Announcing if-me.org in Hindi
By: Toshita Pandey
More communities need mental health support. Our site is now available in हिन्दी! This post is available in Hindi.
Content warning: mental health stigma, depression, and anxiety
I’m a software engineer by profession and a writer by passion. I love reading and writing. I find words fascinating. Writing started off as a hobby and it became a way for me to express my emotions.
As a software engineer, I work on products and turn ideas into experiences using programming languages, well, mostly Ruby. I contribute to open source and participate in open source community discussions.
Sometimes I participate in street plays and theatre productions that are about difficult topics my community normally avoids talking about. Most of all, I love reading and understanding people — their motivations and reasons for the desires they cultivate. It’s like I have a very thin skin and feel everything that anyone in the room feels. It helps me understand people better and myself along the way.
How is mental health perceived and treated in Indian communities?
In Indian communities, mental health issues are still taboo and avoided in conversation. It feels like mental health issues are erased from existence and seen as a myth. Mental illness is only acknowledged in extreme cases — when someone is admitted to a mental health facility.
I’ve encountered people who say, “I don’t have time to be depressed, it’s for losers. Grow up and hustle.” They treat mental health issues like it’s a choice.
Mental health hospitals and treatment centers exist in India, but they are either too expensive or not helpful enough. With a population of around 1.3 billion people, 200 million of which suffer from depression alone, India has a long way to go in destigmatizing mental health and encouraging people to get adequate treatment.
Why did you want to participate in translating if-me.org?
I stumbled upon if-me.org during Hacktoberfest and wanted to contribute to it. After reaching out to Julia Nguyen, the founder, I started writing for the blog before working on the tech side.
The contributor community is a very safe space and everyone is super friendly over all channels of communication. Even though the project does not claim to solve all mental health issues, the community tries to live by the mission to increase mental health support.
Having experienced loneliness and anxiety myself, I recognize the importance of reaching out for help. I want if-me.org to be accessible to people in the Indian subcontinent. I hope these translations bring out the energy that if-me.org carries. I hope more people with mental health issues start believing that they aren’t alone and can survive, no matter what.
Were there any interesting challenges you came across while translating?
English and Hindi are very different, especially with regard to gendered pronouns and grammar. I believe these differences stem from the broader cultural differences between the Eastern and Western world.
Translating for tone is interesting because it’s supposed to represent the project’s mission. Hindi in its true form is quite difficult to comprehend as well as write. Many Indians do not understand it, so the challenge is to convey the essence while using commonly understood vocabulary.
One thing that I realized in this process is that mental health terms are not known by most Hindi speakers. For example, the English term for OCD is more commonly understood than the Hindi counterpart.
This made me wonder whether we purposely choose to not define these disorders or we are ignorant. I hope we create more words to better express our mental health.
