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TRANSLATIONS

SURENDRA

She named the Indian-language writers because translated literature is beginning to be taken seriously. But translators? That tribe without whom the Renaissance would never have happened, nor the Bible ever translated from Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek/Latin into European languages and thence to the hundreds of Asian and African languages; without whom so much science and astronomy would have stayed locked up in Arabic, and so much philosophy have languished in Sanskrit?

What of translators, those ventriloquists who translocate knowledge and literature vaulting the barriers of language both orally and in written forms? I thought it wiser not to question my friend about literature’s hidden forces, the throwers of voices, the cultural brokers of history, the creators, even, of new alphabets.

But ask I will. Now. For it is translators who help the literary experience to tunnel forward in a fashion that no amount of discussion or promotion in the original language can succeed in doing. How shall we promote a double experience fashioned by writers who, in creating a third language, give new life to great writing from Indian languages? Because that is what translators of Indian writing into English are doing!

There is also a strong element of conjuring in their craft. To discerning readers who are willing to suspend their disbelief and tune into a different aural world, our translators into English offer mirror experiences in a language that has no geographical base in this country but which has found a permanent emotional space in the minds of millions of Indians. Terms such as “sacred ash”, “caste pride” “slokas”, and hundreds of others are perfectly understood here. Today’s Indians are, after all, the descendants of the scholars of Nalanda University, the families of those who collaborated with Persian and British language interventions, survived the barbarities of Nadir Shah, picked up dictionary-making from the Portuguese and Germans; they are the great-great- great-great…grandchildren of the trading populations who welcomed the first Arab sailors on the West coast of South India long before the Prophet was born. We are nothing if not a translating nation.

Translating a text is an intuitive process, a divination of meaning which then bodies forth as a linguistic feat, meditated on, crafted and polished. The translator throws her voice so skilfully that the truth of a text originally written in an Indian language is “heard” in English. Here is Vasantha Surya translating the Tamil writer Ki Rajanarayanan: “Taking out the betel leaves one by one as if he were taking things out of a pooja box, he would lay them out with the devotion due to objects of worship… Next he would sniff the broken areca nut. Then he would blow on it. This sniffing and blowing procedure was repeated several times, his hand transporting the areca nut from nose to mouth, nose to mouth, more and more rapidly until ooomm-oosh, ooomm-oosh, ooomm-oosh, dabak! Into his mouth the areca nut would go, having been noisily purified.” Which Indian — educated in English, unable to read his mother tongue or born of a mother other than Tamil — will not thrill to such a retelling?

How much can publishers shape or develop a market for translations by making available books by established writers to readers who cannot otherwise read them? Books that discuss major issues of the day or are uniquely personal accounts that also give them a universal value? How can we honour scripts by unknown writers who come up with uncomfortable truths that expand and clarify our social self-image? Since writing is the thermostat of culture and publishing institutions the boiler-houses that support them, it would help to see how a market behaves, and how it demands and receives a certain kind of material from publishers of Indian literary art and renders them into English. Translation from this incredibly rich multi-lingual cultural world must be helped by publishers to free itself from its almost apologetic role as a second-ranking literary genre, and start relating strongly with building and influencing social awareness.

Now, the last thing we want to do is to demonise the market, or its modern-day systems which are advertising, distribution etc. The aura of suspicion that clouds the profiling and publicising of a product is misplaced. Marketing a product or an idea is not at all a bad thing. Let’s remember that the founders of religions and their followers, or those who were reformers of established ways of thinking, didn’t establish their beliefs by hiding in caves or refusing to meet people; but by travelling around, talking to crowds, and absorbing both criticism and praise along the way.

We know that every one of these things was accomplished with vigour and determination, so there is no place for timidity or anxiety. If the most difficult forms of philosophy could have been marketed, it shouldn’t be hard to market literary translations, which are decodings from our national literatures offering unique experiences that add to insights into social and emotional behaviour that are becoming increasingly necessary for collective life in the 21st century. With literature skipping nimbly into the gaps between women’s studies, sociology, and cultural studies, and coming into its own in the hugely successful self-help field, many texts from our culture are emerging as study material. How to respond to the market tastefully and with perseverance is the question before us.

Academics are nearly always bemoaning the lack of materials. With literary translation, the possibilities for pedagogy are tremendous. The complex issues of the day — gender, caste, region, language, and religion — are all very well represented in Indian literature and it isn’t just in the sense of their being “hot” or “in” topics. Profound philosophical and psychological questions are dealt with by our writers from the inside, so to speak, and not written about as observations from the outside. These issues in translation could make a good reading programme in any of our universities. Who better than Indians themselves to research and discuss issues culled from Indians writing in Indian languages? Excitingly for teachers and students, some authors are still with us. What an opportunity to study texts closely! Imagine if Virginia Woolf or RabindranathTagore had participated in a classroom-discussion of their writing! Part of the marketing of translations should be to co-opt the authors and translators into the promotion of their work. Can anyone present a product better than its creator?

Each of us is, indeed, many people, heirs to many languages and has life skills and insights to share, living as we do in a complex and rapidly transforming society. Media reports may be biased, socio-anthropology difficult to access but a sure way of knowing and understanding what these aspects of national life are would be to look into the mirrors that our literatures offer us. The quest to identify ourselves would be an utterly new area of study and research, besides being a powerful and subtle aid in promoting an authentic cultural unification of the country. While there might be an outbreak of Indian literature in the world, what are we doing about it right here in India?

Calling all ventriloquists …….

E-mail: minik@satyam.net.in

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