The last session: Managing the Translation Market

The last session of the conference dealt with “Managing the Translation Market”. With a panel of six members and moderator Arshia Sattar, this session tackled different aspects of translation in the publishing industry. The moderator emphasized on the value of translation, saying it “provides a whole new text for an audience to enjoy, even though a few things are lost in the process.” Arunava Sinha touched upon the market reasons for translation in India.

A representative of the National Translation Mission, Winston Cruz explained the vision and strategy of the organisation in his presentation. Rubin D’cruz took this opportunity to point out that languages in translation should not be referred to as central or regional as all are important and main languages. He also stressed on how important the National Book Trust and Sahitya Academy were in national enterprise building.

K. Satyanarayan, a Tamil publisher in his own right, discussed options for funding translations as well as the challenges involved in it. Other members of the panel included Neeta Gupta of Yatra Books who initiated the subject of tri-lingual dictionaries required in the industry, and Judith Oriol, the Book Attachee at the French embassy in India. “French publishers cannot ignore the Indian market anymore”, Ms. Oriol said.

A majority of the panel concluded from the discussion that there is a need for training and infrastructure to support translation in India today.