Guidelines for HEIs for translating books to Indian languages issued

CHENNAI: The University Grants Commission (UGC) has issued guidelines to the faculty members and students in Higher Educational Institutions (HEIs) for translation of books into Indian language.

The commission said the idea behind setting up these guidelines for the translation of books into various Indian languages is to mandate the standard and quality of translated study material at both national and regional levels.

"One notable provision emphasized in the National Education Policy 2020 is the promotion of the mother tongue or local language as the medium of teaching and learning in higher educational institutions In light of this task, it is vital for all higher educational institutions to prepare the course structure, syllabus, and course material in various Indian languages which will automatically instil the universities to provide the facility of availing the writing of examination in one's own mother tongue or local language", UGC secretary Manish R Joshi said.

Quoting the guidelines, he said translation will be simple and concise while maintaining the original meaning of the text and concepts.

Accordingly, use of long sentences with multiple clauses may be avoided as far as possible.

Stating that 'ANUVADINI', the Al based translation tool for Indian languages, developed by the AICTE will be used for translation, he said this tool has many advantages, such as translation in the format of the source text file, speech to text typing.

He said all the editing facilities are also provided in the same tool. The first round of translation may be done through this tool, followed by further manual editing by using the tool. At present, the accuracy level of the tool varies from subject-to-subject and from language to-language, which will gradually improve as more people use it for translation and editing.

"Though there will be many words for a particular object, the word which is generally used in that particular domain area shall be used in translation to make the concepts understandable to the readers", he said adding "translation shall always convey the complete meaning and concept of the original text".

He said In case, the original text is translated into word-to-word sequence by the translation tool then for efficient and meaningful translation, it has to be rephrased partially or completely if required.