Padma Sharma gets Karnataka Sahithya Academy’s first translation lifetime award

Bengaluru: Senior translator Padma Ramachandra Sharma has been chosen for Karnataka Sahithya Academy’s first Lifetime Achievement Award for Translation. The award, instituted for 2025, has been named Padma-Shastri Endowment Award for Translation.

It carries a cash prize of Rs 50,000.Born in Mysuru in 1936, Padma has translated 12 acclaimed Kannada literary works into English, including Carvalho, Kanooru Heggadathi (published in English as The House of Kanooru), Samba Shiva Prahasana (Samba Shiva – A Farce). She is the great-granddaughter of BM Srikantaiah, Kannada poet, translator, scholar and educator, a leading figure of Navodaya literary movement.Her husband, late Ramachandra Sharma, was a noted poet who collaborated with her on several translation projects.“Until now, we presented Lifetime Achievement Awards in five categories. For the first time, we are instituting one exclusively for translation,” said LN Mukundaraj, president of Karnataka Sahithya Academy. “English professor CN Ramachandra recently created an endowment of Rs 10 lakh on the condition that the academy institute a lifetime achievement award for Kannada-to-English translators. He also contributed an additional Rs 50,000 so that the award could be presented this year itself.

”