The Goethe-Institut Mumbai began its initiative Diamantenschliff: The Digital Translation Academy, last year to foster translation efforts by young literary translators in South Asia. The academy aimed to look at German as the source language from which works would be translated into several South Asian languages. In the first run, Franz Kafka’s fiction — such as selections from The Trial, The Castle, A Country Doctor, The Metamorphosis — was translated into Marathi, Bangla, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Sinhala, Tamil, and Urdu. It seems fitting that this month, to mark the German-language writer’s 141st birth anniversary, the institute launched its website archiving all the efforts undertaken during the run.

German writer Franz Kafka