Arpeeta Shams Mizan
Translator Bangla (Bengali)
“Language justice means the freedom, accessibility, acceptability & adaptability of using language, be it oral, written, sign or any other form, to express oneself the way one intends to. Language justice includes freedom from hierarchical hegemony where formal linguistic forms prevail over colloquial forms. It means resources like translation and interpretation services that ensures one’s linguistic expression.”
Arpeeta Shams Mizan, a translator on the Respond team Bangla team is an academic doing socio legal research. Currently she is a PhD Candidate at the University of Bristol Law School. She studies the human experience of law in everyday life. Her areas of research include legal consciousness, Colonial legal history, law and religion. Arpeeta was a Tedx speaker. She loves painting in her free time, and can make dog barking sounds!
Arpeeta comes from a middle class family where girls were married before they could complete their graduation. She was the first not only to attend Harvard as an unmarried woman, but also the first girl to do a PhD. After Arpeeta, other cousins followed suit. She is proud to have paved that way for her younger family members.
When asked to share something about the language(s) she translates that people wouldn’t necessarily know, Arpeeta tells us, “In Bangla, there are three forms of Second person, Apni, Tumi, Tui (equivalent to French Vous and Tu). Interestingly, Tui can denote both intimacy and derogatory addressing. The verb forms change for each form.”
As a legal professional, Arpeeta has always been eager to translate her academic knowledge into practice. Since her early days as a student, she's always engaged in community advocacy. Arpeets has a deep passion for language. “Working in Respond means I combine my passions together to make a meaningful contribution to society in real time, as opposed to social change that generally takes a very long time. As part of the Respond team, I get to represent the voice of people whom life hit hard, yet they never lose positivity, strength and continue taking initiatives to make their life better.” Arpeeta says.
Arpeeta tells us that she is a survivor of decade long depression, and still has to fight the fight occasionally. She shares that she tends to focus on her strengths and my support network, (her husband and four close friends) when she has dark days, and goes to therapy when she needs it.
She says this work hasn’t posed any challenges for her mental health. “Besides academia, I am most proud of my mental health journey. I realized I was struggling with mental health issues back in the 2010s, when nobody in my family or work circle even knew the term depression. I made that journey on my own- I suffered depression alone, I searched and found a therapist on my own, I persevered to recover.”
Her work with Respond has shown Arpeeta how the theories she teaches in her class get translated in the real world. This keeps her grounded, and away from being an armchair activist who does research from the ivory towers of academia. She says that, “It also adds diversity to my perspective, as I come across many people who I would otherwise may rarely interact with.”
To Arpeeta, language justice means the freedom, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of using language, be it oral, written, sign or any other form, to express oneself the way one intends to. Language justice includes freedom from hierarchical hegemony where formal linguistic forms prevail over colloquial forms. It means resources like translation and interpretation services that ensure one’s linguistic expression.
Arpeeta’s favorite word in any language is Toska, a Russian word. Arpeeta tells us means, “an immense ache for nothing and everything all at once. It describes a very vital phase of my life, the phase that broke me and rebuilt me.”
