Three books, in Bangla, Kannada and Marathi, are to be translated under the inaugural New India Foundation Translation Fellowships
The New India Foundation (NIF) has announced the three awardees of the inaugural NIF Translation Fellowships, chosen from across 10 Indian languages for the research and translation of three non-fiction texts originally published in Bangla, Kannada and Marathi. Instituted to promote non-fiction translations from various Indian languages to English, the Translation Fellowships aim to increase the readership of regional-language books by translating them into English. The awardees are: Venkateswar Ramaswamy (literary translator) & Amlan Biswas (statistician) to translate Nirmal Kumar’s Diaries 1946-47 from Bangla; N.S. Gundur (academician and literary historian) to translate D.R. Nagaraj's Allamaprabhu Mattu Shaiva Pratibhe from Kannada; Rahul Sarwate (academician and historian) to translate Sharad Patil's Marxvad: Phule-Ambedkarvaad from Marathi.
The fellowship is awarded for a period of six months and comes with a stipend of ₹6 lakh for each recipient/team. In each round of the NIF Translation Fellowships, languages will be alternated to ensure a pan-Indian representation of linguistic diversity. These new fellowships complement the existing Book Fellowships that have led to the publication of 25 books so far and several new works ready for publication in English.
The jury included the NIF Trustees: political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, historian Srinath Raghavan, and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal alongside the Language Expert Committee in all 10 languages: Kuladhar Saikia (Assamese); Ipshita Chanda (Bangla); Tridip Suhrud (Gujarati); Harish Trivedi (Hindi); Vivek Shanbhag (Kannada); Rajan Gurukkal (Malayalam); Suhas Palshikar (Marathi); Jatin Nayak (Odia); A.R. Venkatachalapathy (Tamil); Ayesha Kidwai & Rana Safvi (Urdu).
Speaking on this initiative, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Trustee of NIF, said, “The Translation Fellowships of the New India Foundation have been awarded for the translation of three books that span the genres of personal memoir, philosophical dialogue, and critical theory, by three towering intellectuals of their time: Nirmal Kumar Bose, D.R. Nagaraj, and Sharad Patil. Written in Bangla, Kannada and Marathi respectively, each book is a fine contribution to the rich intellectual tradition in these languages. We are excited that this work will be introduced to readers through annotated translations and hope that the English editions of these books will spark conversations about the relevance of their ideas today.”
