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Translation is about sensitivity

GOUTAM GHOSHGOUTAM GHOSH

Is a translator like a transparent window, tinted window or a mirror? Lakshmi Holmstrom, acclaimed U.K.-based translator, has the answer

INTERPRETING WORDS Lakshmi Holmstrom, translator of several Tamil literary works

Despite the exalted status of translators today, their names are invariably in smaller print than the original authors. It is the translator who transforms a vernacular text for readers to bask in its literary light. In India, we are aware that, but for translations, most of our literature would be out of reach.

But there are translation theories, hypotheses and counter hypotheses. Amit Chaudhury (The Picador Book of Modern Indian Literature) shows how English is not an Indian language in the sense that Tamil or Bengali are. Hemani Banerji (The Sound Barrier: Translating Ourselves in Languages and Experience) and Ngugi wa Thiongo, an African writer in English, opine that mapping a non-western meaning system on to English is "inherently violent" and that language carries culture, and culture carries the body of values by which we perceive our place in the world. Can English then serve as a matrix to transform and capture the cultural nuances endemic to a vernacular tongue?

There is hardly a choice in India. One of the legacies of colonial rule has been English that has served us since long before Independence. The shortcomings of English have been overcome by Indian writers and translators through ingenious manipulation. Lakshmi Holmstrom, an acclaimed U.K.-based translator, has translated Tamil literary works. While in Chennai, she spoke to this correspondent at the Oxford University Press office. Excerpts:

There isn't much about you on the Internet. Could you please tell me about yourself?

I had my education at Women's Christian College, Madras Christian College and Oxford. I began as a student of mainstream literature, looking for a different path and chose women writers. About 17 years ago, I was invited by Virago Press to do a collection of short stories by women. I came across Ambai's Manjal Meen (Yellow Fish) and translated it. That opened the door to translations. I have as much love for English literature as Tamil literature. I have not rejected one for the other. It was learning and moving, learning and including.

Do you feel satisfied after doing a translation?

One is never satisfied. What I say to myself is "For the moment this is the best I can do." In some years I could return to it and say, "Perhaps I could have done better." The text is not a dead thing. As you grow you react to it in different ways. You interact closely with the source text and when you translate, it's never word for word. It's an interpretation. So you dare not say it is a finished thing and the best of all time.

Is there any translation of yours which you feel has been as effective as the original?

I could never tell you that. A translation is different; the original is different. It is a different text in a different language in a different culture.

Have you published anything other than translations?

Yes, a critical work and a re-telling of "Silapadhikaram" and "Manimegalai". It is an imaginative re-creation and more contemporary. In "Manimegalai" I stayed close to the text but it was not a word-to-word translation.

Is a translator like a transparent window, tinted window or a mirror?

You are trying to interpret the source text, staying faithfully close to it. But a word-to-word can never hold because words are taken out of context. Words have different resonances, and they never equate between one language and another. So it is not a mirror. It is an interpretation — a close reading that the translator tries to carry over to a different language.

Do you consider source text a prison of language and the target text the key that sets the source text free?

I do not like to think of the source text as a prison and I wouldn't be presumptuous to claim that a translation holds the key. A translator cannot work without being committed to the source text, without loving it. A translation is a discovery and celebration of the source text.

What about the modern theories which talk about the translator's creativity and that the translator need not be faithful to the source text?

In my view, you have to be faithful to the source text but that does not cut out creativity. A creative translation is more than content. It is the voice, the style and the imaginative world of the text. The challenge is to get that across. Otherwise it becomes flat, word-to-word translation. It may make sense, but has no feeling, no heart.

Is an equally good command of the source and target languages a must?

You need sensitivity to love the music of languages. And you must know the grammar and structure of the languages. Words do not equate one-to-one. What works in one language does not work the same way in the other language. That's the challenge.

How far do you believe that Indian Writing in English is an act of translation?

There is a lot of truth in that. You have to translate if you are writing about ordinary people in this country to approximate the language they use. You are translating not the actual words, but the resonance and thought process. And that is what Indian writers in English are doing. They find clever ways to capture the nuances of the language and transform into English. R. K. Narayan does, Mulk Raj Anand does.

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