22 foreigners among those honoured for contribution to Hindi

The ninth World Hindi Conference here recognised the contributions of a number of Hindi scholars and academics from around the world, and also made a pitch for the establishment of a full-time university for work on translations.

Minister of State for External Affairs Preneet Kaur, Mauritius Art and Culture Minister Mukeshwar Chuni and Delhi Education Minister Kiran Walia, gave away the honours to 19 Indians and 22 foreign scholars on the closing day of the conference.

Among the Indians who received a memento, a citation and a shawl, were Himanshu Joshi, Rajendra Prasad Mishra, Kailash Chandra Pant, M Piyongtemjan Jamir, Prof Jabir Hussain, Usha Ganguly, among others.

The conference also honoured a number of foreign nationals who have contributed to the language despite the fact that it is not their mother tongue.

Peter Gerard Friedlander from Australia; Sergei Sereberyani from Russia; Chekoslovakia's Dagmar Merkova; Marco Jolie from Italy; Liu Anwuk from China; Jabullah 'Fikri' from Afghanistan; Bamrung Kham Ek from Thailand and Upul Ranjeet Hevatanagamez from Sri Lanka were among the foreign scholars felicitated.

Also among those honoured were scholars from Bulgaria, Mauritius, Ukraine, Britain, Germany, Japan, Suriname and the US.

The congregation also dwelled upon the need for focussing on translations as a way to help take the works in Hindi language to a wide readership.

The scholars also stressed on the need to establish a full-time university for translations, to provide resources and able minds that will produce worthy translations that retain the original nuisance and feelings of the language. (MORE)