With simultaneous interpretations available in 18 languages, the Lok Sabha proceedings are now being interpreted in real time into more languages than there are commentary tracks for the Indian Premier League.
Apart from the original “floor audio”, MPs, visitors, and viewers on YouTube can choose from English, Hindi, Assamese, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Kannada, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri, Marathi, Odia, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Tamil, Telugu or Urdu.
A few minutes before parliamentary proceedings start at 11 a.m., an interpretation cell administrator takes a quick roll call of each of the 19 interpretation booths, making sure they are staffed with at least two people, who swap places every half an hour (interpretation is a mentally taxing work, necessitating such swaps). A total of 22 languages are planned — booths for Kashmiri, Konkani, Nepali, Sindhi and Santhali were not, as of Wednesday (March 26, 2025), operational. Urdu and Sanskrit interpretation feeds are not yet being streamed on YouTube.
Human interpreters
The interpretation is fully done by human interpreters, hired by Parliament over the last two years. These “consultant interpreters” have a wide range of experience — some are recent college graduates, and others have worked in translation and radio for decades, a review of their profiles shows.
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An official told The Hindu that many of the non-Hindi-English interpreters either translate remarks using the Hindi or English interpretation as a “relay”. In many of the languages, there is no market outside Parliament for simultaneous interpretation, and the batch of consultant interpreters hired in recent months are the first group to be doing it on such a regular basis anywhere in the country. Unlike sequential interpretation, there is no opportunity to wait for pauses to translate their remarks.
In a matter of months, the official said, the interpreters are showing great progress. Interpreting from English into Indian languages can be a challenge due to different grammatical structures, meaning interpreters have to manage a “cognitive load” of multiple sentences at a time, an enormous challenge.
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Before sessions start, interpreters undergo a rigorous fifteen day training programme, with interpretation drills where they polish their skills before the session starts. Earlier, interpretation was only available from regional languages, and only if the Lok Sabha speaker allowed it.
Need for Sanskrit interpretation
In February, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam MP Dayanidhi Maran questioned the need for Sanskrit interpretation, arguing that it was a waste of public resources, prompting a furious response from Speaker Om Birla. “What country are you living in,” Mr. Birla asked. “Sanskrit is the origin language [mool bhasha] of India.” Mr. Maran noted that only 73,000 people in India spoke Sanskrit, demanding why “taxpayer money should be wasted because of your RSS ideology”.
The Lok Sabha may pay out ₹2-3 lakh in total for each day Parliament is in session in daily fees to the interpreters, assuming there are 44 interpreters (two for each language), getting paid ₹6,000 for each day of service. Interpreters also receive an annual ₹25,000 retainer.
English and Hindi interpretations are so far the only language pairs available in the Rajya Sabha. In recent weeks, the Upper House has also started live streaming these feeds.
Published - March 27, 2025 11:01 pm IST
