The high mark of Sage’s golden jubilee celebrations in India is the entry of Sage India into Indian languages under its own banner –– Sage Bhasha. In an email interview, Rudra Narayan Sharma, its editor, shares his thoughts about this new venture.
Edited excerpts:
Tell us about Sage Bhasha…
It is simple and in line with Sage’s global mission –– dissemination of knowledge. This time this global objective has a robust local face, Sage Bhasha. We intend to spread the best of social science and business and management books from Sage in the local Indian languages, in a language in which people think and speak. In effect, it is a natural extension of our English language publishing programme.
How did you zero in Zeroing on Hindi and Marathi as the language for the imprint?
There is a big market for Hindi and Marathi language. For example, almost 60 per cent of the students in Delhi University come from a Hindi background (a conservative estimate).
And remember this is just one city and just one university. The number of students is constantly rising in the higher education segment and the majority come from Hindi and other language background. Why should they be deprived of quality content? Further, the relationship here is symbiotic. The more we publish in Hindi, the more we interact with the intelligentsia of the local language and in turn it enhances our language publishing programme. In Marathi also we were getting encouraging sentiments. We are starting with these two languages and over a course of time will venture into other regional languages.
Will the original titles planned be on subjects in which Sage India specialises? , that is academic, text books, management and business books? Elaborate about the content writers for this imprint?
Our core focus is social science publishing and in business and management, and we plan to extend this vision and focus into the regional language programme.
Sage is a natural home for authors, editors and societies and we have built this intellectual capital over a period of time. It has grown with its authors and vice versa. There are so many existing authors who want their work to be translated into the regional languages. Also, we keep getting requests from the academics as to why Sage India is not into regional languages. So we have a qualitative and quantitative repository of experts who will write for us. But that will be our second phase. In its first phase Sage Bhasha will roll out the translations of its own published titles, and then 2016-17 onwards we will get into original content in Hindi and Marathi.
How will you ensure proper translation of original Sage titles and expectations from Sage Bhasha?
We are developing a content-evaluation team drawn from academia and professionals in the field who will ensure the translations adhere to the English original. Sage Bhasha will own every segment of the publishing pipeline, end to end. Earlier, Sage had an arrangement with our co-publishing partner, where the former provided the content and the latter took care of the translations, printing, sales and marketing. Now, we will be in charge of the whole ecosystem, and that will ensure value addition.
