Ratnakar Hari Kelkar (22 June 1901 in

Alibag Alibag, also known as Alibaug (Pronunciation: �libaːɡ, is a coastal city and a municipal council in Raigad district of Maharashtra, India. It is the headquarters of the Raigad district and is south of the city of Mumbai. Alibag is part of the ...

– 14 November 1985 in

New Delhi New Delhi (; ) is the Capital city, capital of India and a part of the Delhi, National Capital Territory of Delhi (NCT). New Delhi is the seat of all three branches of the Government of India, hosting the Rashtrapati Bhavan, New Parliament ...

) was a revisor and translator of the Bible into

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India **Marathi people (Uttar Pradesh), the Marathi people in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Mar ...

Life

R. H. Kelkar was born into a Christian family; his father Hari Govind Kelkar had accepted Christianity in 1881. After his father's death in 1904, Kelkar had a difficult childhood. He studied in John Elphinstone School in Alibag but could not complete his education. He later moved to Bombay (now Mumbai) and after doing small jobs he got employment in a branch of the Bombay Post Office as a clerk. While working at the Post Office he continued his studies and received the BA degree of the

University of Bombay University of Mumbai is a public university, public List of largest universities and university networks by enrollment, state university in Mumbai. It is one of the List of largest universities and university networks by enrollment, largest univ ...

in 1926. He worked in the Indian Postal Department for 34 years and retired in 1956 as the Deputy Presidency Post Master of

Bombay GPO The General Post Office, Mumbai, is the central post office of the city of Mumbai, India. The post office handles most of the city's inbound and outbound mail and parcels. Situated in the vicinity of Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Mumbai Ge ...

. While working in the Postal Service, he also studied accountancy and law, and cultivated a keen interest in religion, culture, history, language, and literature. After his retirement he served as the editor of the Marathi magazine Dnyanodaya from 1956 to 1963, and as a professor of

at the United Theological College, Pune until 1973. He died on 14 November 1985 at New Delhi, India.

Translation work

The first Marathi translation of the

Holy Bible The Bible is a collection of religious texts that are central to Christianity and Judaism, and esteemed in other Abrahamic religions such as Islam. The Bible is an anthology (a compilation of texts of a variety of forms) originally writt ...

had been published in the early years of the 19th century by William Carey and his associates at

Serampore Serampore (also called Serampur, Srirampur, Srirampore, Shreerampur, Shreerampore, Shrirampur or Shrirampore) is a city in Hooghly district in the Indian state of West Bengal. It is the headquarters of the Srirampore subdivision. It is a part ...

in West Bengal, India. Later translations and revisions were mostly carried out by committees appointed by the Bible Society in India from time to time. There were two individual attempts to translate the Bible into Marathi – the New Testament by B N Athavale (1931) and the complete Bible by

Pandita Ramabai Pandita Ramabai Sarasvati ( Marathi: ; 23 April 1858 – 5 April 1922) was an Indian social reformer and Christian missionary. She was the first woman to be awarded the titles of '' Pandita'' as a Sanskrit scholar and '' Sarasvati'' after being ...

(1922). The latest translation of the Marathi New Testament from Greek to Marathi was done by Ratnakar Hari Kelkar between 1968 and 1985. This work, Nava Karar, was published at bible-marathi.com in 2005. Translation work done by committees usually entails the use of complex phraseology to find common ground among differing doctrinal viewpoints, and a possible lack of consistency of expression in different parts of the text. R H Kelkar adopted a different approach. He did not use the same Marathi word everywhere for a particular Greek word in order to achieve fidelity of translation. Instead, he studied in great detail the meaning and background of New Testament Greek words, and prepared a wordbook that gave a few carefully chosen Marathi equivalents expressing different nuances of these Greek words. He then built up his Marathi translation by framing sentences using the most appropriate words and phrases. This approach has made his translation extremely readable in contemporary Marathi without loss of authenticity.

References

External links

* Excerpts of selected topics from the Marathi New Testament translated by R H Kelka
http://marathibible.wordpress.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kelkar, Ratnakar Translators of the Bible into Marathi 1904 births 1985 deaths 20th-century Indian translators