How challenging was it for Daisy Rockwell of Bennington to translate “Tomb of Sand,” Geetanjali Shree’s novel, from Hindi to English?
“It's really experimental, and it’s also a very rebellious book and rebellious, in particular, against conventions in storytelling and expectations for what a novel should be,” Rockwell said. “A lot of readers complain that the main character doesn't get out of bed for like the first 200 pages. But I just find that fascinating. You just never really know where she's going.”
Rockwell’s fascination paid big dividends. She and Shree received the 2022 International Booker Prize at a ceremony in London on May 26. The prize honors the best book translated into English and published in Britain or Ireland. Rockwell and Shree will split the 50,000 British pounds — approximately $63,000 — of prize money they received in conjunction with the award itself.
Shree’s novel follows the journey of an 80-year-old Indian woman to Pakistan. It weaves in themes of womanhood, family and trauma with a narrative centering on the partition of British India. Some of its experimentalism is seen in its ever-shifting points of view, including the perspectives of crows, the sun, and even that of a door and a window.
“Tomb of Sand” is the first novel in an Indian language to win the International Booker Prize and the first Hindi novel to receive a nomination, according to The New York Times. It is Shree’s third novel and her first to be published in Britain.
“They really make sure that there’s lots of suspense, so very few people know who’s going to win — like the judges, a few organizers — so it’s kind of built up and built up,” Rockwell said. “So by the time that it was posted, I was a nervous wreck.”
When they learned their book won, Rockwell and Shree were both in shock. Rockwell compared her response to being on a plane, where they tell you in case of emergency to put on your own oxygen mask before helping those around you.
“I tried to process it quickly, and then they tell you to have a sample speech in case you win, so I got out my speech and then I went over to (Shree) and she was just completely shut down,” Rockwell said. “I had to kind of tell her what had happened and give her a hug and then bring her up to the stage.”
Rockwell said she had never before won such a prestigious award of this level. She considers the International Booker Prize the highest honor in the English-speaking world of literature.
“It's funny for me because actually none of my books have ever been published in the U.S.,” she said. “Even in the Western translating world, I'm not known at all, so I think it was very surprising to me. We're sort of coming out of nowhere, like the underdogs.”
By now, a U.S. publisher has picked up “Tomb of Sand,” with its official announcement expected momentarily.
Rockwell said she’s been trying unsuccessfully to get her work published in the U.S. for decades, and many of her friends who translate South Asian languages have had similar struggles.
“Tomb of Sand” was published in the U.K. in August by a small publisher, Tilted Axis Press, which was founded by Deborah Smith, who won the 2016 International Booker Prize for her translation of “The Vegetarian,” alongside author Han Kang.
“She calls it ‘Tilted Axis’ because her idea is to sort of tilt the axis of the world of translation and literature towards a greater inclusiveness to literatures that haven't been recognized in the West,” Rockwell said. “She mostly publishes translations from Asian languages.”
Smith scouted “Tomb of Sand” while looking for books in India, and Rockwell was selected as the translator by way of another translator’s recommendation, Rockwell said.
“This is my first book to be published outside of India, and I would say very much so, the reason why it's my first is because there is really a strong bias in the publishing world,” she said. “Any type of aesthetic judgment can also be racist or xenophobic.”
Rockwell hopes people in the U.S. will continue to become more open-minded and travel through literature, choosing to read in translation as a means of crossing boundaries.
“Americans are very insular and monolingual, and that brings about a kind of blindness and limitation in perspectives,” Rockwell said.
From the first meeting to future plans
“Fiction is the most intimate of all arts, the only one in which we can truly inhabit another mind,” said Frank Wynne, chair of this year’s panel of judges for the International Booker Prize. “For as long as writers have told stories, translators have brought them to the world.”
Wynne is the first translator to chair the panel.
“Translators matter. This is something that bears repeating in the somewhat solipsistic anglophone world,” he said. “Geetanjali Shree’s joyous cacophony is captured in the playful poetics of Daisy Rockwell.”
Rockwell and Shree did not meet in person until last week for the awards ceremony. Initially, Rockwell planned to visit India to collaborate, but the pandemic interfered with those plans.
“All of our interactions were on email. We didn't even Zoom or talk on the phone,” Rockwell said. “By the time we met last week, we felt like friends.”
Rockwell said she looks forward to working with Shree on additional translations of her work.
“Where would any of us be without Daisy, who has given this book its English incarnation, making it accessible for all of you?” Shree asked her audience at the awards ceremony. “Thank you, Daisy, thank you, thank you.”
Where it all began
Rockwell’s love for languages and translating began when she started studying Latin in seventh grade. She continued her Latin studies in college in addition to taking French and German.
“I decided I wanted to try something really different and challenging,” she said. “So I started to learn Hindi, mostly because it fit in my schedule, and kind of stuck with it.”
She later went to graduate school to complete a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago in South Asian languages and literature and became more serious about translating. She also translates Urdu, a South Asian language similar to Hindi.
“I read other South Asian languages but not well enough to translate from them,” she said. “Languages are like people or countries: You gravitate to some of them, some of them you fall in love with, some of them are just not for you. So for me, for some reason, this just became my life partner.”
Translation philosophies
Rockwell said her process involves a rough first draft with the only primary goal being to get the story out of the original language and into English, which often feels mechanical. After that, the process takes on a more creative lens, in making the story actually “live” in another language.
“But at the same time, I'm in a situation where I'm translating a language, Hindi, from a country that went through colonialism, and I'm translating it into the colonial language, English, so there's a power differential,” Rockwell said.
Rockwell takes care to remain sensitive to that power differential and that she herself is not Indian. She’s found that many of her readers are Indians who cannot read Hindi, so in her translations, she tries to prioritize retaining the intended cultural elements of the Hindi language.
“English is still a huge language in India as well. It has its own style and flavors,” she said.
Still, she struggles with the delicate process of balancing the need for readability and accessibility with the need to preserve the integrity of the original — while keeping all of her readers in mind, from Indians preferring to read in English to American neighbors in Vermont.
Additionally, Rockwell said, she decided to move away from translating literature written by men a few years back when she realized all of her translations up to that point were books by men.
“I started to really be conscious of the fact that women's voices are often not heard or sidelined in books by men,” she said. “There's a lot of objectification obviously, kind of sexualized descriptions of women that don't allow them to come out as well-rounded characters.”
In her free time, Rockwell enjoys painting and spending time with her 13-year-old daughter. She finds she does her best translating work in busy spaces, such as the waiting rooms at her daughter’s dance classes.
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