By Carolyn Lengel | Volunteer
Dear friends and supporters of literacy for all,
In India, 740 million people can’t read well enough to get the information they need from a newspaper. They can’t read well enough to manage a bus schedule, fill out a form, or make sure that a prescription is accurately filled. For them, illiteracy is not a theoretical struggle—it’s a daily disadvantage.
That population is equal to 100 times the number of people living in Switzerland. Why the comparison to Switzerland? Because Switzerland has been the setting for some of Bollywood’s biggest hit songs—and because Switzerland is the home of CERN, which on November 5 hosted the “Ripples of Curiosity” TEDx event. One of the innovative thinkers speaking at TEDxCERN was PlanetRead’s founder, Brij Kothari, who came up with the idea of using same-language subtitles for hugely popular Bollywood songs on Indian television as a way to bring some of those 740 million weak-literate or illiterate people in India into the light of literacy.
In his TEDxCERN talk, now available online, Brij shows examples from eye-tracking studies that demonstrate how same-language subtitles bring weak readers into inescapable engagement with written words. He cites inspiring examples of people who have gone from being unable to read beyond a few letters to being able to read well enough to manage modern life.
Brij notes that world leaders have supported his simple, innovative idea, quoting Bill Clinton’s praise of same-language subtitling (SLS) as “a small change that has a staggering impact on people’s lives.”
In pointing out that wiping out illiteracy is “simply a matter of a million people singing” along with subtitled songs from their favorite films, Brij also explains how inexpensive his solution is. “One dollar gives a lifetime of reading to a person.... To scale up nationally would cost a million dollars a year, and in five years we would transition 500 million weak readers” to literacy sufficient to read a newspaper.
Watch Brij’s TEDx talk—it’s well worth ten minutes of your time. And we hope you’ll agree with the TEDxCERN audience that increasing the reach of same-language subtitling for literacy is an effort worthy of your support!
Links:
By Carolyn Lengel | volunteer
By Parthibhan Amudhan | General Manager
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