Roundabout: A Tryst with Translation

Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf? This title of a 1962 Broadway play which was later made into a 1966 film has remained a curious riddle to many as the theme was a volatile relationship of a middle aged couple. Of course, it was traced by the New Yorker several years before the play opened.

As the story goes: “A coffee fiend we know dropped into an espresso joint in Greenwich village the other day and found himself whiling away his time reading the graffiti on the wall beside his chair. Most of the stuff was pretty humdrum, but he was arrested by a legend, done in elegant calligraphy, that read, ‘Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ The reference was perhaps to the feminist streak in the writings of the famed writer of this name who had quite changed the aesthetics of writing fiction with the use of stream of consciousness in penning fiction.”

And now from the past century to the present, the literati in the city were a bit puzzled when a particular session under the common tag of ‘Speaking Allowed’ (very pertinent indeed to the times we are living in): ‘Who’s Afraid of Indian Literature?’ Was it a return blow to an insult to long grudge dating back to 1985 when TB Macauly claimed in all pomposity: “A single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia.” What with the Geetanjali Shree and Daisy Rockwell team steering a Hindi novel to win the Booker?

Talking of here and now

It was indeed a vibrant session with one of the finest publisher-editors Ravi Singh, prolific translator Arunava Sinha and acclaimed Urdu novelist Khalid Javed whose novel “Nemathkhana”, translated into English by Baran Farooqi won the JCB prize for the first time to the Urdu language.

Singh pointed out that the translation scene had become more vibrant in present times than some two decades ago. He recalled how two novels from Urdu and Hindi left an impression on him on just what was being written in Indian languages other than English. Those were “River of Fire (Aag ka Dariya)” by Qurratulain Hyder that the author had translated herself; and Hindi novel “Raag Darbari” by Shrilal Shukla, translated by Gilllian Wright.

“In fact I read the translation first and then went on to read the original”, Singh said, stressing the need for the quality of translation and pointing out that while the national Sahitya Akademi had been translating award-winning books into all the recognised languages for long years, the quality has been sadly lacking. He also hoped that a time would come when more books would be translated directly from one Indian language to another without using English or Hindi as the go-between. “However, let not one hierarchy replace another,” he added.

The Chowringhee Story

The journey of Bangla writer’s novel “Chowringhee”, published in 1962 and becoming an instant bestseller, is an interesting one. Still more interesting is the story of the second coming of the novel in 2007 in a translation by Arunava Sinha, who is a phenomenal translator and has lent her touch to some seventy-plus titles of Bangla from both India and Bangladesh. Twice a winner of the Crossword Translation Award and the Vani Foundation Distinguished Translation Award in 2022, he translates modern and contemporary fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

In 1992, Arunava was working with a city newspaper in Kolkata when a request from Sankar came seeking someone to translate the work into English for a French publisher who was keen to publish it. Arunava did so and gave it to Sankar and forgot all about it. Sinha recounts, “Some 14 years later, Divya Kar, then an editor with Penguin India, called him to know if I was the translator and she found my name on the manuscript. And that’s how the journey started.”

Feast of Paradise and more

For literary enthusiasts, it was a delightful encounter with Urdu fiction writer Khalid Javed who held forth on the writing of his novel which brought a big prize to Urdu for the first time.

When asked if he had envisaged his “Nematkhana” would win the prize, Javed replied: “Not at all. No writer writes for a prize. The experiences and subconscious pressures compel him or her to write. The novel was written in 2014. Baran Farooqi started translating it in 2017 and the translation was completed in 2022. I loved the book but was somewhat daunted by its magic realism but worked closely with Javed Sahib and moved on.”

Speaking of the culture and way of life in the Indian subcontinent, he said: “I am just part of the tradition of Prem Chand, Saadat Hasan Manto, Rajinder Singh Bedi, Ismat Chughtai, Krishan ChandraIntizar Husain and since I am in Chandigarh I must recall the contribution of the brilliant fiction writer Balwant Singh”.

Endearing himself to the audience, he responded to a line of Dag Dehlvi “ki aati hai Urdu zaban aate aate”, Javed said: “That is so because Urdu is not just a language but a culture we were nurtured in irrespective of the religion we were born to.”

This merry mix of languages and celebration in translation is heartwarming to say the least: a smile on the face of letters!