'Vachanas' now available in 10 different languages

The Basava Samithi has brought out the ‘vachanas’ in 10 languages, including Kannada. The volumes are now ready for widespread release. 

Senior researcher Dr M M Kalburgi, the former vice-chancellor of the Hampi Kannada University, who currently lives in Dharwad said that the compositions of ‘vachanakaras’ of the 12th to 18th centuries had been translated into different languages, including Marathi, Telugu, Malayalam, Hindi, English, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali and Sanskrit.

Contents

Each hardbound volume contains 2,500 ‘vachanas’ in 800 to 1,000 pages. Each volume costs Rs 200. The Basava Samithi undertook the arduous task with a fund of  Rs one crore provided by the Karnataka government five years ago.

A team of 50 translators worked for three years to bring out the translated versions, with five to six translators for each language.

While the translations were revised over the period of the following year, they were printed in the next. The Basava Samithi has published the volumes.

Expert panel

Experts in each of these languages were made editors for the respective translations, while Kalburgi was the project director.

While he confessed that the translations were not perfect, he expressed pride  that they had suceeded in bringing the essence to people of other languages.

“Some of the ‘vachanas’ were a challenge for the translators,” he said.  Kalburgi said that the translated volumes of the ‘vachanas’ will be released in the remaining 12 scheduled languages soon.

He appealed to the State government for grants  to finish the task.