About The Department :

The Department was established in 2005, November and the Department has one professor and three assistant professors at present. The Department is offering P.G, M.Phil and Ph.D. programmes. In the beginning the Department had Integrated Ph.D. programme (M.Phil-Ph.D.). In the newly planned academic program the University has dispensed with the Integrated Programme because the need for difference in the quality of the academic tests as well as another aspect like drops out rate after M.Phil.  At present we offer M.Phil and Ph.D. as two different programmes. 

First and foremost the Kannada Language and Translation Studies wants to achieve excellence both in teaching and research. This is what other Kannada Departments in other Universities want to do. However, the uniqueness of this university is to be upheld by the Kannada Language and Translation Studies through its teaching and research programmes as well as other publication works. The M.A, M.Phil and Ph.D. Programmes of this Department have to have a Dravidian Cultural content, for which special papers are being prepared. Where ever needed the help of the other language Departments is also utilized. The papers designed for this purpose will be core papers.

Therefore the Degree programmes of the Department will contain Dravidian cultural content. Special papers, which will form the core of the curriculum, will be designed with the help of the Board of Studies and it is hoped that the University will give its sanction.  Kannada study is no more the age old study Kannada language (in a traditional sense) and a few literature papers. A very vast area of knowledge has come into Kannada studies: Classical Literature Prosody, Grammar, Indian and Western Poetics, Folklore, Dravidian Linguistics, Tribal Studies, Theatre, Mass Communication, Translation Studies, Dravidian Philosophy, Literature and Culture, Research Methodology, Textual Criticism, Literary Criticism, Epigraphy, Religion, Linguistics, Manuscriptology, Hermeneutics, Cultural Studies, Women Studies, Area Studies, Ethnic Studies, Postmodernism and so on.

It is the obligation of the Department to provide our students with appropriate insights into these areas so that they do not remain ignorant about these areas. Most importantly, as mentioned earlier the Department has to take up, and is willing to take up translation work on a regular basis with well-defined aims.As it is well-known, the Dravidian University is established with an intention to create links among the Dravidian Languages. In fact, the eighth objective of the University is “to translate books of other languages into Dravidian languages according to the needs in consonance with the objectives of the University and also to translate books from the Dravidian languages into other languages. Exactly to accomplish this, the Department, in the next five years undertakes the responsibility of translation and publication of canonical Dravidian language texts into Kannada and Kannada text into other Dravidian languages.

Objectives :

1. It is the cherished goal of the Department to break new grounds by designing innovative techniques in teaching and research which are hardly attempted elsewhere as the most of the students joining the courses come rural backgrounds and from regional medium.
2. To orient the students towards the regional and local cultures by incorporating Dravidian writing in English translations without affecting the conventional canon.
3. To provide comparative perspectives of learning by juxtaposing, comparing, contrasting literatures across cultures and languages.
4. To encourage the students to undertake translation of Indian texts into English as an attempt at reaching other comers of the world.
5. To develop the Department into a Centre for Comparative and Translation Studies.

Faculty :