February is no ordinary season. It is the time to remember all the love, longing and connection that define the experience called “mother-tongue”.  21^st of this month is honored by the UNESCO as the International- mother Language Day. The day that got scarred from the blood of the hundreds of young Bengalis who came out on the street to protest the unfair removal of their mother-tongue as the official language of the landmass they called home. The sordid history of government brutality that followed leading to the massacre of 21^st Feb of 1952 Bangla Desh (then East Pakistan) is something that we can never overlook. It is something that should never be overlooked.

Right from birth, we, at Antonym, clung to the troubled space from where literature of one language passes into another.  We wish and work, try and fail, fail and succeed as we wade through the conflicting yet so crucial task of translation.  Because we firmly believe that every successful translation  helps great literatures fly from their birth soil to perch on to minds faraway and enchant it the same way , puts the caliber of the language(s) to test, expands its possibilities and by doing so extends the life-force of words, art and language in general.

This week, to honor the languages and the magic they are capable of as they shape-shift one onto another, we have had ARUNAVA SINHA, a prolific translator and teacher of Creative writing from India bare his heart about the process. Over two decades, Sinha has been translating  a wide range of  classic, modern, and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction into English. He also has translated three books of poetry. Over forty of his translations have been published so far. He has selected and translated The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told and The Moving
Shadow: Electrifying Bengali Pulp Fiction. He has won the Crossword Translation Award for Sankar’s Chowringhee (2007) and Anita Agnihotri’s Seventeen (2001). He has also won the Muse India Award for his translation of When the Time is Right (2012). His translation of Chowringhee was shortlisted for The Independent Foreign Fiction Prize (2009). He is currently teaching at Asoka University, Delhi.

In a candid conversation with Bishnupriya, our Editor for translated fiction, he shared his journey with translation, the joy and the many creative challenges of the process at length. In the end, all of that got built up as a road-map of sorts for all those who wishes to engage in translation in depth—professionally or just because.

Bishnupriya: Translation chose you or you chose translation?

Arunava: It is hard to say who chose whom or what chose what. I don’t even have a specific moment when it began. I was interested in translated literature when in college. And, I think the fact that we read One Hundred Years of Solitude at that time because it won the Nobel Prize, first opened my eyes to the fact that a lot of literature that we read is actually translated. I mean, before that it was the transparent kind of process. So, that raised a kind of curiosity in my head and I started reading translated literature with the awareness that it was translated and then I used to do a little bit of translation, mostly amateur work- “Sokher translation” as they say in Bengali. But then, after college, we started a little magazine in Calcutta called Calcutta Skylines. And, one of the things we used to do there was publish one short story in translation every month. So I ended up doing several of those. So, those were really my first forays into translation.

Bishnupriya:  And who did you translate at that time?

Arunava: The first story was Shankar’s, then there was Dibyendu Palit, there was Saradindu Mukhopadhyay, there was Premendra Mitra. There were a bunch of people.

Bishnupriya: So you were attempting the classics of Bengali Literature?

Arunava: Well, now we think of them as older writers, but at that point they were all contemporary.

Bishnupriya: What was the first book you translated, your first work?

Arunava: The book was Shankar’s Chowringhee. Which I translated as a matter of fact in 1992. After the city magazine thing happened, he asked me to translate Chowringhee and then I translated it in about three months and gave him the computer print-out and I left Calcutta after that and it pretty much went out of my life. I moved to Delhi with a job. I was journalist back then. Then, 14 years later in 2006 an editor from penguin called me and said that they wanted to publish a translation of Chowringhee and Shankar has told them that there was a translation already and had sent it to them and luckily I had put my name on it, so, the editor asked me, “Are you the one?” and I said “yes”, and that’s how it really began, 14 years later. The first book came out in 2007.

 Bishnupriya: It is quite a hefty novel, Chowringhee, how long did it take for you to translate?

Arunava: About three months. I used to work nights. After work, I used to stay back in the office and work on the office computer for 3 or 4 hours in the evening and I finished it in 3 months. I was also in a hurry because I was leaving Kolkata. So, I wanted to finish it before I left.

Bishnupriya: And it was for the Calcutta Skyline?

Arunava: No, this was for the author, he wanted a translation. I think, somebody had said, a foreign publisher, or a French publisher had said that they were interested in publishing it in French translation but they wanted to read it in English first.

Because, novel is such a big project—any novel. Writing, translating it takes so much of your time unless you are really driven, it is really hard to pull a project to the finish line.

Bishnupriya: One thing I noticed as we were researching your body of work was that you have been translating texts across different fictional genres like, thrillers, classics and all of that, you have translated even a very post-modern, intense text as  Harbart.  So, I am curious to know what motivates you to take up this variety.  Is it not more challenging to jump genres than find and stick to a type of text that suits you?

Arunava: Yeah, that’s the thing. You’ve put your finger on it. One of course, is the quality of the book itself. But that business of staying in your comfort zone can be deadening after a point. After all, my primary joy of translation is very personal. It is the translation itself that brings the greatest joy. Not even so much to finish the book as the act of translating. So, if you are translating, you want the challenges to keep coming and to be of a diverse kind, so that you don’t feel at any point, that oh, I can do it easily.

Bishnupriya: I think I see your point here, Harbart has such a colloquial feel about it. Because, Nabarun Bhattacharya’s writing itself is very ingrained in his culture. Taking it out of that and throwing it into a foreign language is very difficult. But you have done a great job. I was reading the first few pages, and it invoked in me the same sense of chilling awe as did the original when I read it years ago.  

Arunava:  Thank you.

Bishnupriya: What do you think of the current scene in translation—particularly texts in Indian languages getting translated in English and others. Is the progress what it should or could be?

Arunava: I say, the progress is very good. Many of the canons of Indian literature have been translated to English. Not so much into the other languages, not so much between the non-English languages of India. That’s where we are lagging behind. But as far as translation into English is concerned, there has been great progress. So that’s what I am happy about. Many more publishers are publishing translations. They could do a better job with the editing and production certainly. Sometimes they publish a little indiscriminately. But great literature is being discovered. And the best thing I think is that translated literature, literature translated into English from Indian languages is actually showing us that Indian writing in English is a very small portion of the kind of literature we have in India.

That more and more Indian literature in non-English language is being translated to English  has led to our realizing that writing that is originally done in English is actually, only a very small segment of the possibilities. That original writing in English also tends to be very urban and narrow and by reading all these other literatures from different socio-economic classes and different jobs and different political sensibilities and different cultural values as really shown as what even writing in English in India is capable of.

Bishnupriya: Let me just hold you here some more.  Would you please expand about the editing and production part of the translation process?

Arunava: Let’s just say that not all but some of the publishers are very meticulous with their translation and with their editing, but not all.

Bishnupriya: We come across a lot of people translating because I think, once you get out of your language, a linguistic circle, and you find yourself in another country or another social circle, there is a spontaneous urge share the literature that you carry within. So the interest has been there for a while but I just wanted to know if the quality of the work is satisfactory enough?

Arunava: No, no. It is very hopeful. I would say that some translators could do with more training and more finesse. But on the whole it is very hopeful and there are very many more high quality translators now than say, ten years ago. I have No doubt about that.

Bishnupriya: What in your opinion would help Bengali translated work reach to a greater audience?

Arunava: I think if the Bengali diaspora took a greater interest in reading and spreading translated works, there are huge enormous audiences out there—both diaspora audiences as well as local audiences in Anglophone countries, whether it is America or Britain. And, if the diaspora took the lead then a lot of things could be achieved. Otherwise, we would end up waiting for British or American publishers and obviously, Bengali literature may not be their focus.

Bishnupriya: Are you saying a publishing industry of sorts should emerge from the diaspora community ?

Arunava: In this day of technology, you don’t even need a publishing industry, you could just have people spreading the word and you know creating book clubs, discussions, and events and generally getting people interested then, the supply of books can always be made available.

Bishnupriya: Now that there are quite a few generations of diasporic population are out there who are getting more and more interest and getting more exposed to, you know, the literature of their roots so there is we can probably hope, a look forward to a greater audience a more complex audience.

Arunava: That’s right, provided they are involved and interested.

Bishnupriya: How difficult is translating works of poetry than translating pieces in prose? I know you primarily translate prose but you are also a mentor so I just wanted to know the details.

Arunava: I also translate poetry, not in the same quantity that I have translated prose. It is different obviously because in poetry you are looking at a different kind of relationship between the language and how it is used. So all those relationships of sound and rhythm and music may not always be possible to accommodate in the target language. You have to improvise more, you have a different notion of what you will accept as the translated work. It’s not like prose.

Bishnupriya: I was talking to one of my friends day before yesterday. She was trying to translate, I think, an Israeli poet but she is attempting the work that has already been translated to English. So, now she is saying that I don’t know what to do with the rhythm. So that got me thinking, say for example, Philip Larkin writes in perfect iambic pentameter. If I want to translate him in Bangla, as a translator what should be my position in handling it?

Arunava: You have to decide if you want to have an equivalent meter then you will have to look for one. If you say that I am going to stick to the meter, you may have to be a little more flexible with the words. I mean, the difference is that what you are going to privilege and what you are going to make your main objective.

Bishnupriya: Will translation change with the different audience groups that use the same language but belong to a different cultural group? Say for when you are translating a Bengali work targeted for urban, non-Bengali speaking Indians and you are translating a text for American audience, so, will the translation change?

Arunava: Not really, at most, the American editors would like to change some spellings, occasionally substitute a word, like, they might want to use the word “cookie” instead of “biscuit” or “sidewalk” instead of “pavement”. You know, some technical changes. But on the whole, no. My translations that have been published in the US have not really had the editors making that kind of intervention. Because they are also used to reading English writing from India and the UK. Right?

Bishnupriya: Okay, so, translation and transcreation, how do you perceive these concepts?

Arunava: These labels have no value for me. I do what I do—translators do what they do. Now you can call it anything you want. It doesn’t matter. I think these are unnecessary categorizations that actually lead nowhere.

Bishnupriya: Tell us a little bit about your translation process. Like how do you choose a text or go about it from there?

Arunava: There is no set process or rule, I mean, you know, I read a book, I like it so much that I want to translate it. It’s like when you listen to a song and you like it so much that you start humming it. It’s a very similar kind of impulse. And then, if I am lucky enough to find a publisher who will take my word that this book is well translating, then I go ahead and translate it and the publisher publishes it. Sometimes I translate and then I wait for the right time, maybe it will be accepted much later.

Bishnupriya: So, it is always chance with you? I am asking this because there are like, so many people trying today, you know, to translate.

Arunava: No, it doesn’t always start with me. Sometimes a publisher might also commission a translation of a book that they have come to know about and they feel they want to publish. So that happens. It is very rare but that happens. But mostly it starts with the writer or the translator approaching the publisher.

Bishnupriya: You have only translated from Bengali to English. Right?

Arunava: Well, I also have started translating from English to Bangla.

Bishnupriya: : But have you considered translating the stuff that is probably a French that has been translated to English and then re-translated to Bangla?

Arunava: No, because there are people who can do it directly from the French.

Bishnupriya: Right, the idea of such translation makes me nervous because the resource gets too distant for me.

Arunava: It is the last resort. If you don’t have any other option to do it. For example, some publishers have translated Bengali literature, Bengali books from my English translations. So, even in India, we are heading towards that situation where you don’t have too many people, for example, how do you translate from Tamil to Bangla, or Bangla to Tamil? There are not too many people who can do it. So, I think if that is the situation then go via a bridge language, whether that bridge language is English or Hindi. It is better than nothing.

Bishnupriya: Now I have a sibling question, that is, whether translation is a solo work or a team work?

Arunava: Well, you certainly need a good editor, no doubt about that. If you don’t then your translation is not going to be as good as it could have been.

Bishnupriya: So, there has to be some kind of back and forth involved.

Arunava: The back and forth depends on the gap between the editor’s perception than the translator’s. But certainly you need a good editor to look at it for sure.

Bishnupriya: What in your opinion is a successful translation?

Arunava: A successful translation in my mind is the one that when  it is read, gives the reader the feeling of having read the text in the first language in which it was written in its entirety. It is not just a matter of accuracy or meaning. It is everything from meaning to sound to rhythm to music, to effect, most of all, does it affect me in the same way.

 Bishnupriya: Right, but Arunava Da, is there a way to know for a foreign audience?

Arunava: Only the translator can know actually. And the translator would have to read the book. Like, I read a book in Bangla and when I read a translation I must feel I am reading the same book. If I have to break it down into components, I can’t. But overall, I feel I am reading the same book.

Bishnupriya: You are saying you shouldn’t think of it as a translation.

Arunava: I am not even sure what that means, “this is a translation”. That for my mind, when people say that, they usually mean it as a pejorative. That’s there is something wrong with it.

Bishnupriya: I don’t mean it that way. But probably I get what you are saying because I shouldn’t be feeling that.

Arunava:  Yes, most certainly, if you are reading the Bangla text smoothly, you shouldn’t start interrogating the translated text.

Bishnupriya: How would you place creative liberty in the process of translation?

Arunava: As long as possible, preferably zero.

Bishnupriya: Okay, but from your experience like, say there is an image in the source text, transferring it into the target language requires you to shift the linguistic flow of the original. Should you or would you?

Arunava: You have to aim for the holistic effect. Whatever you need to do for that, you do. Right? If you mean I am substituting iron with aluminum and it does not make a difference to anyone then fine, go ahead and substitute it. But if it looks like shiny aluminum instead of matt finish iron, then obviously there is a problem, if not achieved by the same effect.

Bishnupriya: Sometimes there are certain cultural nuances in  a text which when translated, sticks out awkwardly.

Arunava: Why would you do that? A proverb is not meant to be taken literally. So the translation should not be asking the reader to take the text literally either.

Bishnupriya: So when you are saying holistic effect, what do you mean? Like are you looking from, a sentence point of view or text?

Arunava: No, no, it’s certainly from every point of view, I mean, as granular as possible. But at the same time you can end up as I said, making a very accurate translation that will be completely indifferent to the other aspects of the text. Right? So, as I said, music, rhythm, sound, silences, and pitch—high pitched, low pitched, medium pitched, is it melancholy, is it happy, you know how it shifts from sentence to sentence. That’s why I said that these elements need to be preserved in the newer version so that the holistic impact is the same. That’s why Google translate will never replace us.

Bishnupriya: Word of advice for those of us who wants to take up translation more professionally and what are some of the skills that we can focus to develop? Are there certain workshops or courses that can aid one’s understanding of the process?

Arunava: Workshops and courses are good but basically you need to read a lot and write a lot and translate a lot. You have to read a lot both in the language into which you are translating and the language from which you are translating and you have to translate a lot. You are not going to get it right the 1^st time. So, it’s like riwaz. You have to keep translating but always remember when you are translating, you are writing. You are not doing a mechanical transfer of words from a language to another. Sometimes people end up doing that and creating a text in the new language that is wooden, that has zero literary value.

Bishnupriya: We often come across those kind of texts so often that are grammatically alright but the text does not work.

Arunava: And it’s also something that you have to develop for a year for yourself to understand whether you have got it right or wrong. Even after all these years, after so many books, I still get it wrong in drafts.  So the whole point is to get it right eventually. It is not like you have to get it right the 1^st time.

Bishnupriya: I think the metaphor of music is so apt here because you just have to do it and re-do it and go back to it again. It’s a long, laborious and rather boring process I would say.

Arunava:  No no, it’s long but it it is neither laborious, nor boring. It’s like you ask a musician when they are composing or singing, that is it boring. They will say no, of course not. I am trying to attain perfection, how can it be boring?

But, I understand what you are saying. The novelty of doing something new maybe fading but that doesn’t matter because you know that you are trying to attain just that perfect thing in your head but you aren’t seeing it.  So that in its own is a sort of brilliant quest.

Bishnupriya: So how many drafts you usually do?

Arunava:  Two, I do one draft and then a 2^nd one that goes to the editor.

Bishnupriya: Some resources that new translators can look up to?

Well, youtube is full of translators talking about their art, so it’s always interesting to listen to those but I would say, the best way of learning is to actually read translations.

 Bishnupriya: But, Arunava Da, say for someone who translates Japanese work, when I read that, I read the translator’s creation. So how do I understand his excellence?

Arunava: You will understand it from the differences in it from the text you have read that was written originally in English and the differences will manifest them as different forms of beauty. There are things that the English language is not capable of and you will think where the hell is this coming from and then you realize it is coming because it is a translation.

Bishnupriya: That is an interesting way to look at it. Most of the time I thought the great source author was doing his things.

Arunava: Of course he/ she is but the whole point is that, the great source author is doing his job and the great translator allowing the great source author’s work to shine through.

Bishnupriya: Name a text that you never want to translate.

Arunava:  From Bangla? There are a lot of rubbish texts that I don’t want to translate!

Bishnupriya: Well In my mind the question was framed for a text that you fall in love with a text so much that you don’t want to translate it

Arunava: The more I am in love with the text, the more I’d like to translate it. Remember that translating a text is not the same as sending it off for publication. If you love a song you may sing it over and over again and then decide no, its not good enough to record. So, then you don’t record it. You don’t release it doesn’t mean you don’t translate it. I had been most afraid to translate poetry. I do translate poetry, but there is some poetry like that of Sankha Ghosh’s, something I’d be very frightened to translate and I’d be very selective about which poems to translate. Also, Joy Goswami.

Bishnupriya : Why? Is there a particular reason?

Arunava: Because there is tremendous compactness and economy in Shanka Ghosh’s writing. If you unravel it, one line is like worth 10 lines, which is very difficult to then put back in one line in another language. At least I don’t have that mastery. And with Joy Goswami, it is the music, the sounds, the rhythm, the rhymes, where the rhymes are so cushioned to much of his poetry, that if you take the rhymes out of it, it will not work.

Bishnupriya: Who did you translate among poets?

I’ve got three books— Sunil Gangopadhyay, Shakti Chattopadhyay and Bhaskar Chakraborty.

Bishnupriya: Was any of them easier than the other to translate?

Arunava: None of them was. However, In that sense I’d found a certain flow, I enjoyed the process.

Bishnupriya: Did you translate the poems at one continuous phase of working with that form of art?

Arunava: Yes. Also, I have read other translated versions of their work and I find them very good as well. It also shows me that there is no one way to translate poetry.

Bishnupriya: If you could just illustrate a little bit on that.

Arunava: In other translations of the poems that I have translated, they have done different things with the poem and they work very well too.

Bishnupriya: I think translations also sort of widens or opens the texts to more possibilities.

Arunava: Yes, you could say that. Of course, ideally, the finest text in the world could only be translated in one way and its will close the door on other possibilities.

Bishnupriya: I remember actually reading Buddhadeb Basu’s translation of Meghdoot and I think somebody else also translated. But all the versions were shining in their own ways and to read one after the other was such an exhilarating experience. You will feel they are all floating together, like three parallel running rivers.

Arunava: – Well, I’d like to believe you can always, always add to them too.