If you are reading this, you, like me, may be one of these people! For you, I have compiled a booklet of Urdu poems to consider in your translation work for the Stephen Spender Prize 2021. 0.7 per cent), Sri Lankans, as well as third-generation Asians, Asians of mixed parentage, people from Nepal, Bhutan and the Maldive Islands and some from the Middle East. In the UK, South Asian minority groups include Indians (1.45 million, 2.3 per cent), Pakistanis (1.17 million, 1.9 per cent), Bangladeshis (451,500. Yes, language is our mother and so losing the language of our ancestors can feel like losing a mother. It is interesting that the language one grows up with at home is called ‘the mother tongue’. In the 1980s South Asian children were actively dissuaded from speaking their mother tongues at home! These were seen as necessary measures for ‘integration,’ however, for many what this resulted in was loss. In talking to individuals from the South Asian community in the U.K., I have learnt how this feeling of rootlessness can travel from first generation to second generation. One transforms into an entirely different person in so many ways! For many though, this experience is a difficult one and people find they feel a little like Harry Potter the first time he uses the floo powder to travel – not quite all there. A person who leaves one’s home, often due to a lack of resources, support or prospects there, uproots absolutely everything to go and re-establish a new home in a different country, is forced to negotiate loss.
Through this journey I realized that several factors may have played a part in my desire to translate Urdu and facilitate others to do so too. I have been looking back recently, while being interviewed or making video content for children in the context of speaking about Urdu.
I never set out to be an Urdu translator or to promote Urdu learning. I welcome you to the new website and to the prize! I am honoured to be the Urdu Spotlight curator and judge for the Stephen Spender Prize 2021. My name is Sascha Akhtar and I am a writer, translator and educator originally from Pakistan.