While Rotary is making huge gains in India both on the membership and TRF contributions front — last year it stood first in membership and second in TRF contributions, after the United States, and edging past Japan — quite often the language barrier is a hindrance in the effective functioning of clubs.
Particularly in rural areas, when English language capability is limited, many club presidents find it difficult to understand the content of ‘The Club President’s work book’, which is brought out in English by the RI headquarters in Evanston.
Realising the difficulty of many such club presidents in Indian villages and smaller towns, RIDE C Basker has come up with an innovative idea to translate the club president work book into several Indian languages.
The Tamil translation of club president’s work book, which will benefit around 600 presidents in Zone 5, whose mother tongue is Tamil, done by PDG G Olivannan from District 3230, was recently released in Chennai by PRID P T Prabhakar. He handed over the first copy of the Club President’s guide to D 3230 DG Natarajan Nagoji. Olivannan participated in the meet.
“Translations of the President’s and Secretary’s club books in several other Indian regional languages is also on, and those books will be printed and released soon to help the presidents not familiar with the English language to conduct their meetings effectively,” added RIDE Basker.