Planning to translate Tagore's 'Gitanjali' into Hindi: Javed Akhtar

Encouraged by the "great response" to an album of Hindi Rabindrasangeet translated by him, lyricist Javed Akhtar was now planning to translate the poet's Nobel winning work "Gitanjali".

Akhtar recently translated eight songs of the bard which were sung by Sangeeta Datta.

"We translated eight Tagore songs to the same tune in which the song were sung originally. It got great response in Shantiniketan and in London in that very town hall where he had recited his Gitanjali.

"Now I am feeling encouraged to translate the Gitanjali," he said here on Friday.

"Gitanjali", a collection of Bengali poems by Tagore, was published on August 14, 1910. The "English Gitanjali" or Song Offerings, containing 103 English poems, came out two years later.

In 1913, Tagore became the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize for Literature for the "English Gitanjali".

--IANS

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