This recent review of a translated version of noted Urdu author Joginder Paul (Ruchira's father-in-law) sparked the question: How much is being lost in translation?
(Thanks to Ruchira for the link to the Library of Congress recordings and Bio. page)
The reviewer , Sangeeta Barooah Pisharoty of The Hindu newspaper, asserts
If you don’t know Urdu, then better not read Joginder Paul. No translation can match the poignancy, the magic that he weaves into his writings by stringing words together in lyrical Urdu. His subjects lose their alloy in the unfamiliarity of any other language, particularly English, imported from a different culture.
She is lamenting the loss of the flavor of the language in the translation, but she misses the point that without even an imperfect translation, there would be no access to his writings for a wider audience.
Some authors, notably Rabindranath Tagore, bypassed the pesky issue of translation by acting as their own translators. Nobody accuses his Gitanjali of being less flavorful than the original, though some detractors may have found the imagery too insistently alien for them to appreciate as valid poetry.
In the most recent discussion on Accidental Blogger, we had the poet translating her own poetry from Romani to English. Rather than dissuading attempts at translation, the publisher has encouraged others to translate these into their own languages and submit them for possible inclusion.
We encourage Roma to translate these poems, from the original Romani or English versions, into their own languages and dialects and send them to us. Translations will be reviewed and, once found acceptable, posted on this page with credit to the translator.
Now, that's a more accepting approach to translation and much to be encouraged.
Others have taken a different path, notably Arundhati Roy, who, in her God of Small Things, twists and shapes the English language to conform to the Malayali idiom in which her story is steeped. She did it so naturally that the average reader wouldn't even recognize the formative elements of her prose as being from another. In short, no translation required.
During the funeral service, Rahel watched a small black bat climb up Baby Kochamma's expensive funeral sari with gently clinging curved claws. When it reached the place between her sari and her blouse, her roll of sadness, her bare midriff, Baby Kochamma screamed and hit the air with her hymnbook. The singing stopped for a "Whatisit? Whathappened?" and for a Furrywhirring and Sariflapping.
Let's face it: Translations may not always be ideal, but they are the best chance we have of reading the works of authors that we would never had had access to.
I've been recently going through The Adventures of Amir Hamza, a translation from the Urdu, which is itself a translation/compilation of the Indo-Persian epic. In the footnotes, you come across interesting remarks such as "paseen, ghora-roz: no translations available", for words which appear only in transliteration in the main text. We can figure out they are some kind of deer species from the context in which they occur .
"...on the other side of the field grazed numerous herds of deer, axis deer, hog deer, stages, paseen, ghora roz, antelopes and ravine deer."
Was something lost in translation here? Maybe not in this case, though there are probably several other instances where an English equivalent would have served good purpose. These pitfalls are only too evident when current translations are made of centuries-old writings. Words are missed or mistranslated due to changes in the original language over time.
In the face of purists who insist that writings are to be read only in their original language, it bears repeating that the urge and ability to master a language is a talent given to the few who have the inclination and the time.
For the rest of us, a translation, no matter how inept, is a precious glimpse into worlds beyond our current boundaries.
I agree completely. I just do not understand arguments like the one Ms Pisharoty makes in her review. True, translations often fail to capture the nuances of the original language of the author. But literature is more than nuance. It is about crossing cultural boundaries by connecting at the level of the universal human condition and understanding.
I have read Tagore extensively in Bengali, a language in which I am perfectly fluent. The English translations of his work seem painfully stilted and somewhat incomplete to me. But I encouraged my children who don't know Bengali, to read him in English. They did and found him admirable. Who am I to sit and split hairs over the "finer" quality of my enjoyment of Tagore and their "less authentic" one?
Although I can read my father-in-law's books in the original Urdu transcribed in Devnagari script, I often prefer to read the English translations only because my own knowledge of Urdu is somewhat limited compared to my ease with English.
I must note here in the form of a disclaimer that I did not ask Sujatha to write this post. In fact she surprised me this morning with the review. I did then provide her with the link to my FIL's profile in the Indian Library of Congress archives.
A couple of minor corrections. Joginder Paul is 82 years old. The reviewer in the Hindu article aged him by 5 extra years. Also, after having lived in Maharashtra for many years, he has been a resident of Delhi for a little more than three decades.
Posted by: Ruchira | April 27, 2008 at 02:53 PM
I'm surprised that the reviewer wasn't able to get hold of the correct biographical details. You would think it ought to be easy enough in the age of the internet.
But I did come across this translation of one of Mr.Paul's works.It may be of some interest to those who are curious about his writing, even in translation.
Posted by: Sujatha | April 27, 2008 at 06:24 PM
His subjects lose their alloy in the unfamiliarity of any other language, particularly English, imported from a different culture.
I don't think that a language is necessarily "stuck" in a culture, they are not the same thing, especially in multicultural contexts. An important part of the Jewish culture is expressed in Yiddish, Ladino and other languages, in texts that are obviously Jewish rather than German or Spanish. The cultural meanings matter and in this sense English texts from South Asian cultural area require explanations for speakers of English belonging to other cultural areas. Otherwise, much of the meaning may remain available only for those who know "what is talking about" (and I'm not referring to casual addition of words from local languages). I know that a language may be used as an identity feature (and it is used many times), but this is a matter of choosing policies of public presence. Personally, I am rather careful about the cultural meanings that may require translation even between speakers of the same language. Why not considering the translation as a challenge of expressing the same ideas, feelings in different linguistic contexts?
Posted by: Alin | April 28, 2008 at 10:47 AM
Speaking as a person who has difficulty with nuances of my own mother tongue, there is no way that I could do justice to translating perfectly from Tamil to English, my familiarity with the English context being much greater due to the sheer volume of reading in English that I have done, as opposed to Tamil. I may give a tolerable translation, but it would not match the felicity of translation by someone equally well-versed in both languages. Every translator must of necessity strike a balance between expressing the intent of the original author and injecting their own cultural/linguistic sensibilies in the mix.
In the Arundhati Roy example I cited, her use of 'Whatisit? Whathappened?' is a word-perfect and more importantly frenzy-perfect translation of the Malayalam outcry "Enthua, endhupatri?" that would have occurred with the bat flapping. An English reader with no knowledge of Malayalam is still able to get a vivid sense of the incident, without the original words running in their head, as it did for me. But again, no explanation of cultural context is required for this.
Posted by: Sujatha | April 28, 2008 at 01:48 PM
am doing some translation work at the moment. hence am able to appreciate your point.
i deliberated over the issue for sometime before taking a decision on how to approach the cultural traslation. I realised that something will be lost in the translation. That's inevitable. but to try the arundathi method you illustrated in order to capture the nuances as much as possible, may not work well, i realised - unless of course one has, like arundati roy, that terrific sensitivity to and mastery over the english language coupled with a high degree of creativity.
i decided the best method would be to understand the spirit in which the original is written and then translate into good idiomatic engish. works which try to capture the rhytm of malayalam, kannada or tamil in the english language is something i've never enjoyed reading(Kanthapura, for example - no matter how cannonical a work it is, i dare to admit it irritates me).
so, my policy is,1. keep english as impeccable as possible(not easy for a non-native user)and 2.imperatively adhere to content of the original text. no matter how hard we try to capture the nuances of tamil or malayalam in english is impossible.
Posted by: kochuthresiamma p j | April 30, 2008 at 11:00 AM
In my opinion, English spelling and grammatical errors can trivially be corrected by a good editor, but whatever of the original is discarded by the translation--whether it is something literal, figurative, idiomatic, or otherwise--is irreversibly lost.
In essence, my opinion--contrary to the previous commenter--is that preserving the cultural intricacies and nuances, to whatever extant possible, is more important than the translator's meticulousness in the target language. The underlying messages and nuances, idiomatic or otherwise, are as much *content* as the specific words used by the text.
After all, the literary work is not simply a sum of its words, but also a sum of its impact on its readers... and that impact is achieved as much by the implied as it is by the expressed.
Posted by: Roland Hönsch (Magoria Books) | April 30, 2008 at 11:23 AM
Kochuthresiamma, Roland,
As an exercise in comparisons, would you mind checking out these two translations of different stories by Mr.Paul. The Winged Ones and The Second Step.
I think the first example lacks a certain quality in the translation that the second one has. One has a relatively inflexible approach to the phrasing of the sentences, which while conveying the gist of the situation/conversation, seems annoying to me. The second story has a smoother flow in the translation even though the idiom is far from purely English in nature.
It's true that cultural intricacies are sometimes not to be tampered with, but not at the cost of antagonizing the reader. I remember the comparison between a Rosemary Edmunds translation of War and Peace and another by some other translator- the difference was like night and day. Natasha's innermost thoughts in one were so much more vivid for the proper use of idiom than the other, more literal interpretation.
Posted by: Sujatha | April 30, 2008 at 03:46 PM
Indeed, I would agree with you, Sujatha, that the first translation feels awkward at parts. It is also unpleasant to read on account of the way it has been typeset--a fact that does not alter the quality of the translation, but almost certainly impacts our perception thereof.
In fact, I'll go a step further and say that I also found the first translation irritating, and the second one rather pleasantly flowing. Not being familiar with either the original stories, other translations thereof, or, I am sorry to say, much Indian literature in general, I do not know to what extant this difference was facilitated by the nature of each story.
However, I think the first story is salvageable in precisely the way I suggested/implied in my previous post. In fact, I think, it might well be turned into a more immersive, if still more demanding, journey into Indian literature by fixing it in small ways here and there, and adding a whole slew of explanatory footnotes for the more ignorant (in a non-pejorative sense) readers, such as myself. It might then make for a read that teaches readers about Indian culture in ways that will aid their appreciation of both this and subsequently read stories.
Posted by: Roland Hönsch (Magoria Books) | April 30, 2008 at 05:32 PM
A comment on the "colonial" and the postcolonial" approaches to translation into English: My experience of translating Joginder Paul's fiction led to heated discussions with the author on what kind of English could be used to translate his stories or for that matter any Indian author from any Indian language. The author, who was brought up on Queen's English, insisted that I used "impeccable English" as spoken by the "native speakers", by that he meant the British. To me that was most unacceptable because what came to me "naturally" as a postcolonial user of English language, was a model of the English taught, learnt, spoken, used by us as "Indian English" (English, owned and "legitimized" through formal study by many an academic institution today.) It is this English I thought that could best carry the cultural nuances present in the original Urdu, not to deny that even then a large measure of cultural loss is inevitable. I must say I had to reject the "linguistic purity" of English language upheld by my father, the author, and go for the English that is more real to me in India today!Incidentally the novel I translated by him is called "Sleepwalkers".
Posted by: Sukrita | April 30, 2008 at 09:42 PM
Here is the link to an article in the journal Translation Today. The featured essay addresses the issue that Sukrita mentions in her comment - the challenge of translating the work of an author who is close to the translator and the different perspectives each brings to the table. The author of the article, Somdatta Mandal, specifically cites Sukrita's translation of Sleepwalkers (section II of the article) by Joginder Paul.
Posted by: Ruchira | May 01, 2008 at 12:21 AM
While it is true that much is lost in translation, obviously, much is gained, too -- specifically, access to the works that one would otherwise not gain, waiting to master the many hundreds of languages in which written literature is available and the several thousands which have oral literatures.
I would like to propose a way to overcome the limitations of individual translations: promote translation as a collaborative enterprise. Create a web site, post the best translation you can come up with, invite proficient bilinguals to comment and improve on it. This way, there would be multiple versions of the same work (or, more practically, parts of the work) available for comparison and criticism and may the best version win, over time. This is something like a Wikipedia model of translation.
There are many issues to be resolved in this model, of course, the most important being that of ownership and copyright. It is unlikely that people undertake translation in order to become rich (considering the gargantuan purses that publishers urge on their authors), but still there may be some complications here. The more serious issue might be that of intellectual property rights in a substantive sense, not just commercial sense. All these have to be worked out, but my point, simply, is that translation can benefit when many people contribute and the Web is the ideal medium to make that possible.
Posted by: S.N. Sridhar | May 02, 2008 at 08:59 AM
Roland,
Footnotes are likely to remain one of best modes of providing cultural context in translations. For the casual reader, it can be easily ignored, while for a reader who wishes more in-depth cultural information, it can pack a goldmine of details which could not be adequately captured by the translation alone. In fact, some of the best recent translations that I read came with dozens of pages of footnotes, which I would randomly read if I felt the urge to check out the detail.
Sukrita,
That was an interesting anecdote, about the clash of opinions you had with Mr.Paul regarding the style of translation for Sleepwalkers. In some ways, I think that even translations have to take into account more modern sensibilities to help make the work more accessible to a newer generation. In the Anukriti article Ruchira has linked to, one example has the translator using 'rice crispies' to replace the term 'sweets' used in the older translation, which I suppose would be more evocative to readers who are familiar with rice crispies.
(I got a little sidelined by looking up rice crispies, and thought this was funny if slightly off-topic from the Wikipedia link:
The cereal is marketed on the basis of the noises it produces when milk is added to the bowl. In fact, Blue Man Group makes music by crunching Rice Krispies in their performances. The onomatopoeic noises differ by language:
* English: "Snap! Crackle! Pop!"
* Canadian French: "Cric! Crac! Croc!"
* Spanish: "Pim! Pum! Pam!"
* German: "Knisper! Knasper! Knusper!"
* Swedish: "Piff! Paff! Puff!"
* Finnish: “Riks! Raks! Poks!”
* Dutch: Pif! Paf! Pof!
* Afrikaans: Knap! Knaetter! Knak!
* Zulu: “Click! Click! Nagunga!” (Postalveolar clicking) )
Mr.(Prof?)Sridhar,
Magoria Books have on their website what you have suggested for the translation of poems by Hedina Sijercic, where they encourage readers to submit their own translations. But your proposal is of a grander scale and doubtless a worthy world-wide project that could have many collaborative parts in different countries/universities. Is it a university project in the making?
Posted by: Sujatha | May 02, 2008 at 11:16 AM
Ruchira :
Thanks for bringing this post to my attention. I am surprised by the amount of comments it has induced. Having done some amateurish translations myself, I have great admiration and empathy for professional translators. This goes in spades for authors who do their own translations - I have come across very few
Interesting that Pisharoty has chosen to use the word 'alloy'. Translation is of course an alloying process. I have never heard of ornaments of pure gold, and pure silver is functionally useless. Perfection is boring besides.
My two cents' worth, from personal experience, is that fluency in an alien language is not the sine qua non for translators (or readers), and that explanatory footnotes and glossaries for translations of fiction are an abomination imposed by skittish editors. Conscientious translators do their best to convey nuances as well as meanings. Supercritical passive readers ought to go out and buy dictionaries and get a life.
Posted by: narayan | May 02, 2008 at 02:39 PM
The word "sweets" is used interchangably by Indian translators to signify two different types of confections - the syrupy and dry milk and grain based Indian "mithais" as well as candy. In older translations the word "sweetmeat" (a word I hate) used to signify the former. Rice krispies seems like a strange choice unless the the "sweet" was indeed a "puffed rice" snack like caramel popcorn.
But I get the point about getting specific to make the translation more "real" to the reader.
Posted by: Ruchira | May 02, 2008 at 06:31 PM
if there is a keralite who visits this blogsite, can you help me find the english equivalent for the malayalam word NIMITHAM? the word translates as 'means', carrying implications of predestined, divinely? ordained. or is the word intranslatable, being loaded with cultural nuances?
Posted by: kochuthresiamma P J | May 07, 2008 at 04:10 PM
My knowledge of Malayalam is too limited to offer a good answer. In Tamil, 'nimitham' has the sense of prognostication/prediction, but the following links may offer some insight into whether there is a suitable word/phrase for it when used in the Malayali contexts: Link 1 Link 2.
Posted by: Sujatha | May 07, 2008 at 05:20 PM
million thanks Sujatha.
looks like hunt for an english equivalent for the word NIMITHAM has been on for some time. i still didnt find a word which implies reason + providential concidence of events, which is what nimitham means.
i will find these links very useful
Posted by: kochuthresiamma P J | May 10, 2008 at 10:58 AM
Why do some people read translations when they know the original language? It drives me crazy when my children do that.
Posted by: Pancho | July 08, 2008 at 10:33 PM
Pancho,
Sometimes, the ability to read in English far outpaces the speed at which the person may read in their native language, especially among the diaspora. So good translations aimed at those populations serve a special purpose of introducing them to aspects of their mother culture without the fatigue engendered by slow and laborious reading.
Posted by: Sujatha | July 13, 2008 at 07:57 PM