Bhojpuri which is spoken by more Mauritians than French and is used to convince voters in electoral campaigns. Mandarin and Hindi being the second and third most popular languages in the world according to Berlitz.com as well as the main languages of the countries which will have the two largest economies on Planet A for most of the remainder of the current century. And beyond.
There is basically no reason why an MP shouldn't also be able to speak in Telegu, Tamil, Marathi or Urdu in our National Assembly given that they are all languages that are spoken here. To be sure not all of them should be conferred the same status in parliament. Kreol, which is spoken by at least 170X more people in Mauritius than English should be given a place at least as important as the latter. This would mean making human translation into Kreol available during live transmissions of Parliament TV and a version of the Hansard in that language afterwards. That shouldn't require too big a staff given that most of us speak three languages fairly early in our lives or much money given that they can be redeployed in our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, embassies and at the MBC.
We should also make provision for speeches in Spanish and Arabic which are the most popular languages in about twenty countries each. And let us not forget Sanskrit about which forty years ago Briggs told AI Magazine "Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial Intelligence."
All of this can be done in two phases. The first one will take care of the first two paragraphs and the second the rest. But we should be able to make arrangements for the live translation of Parliamentary TV in Kreol and Bhojpuri almost immediately until relevant committees begin to keep minutes and lose hours.
