UGC Pushes for University Textbooks in Indian Languages

December 8, 2022

The University Grants Commission (UGC) recently held a high-level meeting with international publishers to discuss the possibility of translating undergraduate textbooks written in English in India’s regional languages.

About the high-level meeting

The high-level meeting between the UGC and international book publishers focused on the ways to translate textbooks for undergraduate programmes in higher education institutions across India to regional languages like Telugu, Tamil, Kannada, Malayalam, Marathi, Gujarati, Odiya, Bengali, Assamese, Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu.
The meeting included representatives from Wiley India, Springer Nature, Taylor & Francis, Cambridge University Press, Cengage India, McGraw-Hill India, and others.
During this meeting international publishers expressed their willingness to collaborate to achieve the goals of the national mission that seeks to bring textbooks in different Indian languages.
Initially, the focus will be given to translating the existing textbooks in BA, BSc, and BCom programs. It will later be expanded to include postgraduate programmes.
During the meeting, the UGC announced that it will provide assistance to publishers regarding the identification of textbooks, translation tools, editors for editing etc.
It also emphasized that a model will be created in collaboration with the publishers to provide textbooks at affordable prices in digital format.
It would also encourage Indian authors and academicians to write textbooks in regional languages and rope in publishers to help those authors looking for translations.
The UGC is currently planning on translating many textbooks into Indian languages in the next six to twelve months.
It had earlier formed an apex committee to prepare a roadmap to bring out undergraduate course textbooks in Indian languages.

Other efforts to translate textbooks into regional languages

The All India Council of Technical Education (AICTE) has already brought out 270 first-year engineering text books in 12 regional languages. In October 2022, the first-year MBBS books were released in Hindi by Home Minister Amit Shah. As per the recommendations by the UGC, the Bar Council of India has recently formed a panel headed by former Chief Justice of India S. A. Bobde to translate legal books to regional languages.

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