The language of broken barriers

Bengali is the most translated of all Indian languages and so it was in the fitness of things that the first edition of the Calcutta Literary Meet, held in association with The Telegraph, have multiple sessions on translation with about half a dozen author-translators attending.

Beyond Babel: Finding Other Literatures Through Translation, the first session on Day 4, saw Pawan K. Varma, Anita Nair, Arunava Sinha and Sampurna Chattarji discuss the significance of translation and the essential qualities of good translation. The session was moderated by Malabika Banerjee of Gameplan, the organisers of the Lit Meet.

Drawing from the Biblical reference, retired diplomat-cum-author-cum-translator Varma said: "The Tower of Babel is a colonial construct. The British were to take away our languages. One of the arguments was that there were too many languages." India, Varma said, had 24 fully developed languages with well-constructed vocabulary and a fine corpus of literature. "This prompted Macaulay to comment in his Minute on Indian Education 'You need a ladder to climb out the wall of languages'."

Varma squarely blamed the British for the way the young generation believed that if one knew English, one could be less than sure in his mother tongue. "This is leading the nation towards becoming a linguistic half caste," he said. Ruing that translations were greatly neglected, Varma, who has translated Ghalib, Kaifi Azmi, Gulzar and Atal Behari Vajpayee, said: "We are in need of a centre of excellence for translation. In the absence of avenues of good writing in regional languages, the vacuum is often being filled by mediocre English writing."

But what makes a good translation? "Is it literal translation? But then exactitude is the death of translation," Sampurna said.

Anita Nair, who has translated Kathakali texts, said: "I wanted to translate Nalacharita, a 19th century Kathakali text, narrating the story of Nala, which is both metaphysical and philosophical. And I decided that I would translate it as I understood it. The author had written it in the fishermen's dialect and I had to be sure that I retained the flavour."

Arunava is particular about retaining the author's voice. "And that is particularly difficult when you are translating different authors. When you move from one author to another, you should be careful that there is no hangover," he said. Both he and Nair spoke of Jorge Leal Amado de Faria's writings. "We read him in English but he writes in Portugese and the country flavour is brought into the translated English text," said Sinha.

Both Varma and Sampurna, who translate poetry, have had the authors of the original works congratulating them that the translation surpasses the original. Varma brushed aside the praise. "Gulzar and Kaifi Azmi are both generous and extremely cultured," he said, going on to quote Gulzar: "Translation is like a mistress, if she's beautiful, she's not faithful and if she's faithful, she is not beautiful."