Indian languages literature gets boost, translation catalogue lanched

Jaipur: A translational catalogue of Indian language writing was launched in Jaipur Literature Festival on Sunday. The catalogue will help publishers from all around the globe to pick up the literature work in Indian language and translate them in different languages.

Launched at the third edition of Jaipur BookMark (JBM), The Global Rights Catalogue aims to increase the readership of literature in Indian languages.

The literature in vernacular language often does not receive credit as much it deserves and the only reason behind it is the lack of translation available, organizers said.

This will not only encourage the local languages but it will also help in getting the translation of foreign works and initiate an exchange of literature between different languages, organizers added.

To make it more successful, JBM has tied up with Daily Hunt, India's one of the leading distributors of e-books.

Organizers said that daily hunt has almost 70000 books in 10 different Indian languages which make them the suitable partner for this initiative.

Sanjay Roy, Managing Director of Teamwork Arts, said "We discussed the possibility of commissioning a translation of 8 to 10 works in different languages, which is where Daily Hunt came in, with publications in over 16 languages and a reach across 1000 Indian cities".

To begin it, three books published in Hindi and one book published in each of Gujarati, Rajasthani, Kannada, Bengali and Assamese are included in the catalogue.

The translated books are "Sur Ki Baradari" by Yatindra Mishra into "A blessed life". The other book is Anu Singh Chaudhary's "Neela Scarf" which is translated into "The Last Puff and Other Stories".

Feminist author and founder of Zubaan books, Urvashi Butalia lauded JBM for this initiative and said that in India there is no such platform for Indian language literature to show on the world stage like this.

This initiative is an encouraging sign for Indian language writers as a lot of quality writings go unnoticed because of lack of the translation and readerships of vernacular languages.