The press intends to bring out publications based on the research of scholars from
JU and other institutions. The press will be the central unit to bring out all university
publications.
Along with the launch of many books, this Book Fair will
see the birth of a university press. Jadavpur University Press will be inaugurated
on February 1 at the fair grounds. The first two books to come out of the press
will be Bengali translations of two re-doubtable Italians. One is the translation
of selections from the notebooks of “Leonardo da Vinci” by Sukanta Chaudhuri, Professor
Emeritus, Jadavpur University, the other of Machiavelli's II Principe (The Prince)
by Doyeeta Majumder, titled Rajpurush. Both have been translated directly from the
Italian. These are the first two volumes of a series of which Chaudhuri is the general
editor. Renaissance expert Carlo Vecce, from the Oriental University of Naples will
be present at the launch.
“The idea of the university press was mooted last year”,
said Professor Samir Saha, the director of the press, who teaches mechanical engineering
at the university. The press intends to bring out publications based on the research
of scholars from JU and other institutions. The press will be the central unit to
bring out all university publications, Saha said. “We also intend to reissue titles
from the backlist of departmental publications. There are quite a few out-of print
scholarly titles for which there is still a great demand”, said Abhijit Gupta, the
joint director of the press. Chaudhuri spoke about the tradition of translating
Italian classics into Bengali. He mentioned the works of Ramdas Sen, the entire
collection of whose works is at the National Library. Recently, Shyamal Gangopadhyay
had translated Inferno and Purgatorio from Divine Comedy.
Courtesy: The Telegraph
