Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Mangalore
A nice rhythm
Khwaja Tariq Mahmood .
EFFECTIVE AND effortless. Effective style, effortless flow and elite language; treat any poem with these adjectives and you have a blissful outcome. Despite the well-proven belief that translation usually spoils the original flavour of a work of art, 78-year-old Khwaja Tariq Mahmood of Pakistan forces one to ponder over it; with proof of his translations of the poetry of Shakeel Badayuni, published by New Delhi's Star Publications.
Take for instance, a couplet from one of Shakeel Badayuni's ghazals, "Kya asar tha jazba-e-kamosh main; khud woh simat ke aa gaye aagosh main" which he translates as "It was so effective, the silent toil; beloved curled to our side like a coil," or "Subah ka afsana kah kar sham se, khelta hun gardish-e-ayyam se" is translated as "From morning muse to evening ruse, With life's treadmill, I amuse."
The reason for his popularity is his rhymed translation, keeping in consonance with the original text of the poem. Reading his translations, one might think him to be a poet or a professional translator but his life is an interesting transition; from Pakistan Army's Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineering, a Law degree in 1977 from Punjab University, life of retirement as a brigadier in 1979 to his post graduation in International Relations from the U.S. in 1985, to translating Urdu poetry for sheer passion. He has also translated sections of Diwan-e-Ghalib besides the works of Qateel Shifai, Sahir Ludhiyanvi, Faiz Ahmad Faiz, Allama Iqbal and Bahadur Shah Zafar, all brought out by Star Publications.
"I had been interested in Urdu poetry from the beginning; but it was Randolph Kent, a teacher in the University of Southern California who asked me to translate Ghalib to know what he said in his verses, that I took up the translation work," says Mahmood whose rhymed translation of 88 works of Ghalib has earned him much popularity among the readers. For him the rhymed translation "was not easy. To match the original text with the translation, I had to really work hard and do a lot of reading. Take for instance; there is no match for `saat aasman' in "Raat din gardish main hai saat aasman" from Ghalib, so I used the word `seventh heaven' for it and thus matched the two without spoiling the meaning and the sense."
In his kitty is "Majaz Lucknawi and four poetesses from the subcontinent".
We are waiting.
RANA SIDDIQUI
Printer friendly
page
Send this article to Friends by
E-Mail
Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Coimbatore
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Mangalore
|
