Prof. V. Saratchandran Nair assumes office at the National Translation Mission.

Prof. V. Saratchandran Nair has taken over the reins of the National Translation Mission on the 6th of September 2013. He is the second Project Director of the Mission after Prof. Aditi Mukherjee who completed her term in March 2013.

A teacher, lexicographer and translator, Prof. Nair, is a linguist by training. He received his doctoral degree in Linguistics from Annamalai University. Earlier, he was the Principal of the Southern Regional Language Centre, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, an office of the Ministry of Human Resource Development. He retired as a Professor cum Deputy Director of the Institute in 2011. In the beginning of his long standing career, he was also associated with the Anthropological Survey of India as a Research Associate at Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar Islands. He worked on the language of the Jarawas. He was associated with ILCAA studies, University of Tokyo for the Preparation of Japanese-English-Malayalam dictionary and with other International organisations such as Mobile Labs, Lund, Sweden, E-Trans, Elmhurst, USA, Glyph Language services etc. and worked different aspects of Malayalam linguistics. Apart from this he has published several research articles on different aspects of Linguistics at the National and International level.

The publication of eight dictionaries (six trilingual and two bilingual, all of them bidirectional) which he has edited stand out as one of his noted achievements. He has also authored an Advanced Course Reader in Malayalam and has translated the book Atal Bihari Vajpayee from Kannada to Malayalam and also edited books on Linguistics in Malayalam, such as "samakaaliina malayaaLa vyaakaraNaM" (A contemporary Grammar of Malayalam), "bhaa'shaastram, innale, innau (Linguistics, Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow"). Recently he was awarded “Gurudakshina", for his contribution to Malayalam Literature and language, by dakshina, a chennai based socio-cultural Malayaali association and Dr.Hermann Gundert award by Dravidian Linguistics Association for his contribution for developing dictionaries in four South Indian languages.