A new imprint dedicated to translations!

Ratna Sagar – a leading educational publisher – has recently launched a new imprint, viz. Ratna Books, which is dedicated to publishing translations of literary texts from Indian languages into English (Ratna Translation Series – Celebrating Indian Languages in English).

The first three titles were released recently, where eminent poet Ashok Vajpeyi was the chief guest. The panel that discussed “Literary and Cultural Dimensions of Translation” included another eminent writer Keki N. Daruwalla and Professor GJV Prasad, professor, Centre for English Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

The Marathi translation of a collection of Gangadhar Gadgil’s short stories was also released in Mumbai by Ramdas Bhatkal (Popular Prakashan), who has published most of Gadgil’s work in Marathi. At the event, eminent writer Usha Tambe discussed the intricacies of translation with Keerti Ramachandra, who has translated Gadgil’s stories.

More recently, the Malayalam translation of Malayatoor’s The Sixth Finger was released by eminent writer Sethumadhavan at the Kochi International Book Festival. Professor RK Jayasree was in conversation with Prema Jayakumar, the translator of Malayatoor’s novel.

The initial three titles are translations from Tamil, Marathi and Malayalam. The next in the series are from Telugu, Assamese, Bengali, Gujarati and Kannada. Under consideration are from Urdu, and more from Marathi, Tamil, Bengali and Kannada.

Ratna Books plan to publish about ten translations a year.

–GS Jolly(With inputs from Ratna Sagar)