New Delhi: The Union Ministry of Education entrusted the task of translating Tirukkuralai into various languages to the Central Classical Tamil Research Institute (CICT). Accordingly, Thirukkural has been translated into 13 languages namely Sams Krit, Hindi, Marathi, Odia, Malayalam, Saurashtiri, Wakripoli of Narik Kuras, Paduku, Nepali, Arabic, Urdu, Persian and Khmer.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce all these today at the Kashi Tamil Sangam event in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh.
CICTL has already released Thirukkural in Punjabi and Manipuri in 2012, Telugu and Kannada in 2014 and Gujarati in 2015.
A Compendium of 18 English translations (A Compendium of Tirukkural-3 Vol.) has also been published by CICD.
In continuation of this, with the aim of bringing Tirukkural to world languages and Indian languages, 10 neighboring languages including Irish, Thai, Malay, Burmese, Swedish, Danish, Korean, Japanese and 76 Indian languages including Assamese, Tulu, Bhojpuri, Santhali, Konkani, Bodo, Sindhi, Maithili, Malto. Thirukkural is also releasing in languages.
The reason for this is that Prime Minister Modi expressed his desire to the Central Classical Institute to translate and publish Thirukkural in 100 languages.
Dr. M. Govindarajan from Thanjavur has translated Tirukkuralai into Hindi. He is the former General Secretary of Pasha Sangha, an Allahabad-based organization that connects languages. He worked as a Hindi teacher at Ramakrishna Mission Higher Secondary School, Chennai, and translated Prime Minister Modi’s book `Sakshi’ into Tamil under the name ‘Annai Yin Thiruvadi 2020’.
S.Rajagopalan, Srivilliputhur Professor in Sanskrit, Ramanathapuram Professor A.Basheer Ahmad Jamali in Arabic, Dr. Amanullah, Madras University Assistant Professor in Urdu, and S. Sathappan, former pilot of the Indian Air Force, in Persian have been translated by many.
All these translations have many features like transliteration, translation, interpretation, and semantic interpretation according to their respective languages.