R Madhu Sudan has been asked to be Modi’s interpreter at the summit on April 27 and 28.

R Madhu Sudan has been asked to be Modi’s interpreter at the summit on April 27-28, according to people familiar with the details of the meeting who asked not to be identified. The task of the interpreter in such meetings is straightforward but difficult to ensure that nothing is missed in translation.

The first secretary at the Indian embassy in Beijing R Madhu Sudan will be the only other Indian at the informal summit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It has already been announced that they will meet in private without any aides and written notes and with no agendas or pre-negotiated statements.

PM Modi and China President Xi Jinping

Interpreters should have the felicity of language and understanding of the issues the leaders would possibly talk about so it is always a careful choice to choose a suitable interpreter. Madhu Sudan belongs to the 2007 batch of the Indian Foreign Service and has spent most of his professional career in China. He is also a special assistant to the Indian ambassador and a fluent Mandarin speaker.

He has been interpreting high-level meetings for some years now. When President Xi came to India in 2014, he was the interpreter. His first posting abroad after the training was to the Indian embassy in China as the third secretary from 2009 to 2011.

Xi Jinping India Visit

Nilakshi Saha Sinha, a director in the ministry of external affairs who is conversant in Hindi, English, Bengali, and French, is one of his preferred interpreters as Prime Minister Modi prefers to speak in Hindi during most of his foreign engagements and the presence of an interpreter is critical.