification of acceptance/rejection: Friday 30^th July 2021

Submission link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=uwdm2021

Length of presentations: 30 minutes (20 minutes for presentation and 10 minutes for discussion). The language of the conference is English.

Contact

Conference website: https://ctn.hkbu.edu.hk/wikiconf2021

Conference e-mail address: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Keynote speakers

Khaled Al-Shehari, Qatar University

Henry Jones, Aston University

Julie McDonough Dolmaya, York University

Jun Pan, Hong Kong Baptist University

Workshop convenors

Mark Shuttleworth, Hong Kong Baptist University

Zhilu Tu, Hong Kong Baptist University

Organising committee

Mark Shuttleworth, Hong Kong Baptist University (chair)

Henry Jones, Aston University

Robert Neather, Hong Kong Baptist University

Min-hua Liu, Hong Kong Baptist University

Jun Pan, Hong Kong Baptist University

Clara Chuan Yu, Hong Kong Baptist University

Programme committee

Khaled Al-Shehari, Qatar University

Esperança Bielsa, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Sin-wai Chan, Caritas Institute of Higher Education, Hong Kong

Venus Chan, Open University of Hong Kong

Yi-Chiao Chen, National University of Singapore

Ali Jalalian Daghigh, University of Malaya

Federico Federici, UCL

Lincoln Fernandes, Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

Sandra Halverson, Universitetet i Agder

Catherine Hardie, Hong Kong Baptist University

Prabhakar Rao Jandhyala, University of Hyderabad

Henry Jones, Aston University

Ester Leung, University of Melbourne

Julie McDonough Dolmaya, York University

Robert Neather, Hong Kong Baptist University

Maeve Olohan, University of Manchester

Jun Pan, Hong Kong Baptist University

Serge Sharoff, University of Leeds

Mark Shuttleworth, Hong Kong Baptist University

Ulrich Tiedau, UCL

Jessica Yeung, Hong Kong Baptist University

Clara Chuan Yu, Hong Kong Baptist University

Meifang Zhang, University of Macau

Nan Zhao, Hong Kong Baptist University

Chunshen Zhu, Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Shocked to hear the demise of our close friend Marion Boers, the translator who worked hard throughout her life for the upliftment of translators and translation profession. From South Africa, she was our close collaborator and the President of FIT for 2 Terms from 2008 till 2014.

It is a big loss to the translators' community throughout the globe. 

Our deepest condolences to the family.