Ashoka University’s Centre for Translation, in collaboration with the New India Foundation, hosted the second edition of Bhashavaad: National Translation Conference on August 29–30 at the India International Centre, New Delhi. Spread over two days, the conference brought together leading translators, writers, publishers, and scholars to reflect on the practice, politics, economics, and future of translation in India, and to celebrate its role in shaping the country’s multilingual literary landscape.
The conference was graced by leading names in the field of literature including Peggy Mohan, Rana Safvi, Jerry Pinto, Tridip Suhrud, Ritu Menon, A. Revathi, Supriya Chaudhuri, Sana Goyal, Deepa Bhasthi, Urvashi Butalia alongside several distinguished translators, industry leaders. publishers, and scholars working across Indian languages.
In his opening address, Manish Sabharwal, Managing Trustee, The New India Foundation (NIF) and Founder, Ashoka University, reflected on the shared vision that led to the creation of both the New India Foundation and Ashoka University, and how Bhashavaad embodies this convergence. He also added, “Twenty years ago, the New India Foundation was born, and over a decade ago, Ashoka University was established — both from the realisation that we don’t need to go overseas for world-class education. Three years ago, the Ashoka Centre for Translation was launched to bridge languages, preserve cultural richness, and ensure that voices from across India could be heard and understood more wisely. Today, Bhashavaad stands as a synthesis of these aspirations.”
The second edition of the conference opened with powerful conversations on the visibility of translators, and the intimate challenges of translating lives. The keynote address by eminent linguist Peggy Mohan added sharp perspectives about the changing dynamics of translations, the growing demand among people for translated texts and how translations have truly begun to connect people in India.
Speaking of the exciting times ahead, Peggy Mohan said, “We are standing at a luminous moment in India where translation is beginning to connect us. For the first time, the demand is coming from the public, people who don’t feel completely happy reading in English but know important conversations are happening and want to join them. Indeed, it’s a special moment where translation is being demanded and not thrust upon people. In fact, I am getting a strong feeling that this year is the year of translation.”
She further added, “Until now we assumed that to discuss science, politics, or philosophy one had to learn English, leaving many excluded. But this year, people are saying: we want to be part of the conversation, in our own regional languages.”
Another panel titled “Writing Women, Translating Women” invited leading authors, activists and translators like Sumitra Mehrol, Urvashi Butalia, Saba Mahmood Bashir and A Revathi to discuss issues in translating women’s voices, from the challenges of rendering experiences of gender and sexuality across languages, to the erasures, silences and biases that often shape how women’s lives are written, remembered, and read.
The Ashoka Centre of Translation team also unveiled 10 recently published books, showcasing the depth and diversity of the Centre’s translation efforts, on Day 1.
On the second day, the discussion focused on how translation intersects with broader questions of economics, technology and law. A panel titled “Translating Knowledge” explored how translations can bridge the gap between academic research and society, expand access to legal and technological resources, and ensure that economic and scientific ideas reach audiences across India’s many languages.
Indian feminist writer and publisher Ritu Menon, speaking on the panel, drew attention to persisting challenges in knowledge translation. She said, “The problem that continues even today is the question of credibility between a native speaker and a learned speaker. Even now, the translation of a learned speaker is often considered more credible than that of a native speaker. This, I feel, is something we need to pay closer attention to. It is precisely for this reason that, over the past seventy years, knowledge produced in three deeply significant areas – Subaltern History, Feminism, and Dalit Studies – has not travelled as widely as it should have, despite being highly contextualised and legitimate.”
Another session titled – “The Economics of Translation” highlighted the opportunities and constraints of publishing translations in India, while “Translation and Copyright” engaged with questions of authorship, rights, and ownership. The conference also discussed the themes around translating women, translating knowledge, and translating bhakti, opening up conversation on almost all the aspects of translation, the cost it involves, the impact it makes, its legacy as well as its future.
On the success of the second edition of Bhashavaad, Rita Kothari, Co-Director, Ashoka Centre for Translation, said, “Translation is not only about carrying words across languages – it is about carrying entire worlds. At Bhashavaad, we aim to better understand the practice, politics, and possibilities of translation in contemporary India and we are happy that eminent linguists, authors and scholars joined us today to take this conversation forward.”
The two-day power-packed sessions, jointly organised by the Ashoka Centre for Translation led by Rita Kothari and Arunava Sinha, and the New India Foundation, provided audiences with deep insights into the many dimensions of translation. Discussions explored how translators select texts, the intent behind their choices, and the audiences they seek to engage. The sessions also examined the economics of translation, copyright challenges, the need for credible voices to tell subaltern and marginalised stories, and the ways in which technology is shaping and transforming the field.
About Ashoka Centre for Translation:
The Ashoka Centre for Translation (ACT) is established with a view to foster, nurture, and foreground India’s multilingual ethos. It hopes to unlock knowledge and aid its dissemination through translation. Given the urgency to make knowledge available and democratic, the Centre does not confine itself only to English. In fact, it aims to translate material from many Indian languages into many other Indian languages, including English. Thus, the received binaries of (one) source and (one) target do not characterise the aims of the Centre. A range of texts from literary and popular, political and scientific, and oral and written domains—all of these are important to the Centre’s vision.
