Rabindranath Murmu (right) receives the award in Chennai on Friday. Telegraph picture

Jamshedpur, Aug. 24: A tribal translation work has bagged a prestigious honour.

City-based Santhali writer Rabindranath Murmu has won the Sahitya Akademi Translation Award 2012 for translating Mahasweta Devi’s Bengali novel Eeter Opor Eet.

The 45-year-old writer got the award from famous Tamil author Ashokmitran at a ceremony at Putti Thyagraya Hall in Chennai on Friday evening.

Murmu, the fourth recipient of this award from Jharkhand, has also bagged a memento, a certificate and a cheque of Rs 50,000.

Beside Murmu, 23 other writers from across the country also received the coveted award for their translation works.

Murmu, a language activist, sports lover and secretary of East Singhbhum unit of All India Santhali Writers’ Association, said he was happy.

“I am glad to win this prestigious award. My hard work has paid off finally,” he said over phone from Chennai, adding that the story was close to his heart.

Eeter Opor Eet is a story on the tribal struggle during the Jharkhand freedom movement. The plot is set in Kolhan.

So far, Murmu has translated three books. He started working on Mahasweta Devi’s novel in 2009. It was published by Baha Sonali Publishers in Karandih.

The other two are Sachhai Ki Karamaat (Hindi) by Acharya Chatur Singh and Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Boro Didi (Bengali).

Currently, he is working on Saratchandra Chattopadhyay’s Devdas and is almost through with it.

“Translations help us to gift stories from other languages to Santhali readers,” said Murmu, who is the project director of Guru Gomke Pandit Raghunath Murmu Academy that promotes Santhali and Ho languages in rural schools.