National Translation Mission, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysuru is a scheme of the Government of India to establish translation as an industry in general and to facilitate higher education by making Knowledge Texts (KT) accessible to students and academics in Indian languages in particular. The vision is to create a knowledge society by transcending language barriers. NTM aims to disseminate knowledge in all Indian languages listed in the VIII schedule of the Indian Constitution through translation. All textual materials meant for the dissemination of knowledge constitute the corpus of KT for NTM. AL present, NTM is engaged in the translation of all pedagogic materials related to higher education.
A translation equivalent (TE), indeed, is the key idea and need of translation. In the process of translation, equivalence is not at all universal. Finding out a TE of a word or word combination of a certain concept of the source language (SL) in another language under deliberation, i.e., target language (TL) is considered as the creation of equivalents. The TEs are suitable for specific cases, which are to be determined by scholars of different disciplines and come to a consensus before circulation and standardization. All these steps, obviously, speak of the complexity of finding the proper and only TE for a given term. A number of complex strategies were needed to find out these equivalents. Complete equivalence is acknowledged when there is concurrence of pragmatic meanings of the term in the SL and TL. This new series of TE in Indian Languages comes as a handy reference book at the time of translation and helps in uniformity of technical usages and saves plenty of time.
The use of terminology is an indispensable part of any translation. Translators, especially, Knowledge Text (KT) translators often need resources such as dictionaries, glossaries, Translation Equivalents (TE) etc. in Indian languages. While engaged in translation, translators cannot spend much time on coining equivalent technical terms for a particular book of one discipline that he/she has taken up for translation in respective languages. Technical terms are unexceptionable in academic and scientific writings. Each field typically uses a vocabulary which provides a variety of specialized concepts by means of technical language. Hence, coining, deriving or borrowing of technical terms becomes very essential. These special terms convey concentrated meanings that have been built up over significant periods of study of a field. This inevitably requires experts in the field, who have competence in both the source language, i.e., English and target language, i.e., Indian languages and the discipline in which they work. Taking this problem into consideration, NTM has undertaken the task of producing TE of different disciplines in the scheduled languages of India. Language resource persons of NTM accomplished this task in their respective languages with the help of established experts in the fields.
The discipline-wise coinage of technical terms is an area where NTM has entered into the field to fulfil one of its objectives of bringing out series of TE for different subjects in Indian languages to facilitate the translators. Translating KT into Indian languages is a great challenge. To face that challenge, NTM has completed preparation of TE taking much pain. The distinguished experts have contributed to fulfil this objective of NTM and also towards the development of their languages in terms of vocabulary enrichment. These TE are the need of the hour which will definitely make the task of translation easier. Other translators can also make use of this series of TE in Indian Languages. I take this opportunity to congratulate all the experts and the NTM team involved.
The National Translation Mission (NTM) was established to meet the urgent need for the expansion of quantity and improvement of quality of translation and also the translation of Knowledge Texts (KT) in different domains for higher education. The Mission, to fulfil its objectives, has undertaken the translation of KT in 22 scheduled languages of India by outsourcing to regional publishers and translators, and by in- house translation as well in all the major disciplines taught in colleges and universities across India.
One of the major problems faced while translating KT in Indian languages is the non-availability of ready-made Translation Equivalents (TE) for different disciplines. The absence of such resources hampers the translation process as well as consistency in the use of technical terms expected in translation.
The new series titled Translation Equivalents in Indian Languages, an initiative by NTM, will be very useful for the translators of regional languages. This will benefit the teachers, students, researchers, language enthusiasts and scholars in general and the translators, in particular. Various translation agencies operating in public and private sectors across India and abroad would also be benefitted by this new series of NTM. In addition, it is also expected that these newly developed TE would facilitate the modernization, enrichment and development of Indian languages which is one of the main objectives of the Central Institute of Indian Languages, an apex body of the MHRD, Department of Higher Education, Government of India.
Further, this will also help in fulfilling one of the long term goals of NTM to provide support for research and development of software for the Translation Memory System - a database for storing the words and phrases that have already been translated to aid the translators, word-finders, word net etc., in future.
I am sure that this initiative of NTM in developing the TE for various disciplines in Indian languages will definitely help in nation building. I congratulate the NTM and its staff for this monumental contribution.
The democratisation of access to education is of paramount importance, and one of the ways to achieve it is making resources available in the language(s) of the readers. One of the major objectives of NTM is to give the translation of Knowledge Texts (KT) in Indian languages to the Indian society. This objective ensures that the students of the concerned subjects have a stress-free comprehension of the text and the lack of proficiency in English does not become a barrier. To fulfil this objective, NTM initiated the compilation of Translation Equivalents (TE) for various subjects in all languages of the VIII schedule of the Constitution of India. The translation of KT being undertaken by the NTM, both by outsourcing and in-house translation depend on TE. This translation tool will enrich the language resources and help in developing the concerned language as well. The quality of translation relies on the correct use of specialized terms. It improves reader's understanding and reduces the time and costs associated with translation. TE, therefore, systematically studies the labelling or designating of concepts particular to one or more domains and presents them in a usable form.
Indeed, NTM became a clearing house of information on translation. Through these efforts, NTM establishes databases of published TE in Indian languages, which will remain the base for translation works. This would help establishing India as a translation area. Furthermore, it is expected that developing new terminologies would facilitate the modernization and enrichment of languages undertaken by NTM. Non- availability of TE in Indian languages is a disadvantage as far as quality in translation is concerned. Translators will translate the source texts into their mother tongues utilizing these TE produced by NTM.
The exercise of NTM started with the preparation of text-based TE of different disciplines in the scheduled languages of India to help the translators. In fact, preparation of text-based TE required many workshops, time, labour and money, which delayed in achieving the goal of NTM. Hence, it was decided to drop text-based TE and prepare the TE of the whole discipline by conducting workshops. To accomplish this, the NTM staff, as the first step, had extracted technical terms from various sources available in some languages and also from the glossaries compiled by CSTT, New Delhi. For the compilation of these TE, experienced and competent subject experts and language experts were invited for coining new technical terms and collecting translation equivalents, if already available in the language. Depending on the needs of different languages, Linguistics experts or Sanskrit experts were also invited to the workshops.
Coining of technical terms is not quite the same as non-scientific and technical translation; it requires a high level of knowledge and technological understanding along with the knowledge of Linguistics. Fortunately, it is precisely this level of expertise with which the team had contributed for the first time in the particular language.
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