My Message Board Posting Protocol.

I have one person who is a law graduate who helps me to post. I compose my own thoughts and ideas about an issue, she helps me write these ideas in concise and plain English, so my own thoughts and ideas are clearly presented. My posts are actually very simple ideas, presented in plain English.

Therefore she transcribes my ideas into English; this form of English reflects her usage of the language but simply reports my thoughts and ideas. Sometimes I will discuss my thoughts with her to make sure I am coherently presenting my ideas. I draft, she transcribes, I review and edit, and if necessary we will discuss how to say what I want to say and then the message is posted. Sometimes this is done when we sit together or sometimes by instant messaging, increasingly I can manage to post without such help. She is not the author of my posts and she has no wish to participate in the Message Boards (MB) herself.

This way I can participate on the message boards in a way that lets me address the complex issues I want to engage with. My Ind-glish would not allow me to speak as I want and as such my voice would be unnecessarily constrained. If a non-Bengali speaker wanted to post on a Bengali message board you would also need to use a translator of some sort. The level of sophistication in such an exercise surely should be the choice of the individual. This protocol is transparent and public knowledge so readers can make personal judgments about the value of my contributions. This protocol is a bit like giving a statement to your solicitor for use in court, based on your statement he prepares a more formal document for use in court which you must agree is your statement and you sign it as such. Such a statement of witness is your words prepared in such a way so as to make them clear and useful for the court. However my protocol is much more personalized than that.

Sometimes it is suggested that my own dialect or use of Ind-glish would somehow be more authentic or credible. To me this would, in extremis, be like asking Stephen Hawking to turn off his voice simulator so his real voice could be heard or more closely like insisting a foreign witness in court to engage with difficult issues without a translator. My first language is Bengali, my principle second language is Hindi and my use of English is increasing day by day, but how many people would readily understand Indian/English idioms and why should I be compelled to use a form of a second language that would restrict the flow of my ideas?

All of the following are typical Ind-glish idioms; if I was to write "don't put your head in that hole!" how many people would immediately understand that I was saying, "do not interfere with that!" If I was to talk of people involved in the various Message Board disputes as possible "Aya Ram and Gaya Ram" who would understand that I was talking about "defectors". If I said someone was a "420" who would know I was talking about a "cheat". Referring to someone as a "Arre yaar" meaning friend is also perfectly acceptable in Indian/English.

If I was to adopt Ind-glish I would still need to anglicize it for use on the message boards and I would still be open to accusations of proxy posting, so how would be decided and by whom that my posts were a legitimate representation of my actual language skills and are not my ideas more important than the medium? The transparency of this protocol allows any reader to make a decision about how accurately my posts and on-line persona reflect the "real" me. However this is an issue that is endemic to the MB community and is no way specific to me. This issue has now been subjected to wide ranging consideration and the various opinions are well known. I do not believe if I abandoned this protocol that my posting would be more acceptable or credible but only that I would be prevented by my limited English language skills from participating fully on the MB, as such I intend to continue with this protocol.

Use of English has been a barrier to many people being able to participate in many institutions and organizations and the dominance of English is widely recognized as an institutional restraint that agencies should work towards overcoming by developing meaningful policies that allow non-English speakers to participate effectively. By demanding that I use a deliberately limiting form of English some people are seeking wittingly or unwittingly to maintain a cultural and linguistic dominance over the MB that is neither useful nor equitable. I am very grateful to all of the MB owners who currently allow me to use this protocol.