To mark India’s 74th Independence Day, the New India Foundation (NIF) is inviting applications for the first round of the NIF Translation Fellowships to be awarded in 2022. Three outstanding translators/ writers will get the fellowship for the research and translation of crucial non-fiction works from various Indian languages to English. Proposals are invited from translators for 10 languages — Assamese, Bangla, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Marathi, Malayalam, Odia, Tamil and Urdu. The fellowship will be granted on the basis of the choice of text, quality of translation, and overall project proposal. The non-fiction source text can be from any genre but it should throw light on a given socio-economic/ cultural aspect of Indian history from the year 1850 onwards.
The NIF Translation Fellowships aim to showcase India’s history and distinct narratives through regional literature. They complement the existing NIF programme that has led to the publication of 22 books so far and several new works ready for publication, over 10 fellowship rounds. By the end of the translation fellowships, fellows are expected to publish the translated works as an extension of their winning proposals. Each of them will be awarded a stipend of ₹6 lakh for a period of six months.
The jury for the fellowships this year includes the NIF Trustees — political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, historian Srinath Raghavan, and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal. There is also a Language Expert Committee in all of the 10 languages, comprising bilingual scholars, professors, academics and literary translators including Kuladhar Saikia for Assamese, Ipshita Chanda for Bangla,Tridip Suhrud foe Gujarati, Harish Trivedi for Hindi, Vivek Shanbhag for Kannada, Rajan Gurukkal for Malayalam, Suhas Palshikar for Marathi, Jatin Nayak for Odia, A.R. Venkatachalapathy for Tamil, Ayesha Kidwai and Rana Safvi for Urdu.
Speaking about the initiative, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Trustee, New India Foundation said, “There is an old saying about India: kos-kos mein badle paani; chaar kos mein vaani . A culture is captured by its symbols, heroes, rituals, history and writing; the NIF translation fellowships aim to make more of our culture accessible to new audiences.”
Applications are open from August 11 and the deadline for submissions is December 31, 2021. To know more about the Translations Fellowship, please visit the website: https://www.newindiafoundation.org/nif-translation-fellowship
