On the change in the translation scene in India and on presenting culture-specific words and phrases
A few years ago, nobody took translations seriously enough to think of it as a ‘genre’ in itself. My translator friends would even complain about not having their names on book jackets. However, last year’s Booker and JCB wins are being thought of as a belle epoque for translations. Do you see a change in publishers’ attitudes and readers’ perceptions?
Yes and no. We have to understand that our worlds are like echo chambers and this engagement and awareness about translations has come in these circles. I wouldn’t say that this was a sudden change after a few wins but rather a gradual process, a series of small knocks. The Booker win of course gave it a massive push. The number of grants and fellowships for translators have also gone up but they are mostly for emerging translators only. The “emerged”-but-not-yet-top-tier ones need more encouragement because they don’t have access to a lot of paying gigs that the top ones do and don’t get paid big royalties but have more skin in the game than the emerging ones. I wish there were more residencies to help translators not just in terms of time but also monetarily when they work on a book. I often find it difficult to make time for my translation and writing work because of the paid work I have to take up to pay the bills every month. And that’s despite the fact that I have received royalties/ advances.
But that’s still our close publishing circles. However, the outside world of “non-publishing people who are readers” still perceive translation as a “secondary” exercise. My own extended family says that they are waiting for my “own” book to come out (three translated books doesn’t quite cut it for them).
What essential qualities do you look for in a book before choosing to translate it? Which elements in Sahela Re and in your earlier translations such as Giligadu and Bhairavi cliched it for you?
I need to relate to the story/ characters or an element of it and the writing needs to pull me in as a reader. I love simplicity in writing and the tangibility of a plot. I have realized through trial and error that I struggle a lot if the female characters are not well defined or strong. Shivani Pant, whose novel Bhairavi I translated few years back, only wrote strong female characters, though with tragic ends, like her guru, Tagore. I think Tagore and Pant wrote them thus to show how society fails them, time and again.
Sahela Re also has plenty of them. The protagonist Vidya almost seemed like an alter ego, though I am not half as famous as her but in terms of life decisions. I really like that her room is messy and that she is straightforward. Then, there are Hirabai and Anjali Bai, mysterious, ambitious and successful. Yet doomed in their own way. However, I find myself thinking of Radha Dada and Putul Di’s mother a lot. She hasn’t been a given a name but her story is so poignant in the way she is mistreated by her husband and in-laws for no fault of hers and yet there’s a strength in her that shines through.
I am working on Neelakshi Singh’s Khela right now and that one again has a woman at the centre of it all.
Often translations or translators have to fight with “erasure” at multiple levels. So do women in literature or otherwise. Is that synergy a reason for choosing books by women writers so far?
Women in literature have to deal with this erasure (or worse: objectification or pedestalization or rather dehumanization) when they are written by men. Having said that, I’d add that I have also translated Master Bhagwan Das (Plague Ki Chudail) and though the central figure is passive – unconscious for most of the story, it was a riot to read and translate. In this story, the erasure also works because it is a satire and Das also looks at how quick society is to brand a woman a chudail (a witch).
What I also find interesting is the way women write mothers. While male writers tend to idealize, women also tend to show how conflicted and complicated the relationship between mothers and daughters can be.
In Bhairavi, we are shown that Chandan’s mother Rajrajeshwari raises her under strict supervision and is very protective because of how one “mistake” had ruined her own life. However, Shivani Pant also very deftly shows how that actually makes Chandan too naïve to deal with the world.
In Sahela Re too, the relationship between Hira and Anjali is fraught with grudges. Hira tries to control the young Anjali’s life because of the difficulties she faced at her age and that creates a distance between them.
My earlier translation of Sahitya Akademi-winning Hindi writer Chitra Mudgal’s Giligadu explores these inter-generation relationships beautifully. We are shown how a son doesn’t care for his elderly father much beyond simply doing his duty because the father himself had pushed him away when he was young.
Did you consider translating Mrinal Pande, Shivani Pant’s daughter, after a successful stint with Bhairavi? Was it an organic progression or was stumbling upon Sahela Re a matter of chance? What intersections or divergences do you find in the writing of the mother-daughter duo?
I stumbled upon Sahela Re quite by chance. My poet-publisher friend, Dibyajyoti Sarma gifted it to me. I started reading the book and Vidya Rani sunk her teeth into me.
Their styles are quite different. There is a directness in Shivani while Mrinal brings in more of the outside world, there are references to poets and politics – she brings the outside in. However, the way they describe emotions, almost making the reader feel them, is the same. I “felt” the way Putul Didi’s mother in Sahela Re might have felt (sad but stoic and strong) when she was bullied every hour of the day by the family she was married into much the same way I had felt Maya Didi’s pain and horror when she realizes how terrible the man she has loved all her life is. And guess what? They are both secondary characters.
If we look at the books you have translated so far, their plot lines are quite different from the prevalent sensibilities of the Indian English readership. Translations help transcend boundaries to create a “universal literature” as per Saramago, but does that also mean that a translator has to have a keen eye on the target audience?
Despite my background in publishing, I don’t think I consciously “think” of a target audience. I go at it at a very personal level, or at least that’s how it has been till now – unless I am commissioned to translate something. So, I guess till now, I have been translating for myself.
I must add here though that I think I am becoming surer, more confident with every translation. I am careful and diligent about the work but I am a lot less anxious. I understand that I have to let the translation flow
How do you work through seemingly culture-specific “untranslatable” words and phrases? Are there any techniques that you frequently use for such passages? Is there any passage from Sahela Re that comes to mind?
Some untranslatable words are untranslatable because of their specificity. I leave them as is (much like the titles of the books. Sometimes, it helps to explain. In Sahela Re, Haidari’s last letter where she comments about how children from India/ Pakistan don’t understand nuktas nor any difference in the pronunciation of the T in tabiyat or teka - the bit about the tabiyat and teka were examples I supplied because in English unlike Hindi we do not have separate letters for the two Ts. There was a bit where the character is talking about the “untranslability” of a line. “How do you translate spontaneous outbursts of mehfil attendees such as: “Aaye haaye! Yeh toh Huddu Khan Sahib ki gamaktaan hai!”, “Arre vaari jaaun, is adayegi mein toh ayn-mayn Patiale ke Faiz Mohammad ki chhab hai’; ‘Wah! Kya rangeeli firat hai, jiyo raajjja!”?’ Does saying saying, “Aaye haaye! This echoes Huddu Khan Sahib’s voice” or “My, my, his style seems to have the influence of Patiala’s Faiz Mohammad”, or “Wah! How colourful! Live on my king!” – capture the beauty of these gems? No! At least not for me.’
While other regional books are getting good traction in the English market, Hindi seems to lag behind despite being more widely spoken than any of the other bhashas. Commissioning editors often know very little about Hindi literature.
There are many sides to the Hindi and publishability coin and blaming editors is perhaps a bit hasty. I think the onus is on everybody in the ecosystem: translators, writers, publishers and even readers to bring more Hindi writers to the fore.
Kinshuk Gupta is the associate editor of Usawa Literary Review and the poetry editor of Jaggery Lit and Mithila Review.
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