Our Stories, Their Words: How More Writers From The West Are Now Translating Indian Literature

I read the translated version of Geetanjali Shree바카라™s novel, Tomb of Sand, before I picked up the original in Hindi, Ret Samadhi. It바카라™s a very well-narrated story.  Interestingly, I was guided to the English translation by Harish Trivedi바카라™s piece in Outlook. When I read the review, I went back to the Hindi version. I am a slow reader of Hindi; my medium is Urdu. Having read both, I felt that it has been translated really well. Somewhere, it gets the right tone and the nuances of colloquial Punjabi바카라”the novel is set in the backdrop of Partition and its character travels to Pakistan. That바카라™s the most difficult part of a translated work.

Overall, it is a great moment for translated works in general and Indian literature in particular. It바카라™s wonderful that the novel has caught the attention of the international body of literature. Earlier, we Indians had to translate into English to reach the West, particularly during the time of Rabindranath Tagore. But now it바카라™s people from the West who are attracted to Hindi literature and are translating our works. In this connection, the efforts of the Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales (National Institute for Oriental Languages and Civilisations), a non-profit institute in Paris, is highly commendable. They have been translating a lot of work from Indian languages. Several of my own books of stories and poems have been and are still being translated into French. 

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Within India, I am in favour of making one Indian language, along with English, as the link language. That language, I feel, can only be Hindi. It바카라™s easy to read translations from Indian languages into Hindi because we are culturally bound and can get, for instance, references to Arjuna and Draupadi or expressions of panghat and sindoor. So, within India, we should share our stories in bilingual translations: Hindi and Bangla, Hindi and Assamese, and so on and so forth. Today, it바카라™s the Northeast from where the most dynamic poetry is emerging. They are not being shared with the rest of India. I have made a little effort in this direction with A Poem A Day (HarperCollins India, 2020), in which I have selected and translated 365 contemporary poems by 279 poets from 34 languages of India. It took me about nine years to do this.

Talking of languages, although my mother tongue is Punjabi, I write in Urdu. I can understand Bengali, Gujarati and Marathi; so, I can speak and understand at least five languages. During Covid, I made an effort to learn Malayalam because I thought it바카라™s important to learn at least one South Indian language. Within Indian languages, there is so much literature: Tamil and Malayalam, Manipuri and Khasi. We must hear these stories. For them to be translated into Hindi will perhaps be more convenient than in English because of the latter바카라™s elitist nature. The translations should not be just for international readers; within India, we will benefit a lot from translation from and into Indian languages. We must share these languages. Hindi can be a good medium to understand stories from across India.

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Besides A Poem A Day, I have translated two volumes of works by Rabindranath Tagore. I didn바카라™t translate Gitanjali bec­ause that바카라™s not Tagore바카라™s best work. It contains poems that he had selected and translated for the West. Tagore바카라™s high was in his younger period and when he had written for children바카라”Baghbaan and Nindiya Chor바카라”which nobody had considered for translation. Before Tagore, I had translated Marathi poets like Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar and,  particularly, the firebrand Namdeo Dhasal. Dhasal was a people바카라™s poet. His language is so different from the commonly-used Marathi and his expression is raw and intense. The same can be said of the works of Malika Amar Sheikh, his wife. She is a poet with a strong voice. However, her diction is different from Namdeo.

One important element which has to be considered when we talk of translations is about meaning, which goes beyond the dictionary. In poetry, for instance, it바카라™s the feeling which is more important than the meaning. You have to work hard to pick up the right phrase and yet not miss the image of the poet. That바카라™s why, while publishing Tagore, we chose the format which had the original, the translation by Tagore and my translation. This way, you come to see how Tagore ruined his own poems while translating them; in order to reach the West, he would change the expression, the ending line, or somewhere in the middle, the images. He did all this for a purpose. That바카라™s why I think that Tagore바카라™s original Bangla expressions are much richer. But whoever translated Tagore has had Gitanjali as the starting point even though it바카라™s not his best work. It was his poems about nature and his love poems that are his best.

I have been working on translations of Lalon Fakir (also known as Lalon Shah) and Kazi Nazrul Islam. It was a promise I had made to (former President) the late Pranab Mukherjee. He had told me to translate Nazrul Geeti바카라”songs of the poet바카라”after I translated Tagore. I had told him I was already on it. I find Lalon Fakir more fascinating than Kazi saab. The two Shahs바카라”Lalon Shah and Bulleh Shah바카라”lived a century apart, but their voices are very similar: they both seem to be talking like a baul singer. There is another interesting fact: Lalon lived for 106 years and Bulleh Shah lived for 105 years. I grew up on the works of Bulleh Shah, but I find Lalon바카라™s work to be tremendously rich. Among contemporary poets, I admire Haldhar Nag, a Sambhalpuri poet and writer from Odisha, who is known as 바카라˜Lokkabi Ratna바카라™.

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Geetanjali바카라™s win has brought the focus to translations, which is thriving in India. But several writers in Indian languages are yet to be translated. For example, there is a Malayalam poet, Vaikom Muhammad Basheer, whose works should be taken to other Indian languages. He should have been translated long, long back. Sometimes, cinema is a good medium for a literary work바카라™s journey across mediums. Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay wrote Pather  Panchali in 1929, but it got the attention of the world only after Satyajit Ray adapted it for a film in 1955. Similarly, Goutam Ghose바카라™s film Paar (1984), based on the Bengali story Paathi, drew our attention to Samaresh Basu바카라™s work, at par with the stories of Maxim Gorky and Anton Chekhov. Premchand바카라™s story Kafan, too, reveals similar storytelling skills.

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There is always so much that needs to be translated. It should be a continuous process. From Hindi and Urdu, Rakhshanda Jalil has translated quite a lot, including stories by writers across the border, like Intizar Husain. In literature, we don바카라™t keep borders. My own translations traverse Urdu, Punjabi and Sindhi. Those are the languages we share in the subcontinent. In A Poem A Day, you will see shades of Tamil from Sri Lanka and Bangla from Bangladesh. Geetanjali Shree바카라™s novel is also about crossing borders.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Our Stories, Their Words")

(Views expressed are personal)

(As told to Nawaid Anjum)