TIRUCHY: Achieving heights at a young age, 17-year-old NS Apsara, who recently passed Class XII, translated two major texts of classical poet Avvayar - Aathichudi and Kondraivendan - from Tamil to Hindi.
Praising her efforts, Governor of Tamil Nadu RN Ravi, on Wednesday, said that her work would carry the richness of Tamil literature across India, before posting pictures with Apsara and her family on his official Twitter handle.
On what drove her to undertake the translation, Apsara said, "I was drawn to the work of Avvayar right from grade six. I used to recite Avvayar's 'Aathichudi' in English. My mother used to motivate me in the initial days."
Apsara said that she was inspired to translate poems after taking part in essay translation exercises in Hindi-language learning classes. "I started learning Hindi from grade six. My Hindi teachers, Vijayalakshmi and Subathira, helped me in the translation process. I enjoyed translating the Hindi essays sentence by sentence," she said.
Her father, Sasi Kumar, who is a teacher at the Sengattupatti government school, said, "Though a lot of people learn Hindi these days, they seldom make use of the language through written words. They just keep the certificates. But Apsara wanted to do something with apart from that. As a teacher I wanted to cultivate such interests amongst my daughters."
On choosing Ayyavar's work for translation, Apsara said, "Both Aathichudi and Kondraivendan speak of values, and, compared to other classical Tamil texts, they are more understandable. As to why I translated to Hindi, I would say that we only import from other languages, and not really export our wealth."