The Government of India has taken several initiatives to help speak education and make knowledge available to all. The Government aims to educate the youth of the current generation to create a strong workforce that can help in the development and prosperity of our nation as a whole. One such initiative, the National Translation Mission or NTM aims to break the boundary of regional language and make knowledge texts available to all. Read on to know more about this initiative and what it aims to achieve.

National Translation Mission 

The National Translation Mission or NTM is an initiative undertaken by the Government of India to make all knowledge texts accessible to all through translation. Dr. Manmohan Singh came up with the idea of the NTM in 2008 when he was the Prime Minister of India.

The Central Institute of Indian Languages acts as the nodal organization for implementing the National Language Translation Mission through India. The NTM aims to make itself  the clearing house of all translation related activities in the country and has developed its website in 23 languages for the same purpose. The scheme was launched in 2008 and till now, the National Translation Mission has approved 105 titles for translations in 21 different disciplines. The NTM maintains the National Register of Translators through its website. Translators can register themselves online on this database.This database is in the form of a searchable directory of translators, evaluators and discipline experts with classified information regarding their profession, experience, languages known and expertise in translation.

Purpose of The National Translation Mission

The aim and purpose of the National Language Translation Mission can be broadly divided into long-term and short-term goals. We have listed down the main short-term goals that the NTM aims to achieve.

  1. Promoting and publishing knowledge text translation in major disciplines of higher education
  2. Training of translators in different areas and officially certifying them
  3. Promoting machine aided translation between English and Indian languages.
  4. Conducting short term orientation prorgams under the Translator Education Programme.
  5. Generating and maintaining six databases – the National Register of Translators (NRT), Indian Universities Database, Bibliography of Translations, Publishers Database, Faculty Database / Experts Repository, Dictionaries and Glossaries Database.
  6. Coordinating with the Commission for Scientific and Technical Terminology (CSTT) to prepare scientific and technical terms in different Indian languages.
  7. Developing  translation tools like  dictionaries and thesauri.

The long-term goals of the National Translation Mission are given as follows:

  1. Provide grants to Universities and Departments that conduct Degree and Diploma courses on translation. It also provides grants for projects like preparation of translation manuals between languages.
  2. Support research and development on software for translation memory, word-finders and  word net among many others.
  3. Offer fellowships & grants for projects related to Natural Language Processing and translation.
  4. Organize book launches for translations, regional translation festivals, discussions and book exhibitions to make people appreciate and understand translators and translation activities.
  5. Establish translation as a respectable and viable profession and give rise to a translation industry. It aims to provide employment to the class of unemployed youths who are knowledgeable about regional languages.
  6. Provide support for journals on translation or for publishing translation-related texts and analysis in Indian languages

Conclusion

Since its inception, NTM has been able to achieve several of its goals. It has been a successful initiative that helps several people throughout our country. Just like the National Language Translation Mission, several other initiatives by the Government of India have had major effects on the literacy and knowledge of Indians. It can be called one of the greatest and most affluent missions since it aims to spread cultural and scientific knowledge to different parts of our country.