To celebrate books in Indian languages, New India Foundation announces fellowships

The New India Foundation (NIF) will begin inviting applications for the first round of the NIF Translation Fellowships to be awarded in 2022, from India’s 74th Independence Day on August 15. “Aimed at encouraging translations from outstanding non-fiction works in Indian languages to English, the NIF Translation Fellowships will showcase the country’s rich history and distinct narratives through regional literature...Our endeavour through the Translation Fellowships is to tap into the rich repository of non-fiction literature in Indian languages to make these works accessible to wider audiences,” a release stated. So far, the programme has led to the publication of 22 books along with several new works ready for publication.

The first round of Translation Fellowships will be awarded to three translators/writers for research and translation of crucial non-fiction works about India from various Indian languages to English. Proposals are invited from translators for ten 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.

“Awarded for a period of six months with a stipend of Rs 6 lakh to each recipient, the Translation Fellowships will be awarded to translators/writers working on bringing historical Indian-language texts into an English publication. By the end of the fellowship, fellows are expected to publish the translated works, which will be an extension of their winning proposals,” the release added.

Speaking on the initiative, Niraja Gopal Jayal, Trustee, New India Foundation said, “There is an old saying about India that ‘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.”

The deadline for submissions is December 31, 2021 and the jury for the fellowships this year includes NIF Trustees, political scientist Niraja Gopal Jayal, historian Srinath Raghavan, and entrepreneur Manish Sabharwal alongside with a Language Expert Committee in all 10 languages, comprising esteemed bilingual scholars, professors, academics, and literary translators.

“Based in Bengaluru, the core activity of the New India Foundation is the New India Fellowships which have been awarded to scholars and writers for over a decade and a half now...The Annual NIF Lecture was started in 2004 and renamed in 2019 as the Girish Karnad Memorial Lecture in honour of the late multi-lingual scholar. Delivered annually by a distinguished scholar or writer, the NIF Lecture is held in Bengaluru in association with a reputed public institution,” the release added.