Making a mark in many languages

A bestselling novelist and a leading poet sat down with their translators to discuss Rupantar: Ek Nodi, Annya Srot (Translations: One river, different currents) at the Calcutta Literary Meet, in association with The Telegraph, on Saturday.

Arunava Sinha, who translated Sankar's Chowringhee to English, catapulting the bestseller novel into international market, set the agenda: "Using the hackneyed phrase 'lost in translation' that is borrowed from a film, which in turn borrows it from a book and so on, we will today talk of the pitfalls of translation."

Poet Joy Goswami and his translator Sampurna Chattarji provided a demonstration, reciting their works.

Sinha turned the spotlight on Sankar, asking him what kind of reception his translated book got at the London Book Festival two years ago.

The novelist said: "My two daughters have been taking me more seriously since my books were translated into English. When I went abroad with Chowringhee, the sahibs asked me why the translation was done after so many years."

He attributed the delay to his "middle-class Bengali sentiments". "During World War II, nothing would be available. Even Horlicks could not be found. To stay in people's minds, the manufacturer used to issue advertisements saying Horlicks is not available now but it's worth waiting for. In my case, too, universal acceptance of my work has been worth the wait."

Turning back the clock, Sankar narrated how Rathindranath had almost lost his father Rabindranath's translation of Gitanjali in the London tube. Vivekananda's writings had been translated from English to Bengali before Rabindranath's works, he said.

Referring to an endeavour to translate well-known Bengali books to English in the 1960s, Sankar said: "An editor had refused to let the project get underway. He said if Bengali works were translated, the sahibs would know which books they were based on." He cited Saradindu Bandopadhyay's Jhinder Bandi, based on The Prisoner of Zenda.

Chattarji, who has also translated Sukumar Ray's Abol Tabol, said: "I did the translation out of foolhardiness and love for Sukumar Ray." The session fittingly ended with a reading of the English translation of Ray's "Bhoy peyo na, bhoy peyo na, tomaye ami marbo na (Fear not, fear not, I won't hit you at all)".