New Delhi: The New India Foundation announced the three awardees of the inaugural NIF Translation Fellowships, chosen from across 10 Indian languages for the research and translation of three historically significant 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 are envisioned to create an expansive cultural reach for works that have thus far been confined to those who understand the original language of their composition.
The awardees of the inaugural round of the NIF Translation Fellowships are Venkateswar Ramaswamy (literary translator) & Amlan Biswas (statistician), who will translate Nirmal Kumar’s ‘Diaries 1946-47’ from Bangla, N. S. Gundur (academician and literary historian) who will translate D. R. Nagaraj’s ‘Allamaprabhu Mattu Shaiva Pratibhe’ from Kannada and Rahul Sarwate (academician and historian) who will translate Sharad Patil’s ‘Marxvad: Phule-Ambedkarvaad’ from Marathi.
Awarded for a period of six months with a stipend of Rs 6 lakh to each recipient/team, the Translation Fellowship offers the opportunity for direct mentorship under the Language Expert Committee and the NIF Trustees, apart from providing financial, editorial, legal, and publishing support.
There are no constraints on genre, style, nationality of the translator, or ideology of the material chosen for the Translation Fellowships as long as they are published after 1850 and illuminate the development of modern and contemporary India.
The Jury for these fellowships 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, comprising bilingual scholars, professors, academics, and literary translators.
Speaking on this initiative, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Trustee of New India Foundation 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.”
