Meet a Fall Forum speaker!
Fall Forum 2014 will be held in 3 days. In this event, speakers from more than 10 countries will discuss one of the most urgent global issues of our time: Water. Rajeev Sinha, a student in the Chinese Translation and Interpretation program at MIIS from India, is one of our speakers, and he will speak about water and politics.
Q – Thank you for accepting to be a speaker at Fall Forum. I’m glad that I can interview you for the blog. First, I’d like to ask for your observations on water issues.
A – Water is becoming an increasingly scarce resource, having political implications for a country both in the domestic and international arena.
Shortage of water directly affects people’s life, affecting availability of water for drinking, as well as agriculture. Such shortage also adversely affects country’s economic situation, industries, electricity production, etc. Bigger countries at times face a peculiar situation. For example, at times, while one part of a country struggles with droughts, another deals with floods. While one part of the country is endowed with water resources, the other part is arid. That’s why some countries are engaged in river linking projects as well as water diversion projects.
In the international domain, as regards the trans-border Rivers shared by two or more countries, the concerned countries try to set up bilateral and multilateral mechanisms to alleviate suspicion between them regarding river water usage, and to share relevant hydrological data, which is useful in flood forecasting and disaster prevention and mitigation.
Q – Thank you very much. I’m also curious about your impression of the Chinese language. You obviously have spent a lot of time learning and using the language. What are your thoughts on the Chinese language?
A – People may disagree, but I think Chinese isn’t difficult language to learn in the initial stages; but it is difficult to master. After initial stages, it becomes increasingly difficult to reach higher levels of proficiency in this language.
I think this is partially because the Chinese grammar is flexible, and for a non-native speaker, it takes a lot of time to develop the “feel” of the language. One struggles in choosing appropriate words for specific contexts, and wrong choice of words leads to awkward sentences, lacking native flavor. Even though two words represent similar concepts, they may not necessarily be used in the same way. Moreover, sentence structure is different from several other languages including English.
– Thank you so much. I am looking forward to seeing you and listening to you at Fall Forum.