A new initiative aims to encourage “direct translation” of Hindu or Tamil literature into the world’s major languages – without going through the English translation.

Due to a scarcity of translators for certain “language pairs,” especially in the world of literature, works are often translated from their English translation rather than from the original version.

This type of “double translation” is obviously not ideal, especially in novels and other artistic writing where, arguably, something is always lost in translation.

At the recent Frankfurt Book Fair (October 12-16, 2011) India came to the forefront on the subject, featuring an exhibition from the ILA “Indian Literature Abroad” project.

The project is targeted at promoting translations of indigenous Indian writing – works written in languages other than English – into 6 target languages: Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish.

The goal is to find translators who can work directly from, for example, Tamil to Russian, rather than translating into Russian from the English translation of the Tamil book.

"Translating a regional literary work first into English and then into a foreign language results in loss of textual matter,” explained writer Namita Gokhale of the Indian Literature Abroad project in an article on Daily News and Analysis India.

At Language Translation, Inc., we are not specialized in literary translation, yet enjoy keeping abreast of developments in that significant field.

We do provide language translation services in a large range of languages in many other sectors of activity, including medicine, law and business.

Betty Carlson

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