Lifting the Veil

M. Asaduddin

I grew up in a remote village of Assam speaking what is known as Sylheti, a dialect of Bangla, which will be generally unintelligible to a speaker of standard Bangla. However, the moment we entered school, all books were written in standard Bangla and the teachers spoke either the standard language, or Sylheti or some other dialect. Thus, a process of translation has always been at work even when I grew up within my own language community. The highest aspiration for the speakers of the dialect was to be able to speak and write like the people living in Kolkata... Here is some food for thought for those who make vast generalisations about homogeneity within the same language. When I went to college I became more aware of the social hierarchy implicit in one's use of language.

My first entry into world literature was also through translation -- Bangla translation of literary works such as Three Musketeers, Les Miserables, Tales of Arabian Nights and so on.

When I moved to Aligarh Muslim university in Uttar Pradesh for higher education I was exposed to urdu literature and language. I soon realised that there would be no fun staying there if I didn't know Urdu language and literature. I also realised the extent of insularity that characterised our knowledge of other language literatures in India, apart from our own. This insularity is found not only among ordinary or common readers of literature, but among writers, critics and academic establishments as well. Very few people have any interest in or awareness of a literature beside their own. One way, perhaps the only way, to redress the situation is to have as many competent translations as possible. At that point in my life I was imbued with the desire taht Urdu readers should know more of Bangla literature, and Bangla readers, of Urdu. I learnt Urdu and started translating ficitional works from Urdu to Bangla. The first story I translated was Saadat Hasan Manto's "Tobatek Singh".

After four years of learning and teaching at Aligarh I moved to Delhi's Jamia Millia Islamia as a faculty member in the Department of English and Modern European Languages. Some of my friends there who were writers and critics of Urdu, perusaded me to translate from Bangla and Ahomiya (Assamese) into Urdu. The ideal thing for me at this stage would have been to find a collaborator whose mother tongue was Urdu. Such happy collaborations are, however, often a matter of coincidence rather than design, and when the collaboration does not bring any tangible material benefit, it is still harder to come by. So, I did whatever I could under the circumstances, i.e., finding my way through trial and error. Writing in a newly acquired language was exciting for me, but it was a great strain too. There was a constant anxiety to get the nuances across, for which I had to constantly bother my Urdu-knowing friends. Meanwhile I attended two national translation workshops organised by Sahitya Akademi which provided the opportunity to improve my skill as a translator.

As I started translating from and into Urdu, I also endeavoured to deepen my knowledge of Urdu literature, as I always thought that literary translation is not simply about skills, but about acquiring a new sensibility and entering a new culture as well. Searching for appropriate equivalence was not enough; one has to be bi-literary and bi-cultural to carry the nuances across.

Every writer or tanslator, for that matter, builds his or her art on a tradition that preceded him or her. I also began to take a look at the translation of literary works done by earlier translators. Some of the translations I found to be quite fluent and readable, but in general translation activity was characterized by lack of seriousness, intellectual alertness and a kind of a -historical approach. In one of my articles, presented at a Sahitya Akademi Seminar, I demonstrated how the Urdu translation of Tagore's celebrated novel, Gora translated by no less a translator than Sajjad Zaheer, the chief architect of the Progressive Writers' Movement in Urdu, is so riddled with significant omissions, misreadings etc, that it totally falsifies the intent of the original. Among the audience were two former presidents of Sahitya Akademi - U.R., Ananthamurthy and Ramakanta Rath, and the Current Secretary of the Akademi. Mr Ananthamurthy was so shocked by the revelations that he was provoked to remark - "If the Urdu translation misrepresents Tagore in this way, it should be withdrawn from circulation and a fresh translation done." I think it is necessary to take a fresh look at how some of our classics have been translated into different Indian languages, including English, if classics in world literature are retranslated again and agian to suit the idiom and perspective of the new age including such lengthy works as tolstoy's War and Peace and Marcel Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (running into eight thick volumes), there is no reason why we should rest content with inadequate and sometimes downright shoddy translations of what we consider to be our venerated classics.

I did my first translation from Urdu into English at the invitation of KATHA. Later, I translated literary works from Ahomiya, Bangla and Hindi into English as well. But the largest amount of translation into English that I have undertaken is from Urdu literature. A combination of circumstances have determined my choice of the source language. I did one volume each on Ismat Chughtai and Manto, covring their fictional and non-fictional works. Translating Chughtai was particularly challenging, becuase her fictional work is deeply embedded in the culture of the region where she sets her stories, and her use of a kind of Urdu specifically used by women, interspersed with wit, repartee, pun and sexual innuendoes. The blingual dictionaries that are avilable were of no help. I had to do quite a bit of research on the prevalent customs and traditions, eating and dressing habits, social mores, moral practices, and so on. During my practice of translation I have also reflected on my craft and written on it at some length. My views on translation have emanated directly from my practice. Today, I feel dismayed when I see some scholars talking about translation theories without any reference to translation practice.

In the last couple of years, some university departments have made room for the study of Indian literature in English translation. This, coupled with the phenomenon of a widening readership in English in India has led to a spurt in English translation of Indian works, particularly from the genre of fiction. It is sometimes argued that the translation of Indian literary works into English for Indian readers is harmful for the language literatures, as readers would, then, rather read them in English than in the original Indian language. One mistaken presupposition here is that but for the avilability of such works in English translation, readers would be forced to read them in the original. This is a specious argument that ignores the fact that in this fast-paced world no one is going to spend several precious years of his life learning a language just to read a significant or interesting literary work. For a large section of our young readership, the only window that will open on to their culture is that afforded by the English language, through works of translation. Indian literature in English translation has the potential to become the "link literature" for India, and instead of seeing translators, after the Italian proverb, as traitors, we should engineer a paradigm shift in the critical vocabulary that will enable us to see them as read partriots, in terms of their contribution to the cause forging a Pan-Indian identity and national integration.

As a translator from and into Indian languages, I feel an awful lack of what are known as "instruments of Translation", i.e., dictionaries of all kinds, glossaries, thesaurus, studies on comparative stylistics etc. In the year 2000 I had the opportunity to stay at the British Centre for Literary Translation located at the University of East Anglia, for three months as "Translator in Residence". I was astounded to see the volume and quality of work particularly suited to the translator's job. There were helpful dictionaries, glossaries, thesauruses of all kinds - orthographic, illustrated and visual - that made finding the appropriate word, concept or structure so much easier. In India, the lexicography in many languages is still at a very undeveloped, if not primitive, stage, which makes the task of the translator doubly diffcult. Further, the quality of translation needs improvement through discriminating reviews and criticism.

In the Indian situation, the translator still inhabits a marginal space. The quality of translation cannot improve if translators are not treated well. In many countries of the world, translators accompany writers in different forums to represent them. The writers' delegation sponsored by the Government of India and other agencies hardly include any translators. Translators are still compelled to render themselves invisible. Writers in Indian languages show extraordinary eagerness to be translated in other languages, and importantly in English. If this is so, they should show some readiness to share the glory with their translators, because their reputation in the translated language can be made or marred by their translators. Writers of the stature of Gabiel Gracia Marquez or Umberto Eco feel helpless without translators of the calibre of Gregory Rabassa and William Weaver, and indeed, they never fail to pay the highest compliment to their translators.