We are delighted to inform you that eBird has introduced about 100 bird names in five new south Asian languages- Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati, Hindi, and Telugu. These names will be seen in eBird and Birds of the World (BoW). This is in addition to Malayalam and Marathi that are already supported. This is truly a south Asian effort with Bangladesh also joining in for standardised Bangla names for their birds in eBird and BoW.
To see the names reflected in your eBird App and eBird web account, see this pdf.
In the near future, the team plans to have all bird names translated to the above languages. As of date, only Malayalam has all the bird names translated in regional language – including spuhs and slashes.
We would like to thank all the following people who have helped in completing this exercise.
| Assamese | Jaydev Mandal, Rupam Bhaduri |
| Bengali | Kanad Baidya, Sayam U. Chowdhury |
| Gujarati | Maulik Varu, Dhaval Vargiya, Prasad Ganpule |
| Hindi | Hakimuddin Saify, Monica Kaushik, Praver Mourya |
| Malayalam | Abhinand C, C Sashikumar |
| Marathi | Pooja Pawar, Saurabh Sawant |
| Telugu | Raja Bandi, Chandra Sekhar Bandi |
This update should create a renewed interest in other south Asian languages to publish standardised names that can be adopted in eBird and BoW. South Asian collaboration opportunities exist for some of them – Punjabi, Tamil, Nepali, Urdu, and Sindhi to name a few.
Header Image: Little Bunting Emberiza pusilla by Sandip Das/ Macaulay Library
Great
Making indigenous conservation appeal even more stronger this through language mode. How to convey appreciation to all those named in providing names in various regional languages — Kannada is missing. Thanks for informing.
Great efforts . This will help to bring locals on eBird platforms. Awareness must to communicate such efforts aming locals.
Can we contribute to this? I know the names of a few birds in Assamese that haven’t been translated yet. Maybe the same can be vetted by the experts.
Hi Manabendra,
Thanks for taking interest. May I suggest you speak to Jaydev Mandal who is our state coordinator for Assam. His email ID is [email protected]