CHENNAI: The 3-day Chennai International Book Fair (CIBF), held at the Nandambakkam Trade Centre, concluded on Saturday with 1,125 Memorandum of Understanding (MoUs) signed for translations.
Among the MoUs signed, 1,005 were signed for translation from Tamil to foreign languages, and 120 MoUs to Tamil.
In the first edition of CIBF, 24 countries had participated and 365 MoUs were signed. In the second year, 40 countries participated and 750 MoUs were signed. Hence, the Directorate of School Education focused on singing more than 1,000 MoUs this year. The event was held with a budget allocation of Rs 3 crore by the government.
Chief Minister MK Stalin participated on the final day of the event along with special invitee Shashi Tharoor. During the event, the CM released 30 translated books and 75 books published by the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation (TNTB&ESC).
On social media, the CM wrote, “‘CIBF 2025: Bringing the World to Tamil; Taking Tamil to the World’ – is one-of-its-kind initiative in India by TN School Education Department, which has set new milestones. The Tamil intelligentsia credits this achievement and global recognition of Tamil literature to our Dravidian Model government’s grant and support. Let’s aim for our writers to win not just the Jnanpith award but also the Nobel prize.”
Over 60 countries such as Australia, Benin, Brunei, Bulgaria, Chile, Cyprus, Estonia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg, Madagascar, Mauritius. Mexico. Mongolia, Morocco, Mozambique, Nepal, Nigeria, Norway, Taiwan, Romania. Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Togo, Ukraine, USA, Uzbekistan and Zimbabwe participated this year.
Panel discussions were held on ‘Thirukkural’, ‘Universality of Periyar Thoughts’, ‘Trends in publishing and translation Dravidian literature’, ‘Taking Tamil to the world: Swadeshi Steam and other historical tales’, ‘A comparative Etymological dictionary of Tamil and Indo-European languages’ and ‘Tamil women writings in the 20th and 21st centuries’.