After ten years this multilingual dictionary project of the University of Madras would be revived
Posted on: 02/Apr/2018 9:53:20 AM
A multilingual dictionary that would have meanings of words in as many as seven languages!! Sound’s sensational isn’t it!!
Soon university of Madras would be coming out with a unique dictionary that would have meanings of words in seven languages like Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam plus other languages like Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic-Persian-Urdu.
It must not be forgotten that this project was initiated by the UGC or University Grants Commission decade back and this project was under the funds that was allotted for UPE or University of Potential Education. Now University of Madras wants to revive this project for the sake of many students.
On Saturday, 31st of March 2018, vice-chancellor Mr. P. Duraiswamy grabbed many eyeballs at the senate meeting when he spoke about reviving this superb project of UGC.
Mr. C.G. Rajendra Babu, Chief Editor of this project, expressed his delight and said University of Madras is the one and the only institution to work on such type of project.
In the year 2012, this chief editor retired as the head of Malayalam department in this university. He hinted that five volumes of the project would see the light soon. The various terms used in art and literature would be the first volume of this project. Mr. Rajendra Babu also spoke about how the second volume would be about flora and fauna and third volume would be about many scientific terms. He then explained the word ‘Agam’ related to Tamil Sangam literature and how the dictionary would have its corresponding terms in other languages. He also gave an example of a word belonging to Malayalam called ‘Thullal’ and how this word is an art form in Kerala.
It must be noted that lack of interest and neglect were the reasons why this project could not be revived earlier and was inactive ever since 2011-12.
An amount of Rs 45 lakh was allotted for this multilingual project by the UGC and inspite of this amount this project could not be started and that with more than half of UPE tenure getting over. This has been confirmed by May month report of 2017.
In September 2015, the co-ordinator was asked to furnish ‘action taken report’ but he could not submit even in the year 2017. Despite of many remainders no action was taken by this co-ordinator.
It is now brought out that the non-implementation of this project plus non-utilisation of the approved amount of Rs 45 lakhs would be seriously viewed by UGC and audit.
