ILF Samanvay Institutes Vani-Samanvay Distinguished Translator Award
- ILF Samanvay 2015 announces Hir Pithar Youth Poetry and Hir-E-Pithara Twitter Poetry Contests.
- The Festival also calling contributors to write for Y: The ILF Samanvay Blog.
28th October, 2015; New Delhi: Under the stewardship of the India Habitat Centre and Festival Director, Rakesh Kacker, ILF Samanvay 2015, the 5th Edition of Indian Languages Festival organised by India Habitat Centre from 26th to 29th November, 2015 will have many firsts to its credit. Already announced are the new Identity – ILF Samanvay, the new Logo, the new Colour Scheme, new Creative Director –Rizio Yohannan Raj and the new Website. Added to it are the new Vani-Samanvay Distinguished Translator Award, a new Hir-Pithara Youth Poetry Contest, the new Hir-E-Pithara Twitter Poetry Contest and the launch of Y: the ILF Samanvay Blog.
With its commitment to develop and nurture a level playing field amongst writers / authors of Indian Languages and an expansion of its scope to engage a wider section of the society, ILF Samanvay has decided to institute the Vani-Samanvay Distinguished Translator Award. The award conceptualised in collaboration with Vani Foundation will honour the contributions of a translator par-excellence who has contributed in a sustained and quality manner towards direct exchanges between two Indian languages. Apart from the recognition it will bestow on its recipient, the awardee will also receive Rupees One Lakh. Translators directly translating between two Indian languages would be preferred; other criteria would be that they havesustained this activity for a considerable period of time and produced a remarkable body of work.A distinguished Jury has been constituted including writers Namita Gokhale, Ashok Vajpeyi, NBT Director and writer Rita Choudhury, writer-scholar Rita Kothari, Creative Director ILF Samanvay Rizio Yohannan Raj and IHC Programmes Director Vidyun Singh.
Announcing the institution of Vani-Samanvay Distinguished Translator Award, Festival Director and Director, India Habitat Centre, Rakesh Kacker said: “The Award bridges the gaps caused by the lack of recognition in encouraging direct exchanges between Indian languages without a mediating language and hopes to encourage contemporary translators in our linguistically diverse sub-continent with a rich history of literary exchange. I am delighted that the addition of this award to ILF Samanvay’s range of activities will help to enrich the festival and its institutional mission.”
Arun Maheshwari, Chairman of Vani Foundation, said on the occasion: “Our country’s rich cultural diversity and its expression into arts and literature have been largely unexplored. Vani Foundation was established with the mission of not only re-discovering these idioms, but also connecting Indian languages with one another and with the world. We found congruence of energy and vision with the new team at ILF Samanvay and therefore feel proud to announce Vani-Samanvay Distinguished Translator Award. The award is committed to celebrate the unsung heroes of Indian translation fraternity, especially those who have tirelessly dedicated themselves to not only translating between two languages, but also bridging two cultures.”
The Vani-Samanvay Distinguished Translator award is in keeping with the great emphasis ILF Samanvay has laid on the field of translation this year. The festival has initiated a collaborative translation project with the School of Translation Studies and Training, IGNOU, besides three festival panels dedicated exclusively to look at various issues concerning translation in the county.
ILF Samanvay 2015 has also unveiled a dedicated blog Y: The ILF Samanvay Blog. ILF Samanvay continues to invite bloggers to regularly contribute to Y: The ILF Samanvay Blog. Those willing to contribute may write to samanvay.ihc@gmail.com with the subject “Blog Application”.
As part of expanding its mandate, and reaching out to nurture creativity in young speakers of different Indian languages in Delhi-NCR region, ILF Samanvay is also announcing interesting youth poetry Contest: Hir-Pithara Youth Poetry Contest. Under this contest,poetry can be submitted in all Indian languages on the theme “Insider/Outsider”by 5th November 2015.Any number of poems in one’s original language with length limited to one A4 size page, and has to be separately submitted in specified format, along with a translation in either English or Hindi. Poetry Submissions can either be dropped at the Hir-Pitharas (Poetry bags) kept at the IHC campus, Lodhi Road or at select locations or submitted online in requisite format on www.ilfsamanvay.org. It can also be posted to ILF Samanvay HIR-PITHARA Contest, Programmes Department, India Habitat Centre, Lodhi Road, New Delhi – 110003. The hard copy submission must mark the name, age, address and affiliation of the participant. Details will be available online from 30th October, 2015.
Through this contest, ILF Samanvay invites young people in the city to write poetry in their own language and reclaim the lost vitality of a region that inspired many a poet and artist to make monumental works of beauty for generations to cherish. This journey of Hir in the context of ILF Samanvay through Delhi is to map, mainstream and celebrate Delhi’s hidden pockets of creativity. On 18th November, 2015, Seven poets from different languages will be announced winners and they will be invited to read their prize-winning entry at the theme session of ILF Samanvay 2015 on 27th November 2015 evening, along with senior poets from different languages
The mascot of this poetry contest is the resplendent figure of HIR—the ageless, androgynous, itinerant, storyteller. Speaking of Hir, Rizio Yohannan Raj, Creative Director of ILF Samanvay says, “Hir (pronounced ‘heer’) is a quintessential insider-outsider, true to the time and the theme-zone where in hir arrives at ILF Samanvay in Delhi. Hir is a child-adult of the future, and begins hir travel mid-way, in classic medi as res, at ILF Samanvay. Hir is pronoun and noun at once; Hir is a child’s self expression as well as an adult’s quest for meaning. Hir represents the ‘samanvay’ of the self and the other in our fragmented times. Red-robed, Hir is the self-same heart of pure revolution and ardent love. In the coming days, we shall see Hir extending hir travel from Delhi to different time zones, varied space scapes, carrying hir ‘Pithara’, gathering creative voices from among the young and the young at heart of the country. Inspired by 9-year old Adel Tushar Kumar’s uninhibited painting of a storyteller, Hir is given hir current form by the ILF Samanvay team. Hir Stories are going to be a regular feature of Y: The ILF Samanvay Blog.”
Another notable addition to ILF Samanvay 2015 is Hir-E-PitharaTwitter Poetry Contest: a Twitter-only contest that recognizes how information technology and specifically social media platforms have created new literary expressions, quite distinct from all other ages. The contest is open to poets in the 22 scheduled Indian Languages. This fresh mode is a product of its time, and this contest is ILF Samanvay’s way to recognise and nurture it as a specific movement of the times we are living in.
Participants can send in one submission in one tweet, based on the theme: Insider/Outsider by November 5th2015. A participant can submit any number of tweet poems. The participants can choose to send either a poem originally in English or in translation from any of the 22 languages in the eighth schedule. The participants have to hashtag the first 3 characters of the original language (Eg: #MAL for Malayalam, #ENG for English etc). One winning entry will be awarded the ILF Samanvay New Age Creativity Certificate. The winner of the HIR-E-PITHARA contest will also get a chance to recite their work along with the winners of the HIR PITHARA Youth poetry contest. The contest will be open at the twitter handle @ILFSamanvay from 21st October 2015. Every entry must be accompanied with the hashtag #HIR. To enter the contest follows us @ILFSamanvay and send in your tweets.
ILF Samanvay: IHC Indian Languages’ Festival:ILF Samanvay: IHC Indian Languages’ Festival was conceived in 2011 as an annual celebration of writing in Indian languages. The festival has aimed at generating dialogue across Indian languages at various levels and has emerged as the only literature festival dedicated exclusively to Indian languages.
The inaugural edition (2011) tried to explore the problem of bringing various literatures under the master signifier: “Indian” and the mysterious bond that makes these various literatures at once distinct and collective. In 2012, the festival moved on to highlight and discover the heritage of Indian languages through the strain of Boli, Baani, Bhasha: Gaon, Kasba, Shehar. Even in 2013 the theme Jodti Zubanein,
Judti Zubanein: Language Connections aimed at – discussing the various kinds of dialogues across the ‘regional’ languages and their multifaceted interaction with the ‘national’ languages – Hindi and English. In 2014, ILF Samanvay highlighted ‘Translation/Transnation’ focus on Indian languages which have a transnational presence.
The first four editions of the festival featured 20 languages presented by more than 150 Writers including some of the contemporary masters like Sitakant Mahapatra, Sheen KaafNizam, Ratan Thiyam, Gulzar, Nabarun Bhattacharya, K. Satchidanandan, Ashok Vajpeyi, Girish Kasaravalli, Udaya Narayana Singh, Rajendra Yadav,
Mangalesh Dabral, YumlembamI Bomcha, Arjun Deo Charan, Anupam Mishra, Jerry Pinto, Ketan Mehta, Mahesh Bhatt, Mukul Kesavan, Piyush Mishra, Ravish Kumar, SharadaSinha, Sanjay Kak, Shashi Deshpande, Kavita Krishnan, Vrinda Grover, KanchaIlaiah, Alok Rai, K. Siva Reddy, Manoranjan Byapari, Nirupama Dutt, Rooprekha Verma, SylvanusLamare, Tenzin Tsundue, Viveka Rai, Harrish Iyer, Namvar Singh, Swanand Kirkire, VinayPathak, Arunava Sinha and Varun Grover.
Delhi Press, Vani Foundation, School of Translation Studies, IGNOU and LILA Foundation for Translocal Initiatives are its partners at present. Outreach partners are Pratham Books. Le Communiqué Consultancy will be handling the public relations for the entire Festival.