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Literary Review
Lost in translation
S. THEODORE BASKARAN
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The translator has failed to convey the power and sting of Kandasamy’s Tamil original.
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Visaranai Commission (Enquiry Commission); Sa. .Kandasamy, translated by Vasantha Surya, Sahitya Academy, Rs.125.
Scholars like Sivathambi have pointed out that contemporary Tamil literature is not as widely known as Sangam and Bhakti literature. The main reason is that we have only a few good translations of the excellent in modern Tamil literature.
Sa. Kandasamy, who made a mark as a short story writer in the 1970s in the little magazine Ka Sa Da Tha Pa Ra, soon created an impact with his first novel Sayavanam, an early example of green literature in Tamil. Though not a prolific writer (seven novels so far) what he has written cannot be ignored by critics.
Politics and religion
Visaranai Commission was first published in 1994 and won the Sahitya Academy award. In the introduction to the Tamil original, Sachithanandam points out that the three main strands of the life of Tamils today are politics, religion and cinema. This novel deals with the first two over a period of 50 years. The growth of the Dravidian movement, the Emergency and the dynamics of contemporary electoral politics in Tamil Nadu form the backdrop. He describes the anxiety of the Emergency days and the human degradation that was part of it. Human Rights violation in a police station is a key factor in the novel. There are quite a few innuendos to some living politician, which are lost in the translation.
The main protagonists are bus conductor Thangarasu and school teacher Rukmini. The childless couples’ dog Tiger has a major presence in the novel and Kandasamy describes its moods and movements in a manner that would please James Thurber. Squirrels and sparrows make appearances. There is a politician in the background — a school teacher who wheels and deals and gets elected to the legislature. Kandasamy says that, after completing the novel, he realised that it was influenced by the Tamil epic Silapadhikaram and that he was unaware of it while writing. He sees it as a part of a literary continuum.
Translation problems
Characteristic of Kandasamy’s works, this novel is written in ‘spoken Tamil’. The gap between the written and the spoken forms in Tamil is wide. This presents a challenge to translators. Secondly, the translators are often far from the ethos in which the novel or short story is set. So the metaphors and usages are lost on them. Thirdly the difficulty they have with the terms of non-vegetarian food, of alcohol, of natural history and fire arms. Translators often skip these expressions or take the easier option of transliteration which makes no sense to a non-Tamil.
You observe these problems in the book under review also. The names of fish have been transliterated. The English names are in common parlance in Chennai. Seer for vanjiram, tuna for nethili and so on. The Pungai tree is Pongamia, a popular avenue tree in Chennai. Velladu is not white goat; it is goat as different from sheep. In fact this species is predominantly black and my teacher cited it as an example of ethirmarai — a word that means the opposite. The butcher does not kill a goat; he slaughters it. It is not goat meat; it is mutton and eeral is not lung but liver. In a Chettinad restaurant, you order a liver fry. Similarly Kall is not wine but toddy. Dogs do not claw, they paw. I am not sure if it is deliberate but you notice a few Indian-English expressions also (He took bath).
In the Tamil original, Kandasamy captures the flavour of subaltern life in Chennai by the phrases he chooses, the idioms he uses and the very earthy adjectives employed. The translator often misses the essence of these expressions. This affects the distinct character of the novel. Consequently it fails to convey the power and sting of the original. This is a problem that one notices in the English translation of Tamil Dalit literature being published. You end up with a characterless, sanitised version.
Rukmini, the teacher, reads a book by Gandhiji and Kandasamy gives a Tamil version of one of Gandhiji’s favourite hymns, John Newman’s “Lead kindly light” (1833). The translator has re-translated it, instead of giving the famous English original
K.S. Ramanujam was keen to bring modern Tamil literary works to non-Tamils, as he had the classical works through his much acclaimed translations.. He was sensitive to these problems of translation and was planning a workshop for translators. Unfortunately he died and the problem remains unaddressed.
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