Vivek Shanbhag on ‘Hyphen’, and bridging the gap in India’s translation landscape
Novelist Vivek Shanbhag has launched 'Hyphen', a literary journal and publishing initiative dedicated to translating Indian literature into English. The project aims to bridge the gap in access to regional Indian languages and is supported by a board of prominent literary figures.
Why it matters
It represents a significant effort to promote multilingualism and increase the global visibility of Indian regional literature.
What happens when you cradle a seed of an idea and nurture it for almost 20 years? For novelist and playwright Vivek Shanbhag , it led to the founding of Hyphen , a literary journal to celebrate India’s multilingual heritage with an exclusive focus on translations from Indian languages into English.
“I grew up reading translations from other languages, whether it was Malayalam or Russian. But I have always felt that while Indians have so much access to writers from outside the country, there is little access to writers from our own neighbouring States. It was this desire to read writers from other Indian languages that led to Hyphen . We named it six years ago when we started Bahuvachana Prakashana, our publication house, but no one noticed it then,” says Shanbhag.
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