The Nirmukta Freethought Community

A new member in Nirmukta's FB group, Nimi, asked about The God Delusion and other such books in Hindi. This sparked a discussion on translations of TGD.

The following is from FB:

Ajita Kamal Not sure about a version in SI languages, but you might be interested in this http://nirmukta.net/Thread-C-Ravichandra...ianet-News

Priyabrata Mahapatro Here are the 33 languages into which The God Delusion has been translated. You'll see that Hindi, Telugu and Tamil are among them, but not, as far as I'm aware (please correct me if I am wrong) Urdu or Bengali.

Italian, Hungarian, German, Bulgarian, Lithuanian, Portuguese, Croatian, Czech, Chinese, Danish, Estonian, Finnish, French, Hindi, Telugu, Tamil, Bahasa Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Dutch, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Sovenian, Spanish, Greek, Swedish, Vietnamese, Turkish, Hebrew, Arabic (unofficial translation).

-- From Richard Dawkins .net

Ajita Kamal I found this: http://www.modernrationalist.com/2010/ja...age03.html

Ajita Kamal BTW, it might be a good idea to create a thread for this in the Science group.

Priyabrata Mahapatro Yup , better

Ajita Kamal Better still, a thread on the forums.

Priyabrata Mahapatro Hmm that can be archived for everyone to see.

Priyabrata Mahapatro ‎'ll have to browse through online bookstores like landmark,crossroads,flipkart etc to check for these translations.

Ajita Kamal Thats the whole point. Not just archived. It can be edited, added to years in the future and indexed by google, just to point to a few other advantages. Plus, there's always the possibility that we could lose all this content on FB someday. We don't own it, remember.

Anita Jose thanks to both of you. i'll check out the links

Ajita Kamal Here's the relevant forum: http://nirmukta.net/Forum-Books

1) Devudi Bhramalo (Telugu Translation of The God Delusion)
by Innaiah Narisetti
http://www.dkagencies.com/doc/from/1063/...etails.htm

http://www.worldcat.org/title/devudi-bhr...referer=di

2) Chraistavam imta amanushama (Telugu Translation of A Letter To a Christian Nation)
by Innaiah Narisetti

3) Bengali Translation of First Chapter of God Delusion

http://richarddawkins.net/articles/1272-...d-delusion

4) Free Translation of The God Delusion, God is Not Great,Letter to a Christian Nation in Telugu can be found here

http://www.centerforinquiry.net/india/lo...ed_reading

All the translations belong to CFI India

Thanks both for providing these resources. This maybe a good opportunity to remind ourselves and perhaps resume some ongoing translation projects and add more languages to them.

Pale Blue Dot
- Trigger thread with many iterations of a Tamil translation (Link)
- Thread with drafts of Tamil, Hindi and Kannada translations (Link)

OUT campaign
- Thread with Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Bengali translations (Link)
- Some of the finished products in the Out Campaign India page (Link)

I am sure there is also a lot of homegrown rationalist literature for which English translations maybe useful. Perhaps the regional groups can provide good talent pools for translators. TED talks allow volunteers to transcribe and subtitle talks and we can perhaps have informal teams to subtitle some talks particularly relevant to the movement.

Often, we have regional language posts in the pan-Indian groups on Facebook. Perhaps it will help if a guideline requesting translations (from the poster or other members) for all non-English posts is added to the member guidelines. Eventually it might help to have some standard locations (tabs or dedicated blogs) for members who wish to communicate in Indian languages of their choice.

Edit (19/03/2012) : Added link to forum post on TED talk translation.

Are there any copyright issues while attempting translation of books like "The God Delusion", "God is Not Great" etc ?

If not, perhaps we can make use of Google Translation Service (http://translate.google.com/) to carry out our task.

There will definitely be copyright issues. Since the book is the intellectual property of Prof.Dawkins, we will need his express permission and from his legal eagles before anyone can start a translation effort.
However we have to also consider that the translator who will be doing the work to any of the local languages MUST be extremely fluent and well-versed with the nuances of both English and the local language. Moreover it isn't simply enough to get the words across, the feeling or the emotions of the book: calm, scientific and logical analysis of religion, must be preserved. Usually people would be averse to picking up a book that declares "Belief is a delusion", but once they pick it up they must be able to understand that we are actually dissecting the case for religion in a cool-headed fashion. Getting a Tamilian/Telegu/Malayali etc former Christian for helping with the Bible passages as written in the local translations would be enormously helpful.
This is of great imperative. First consult the legal eagles, then get translating!

Here is the contact address on the RDF website
contact@richarddawkins.net
UKcontact@richarddawkins.net

Perhaps it will be best to get a working draft plan of how, who, which organizations will be involved in any translation work before we contact them. Best to try to rope in their interest and enthusiasm with a thought out protocol. And knowing Prof.Dawkins, I'm sure that he will be most excited that people are being given a chance to re-evaluate their theistic position.

Regards ,
Nick.

http://dharumi.blogspot.in/2009/01/1.html

PS: we are always on a lookout for people to help translate famous english works into regional langauges and brilliant indian works of indian languages into english,if anyone is interested in helping please reply here are send a message to info@nirmukta.com

I searched a lot ,but could not find a hindi version perhaps we can contact that website and ask if it is available,if not,if we can help make one ? and what is the procedure for translating their work.
Just mailed the dawkin's organisation.