Konkani academy to translate famous works

MANGALORE: Vishwa Konkani Sahitya Academy, which is the first offshoot of the Konkani Language and Cultural Foundation, will take up literary works, including transliteration and translation of inter-language literary works, according to the foundation's president Basti Vaman Shenoy.

One of the "landmark" works that would be taken up by the academy would be the translation of Rashtrakavi Manjeshwar Govinda Pai's monograph from Kannada to Konkani and Hindi by Suneetha Bai.

Mr. Shenoy told The Hindu that there were a number of inter-State and inter-language books, which had to be translated into Konkani.

A panel of experts in Konkani, Kannada, Hindi, English and other south Indian languages had been entrusted with the job of identifying the books for translation.

Three Konkani books have been taken up for transliteration. They are `Moga Maka Shikay' by late V.J.P. Saldanha, `Tum Baro Za' by late A.T. Lobo, and `Angel' by late J.S. Alvares. He said Konkani books written in Kannada and Malayalam scripts had to be transliterated into Devanagari script. Senior Konkani researcher and writer Mark Walder had been put in-charge of securing the books for transliteration, he added.