International Translation Day | The power of community for India’s young translators with mentors, peer resources, grants and scholarships

The 2022 International Booker win for Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, translated from the Hindi by Daisy Rockwell, is widely considered a watershed moment for Indian translation. Author and translator Arunava Sinha, who both teaches and mentors young translators, says, “They are coming out of everywhere, and with an enthusiasm for books in their mother tongue. “Places like Disney+ Hotstar look at the English version of the script because a lot of people who work there can’t read Malayalam.” She calls it “shadow work”. Speech flows across barriers.”Vasantha SuryaTamil journalist, poet and translator Notable fellowships and grants for young translators The South Asia Speaks Fellowship is a free literary mentorship for outstanding emerging writers living in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Bhutan, Nepal and Maldives NIF Translation Fellowships for non-fiction works from Indian languages to English. Emerging Translator Mentorship Program from The American Literary Translators Association has categories that include non-language-specific BIPOC mentorship, and non-language-specific, non-genre-specific mentorship The Emerging Literary Translator Mentorships by the National Centre for Writing The Bank of Baroda Rashtrabhasha Samman for translations from Indian regional languages Charles Wallace India Trust Translation Fellowship from Literature Across Frontiers The NBT Translation Grant Programme Pen Presents from English PEN The PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grants The Camargo Fellowship from the Camargo Foundation The Jan Michalski Foundation’s Residency for Writers swati.daftuar@thehindu.co.in