Noor Sabharwal, Opinions co-editor spoke to Sanchit Toor, project coordinator at the Ashoka Centre for Translation ahead of Bhashavaad: National Translation Conference.
How do multilingualism and translation interact with each other in India? What is India’s legacy of translation?
Given India’s one-of-its-kind multilingualism, ‘where greater difference may exist within a language’ and where the ‘same’ language is often constituted by forging many languages together, as articulated by Professor Rita Kothari in A Multilingual Nation, translation becomes an important mode and site of approaching proximity as well as distance. It makes us ask, as Professor Kothari does in the title of her introduction to the edited volume, ‘When we are ‘multilingual,’ do we translate?’
Professor G. N. Devy has argued that Indian literary communities possess a particular ‘translating consciousness’ and that acts of translation underlie the foundation of modern Indian literatures. Considering the Indian metaphysical view of temporality, where repetition overrides linearity, he goes on to argue against ‘originality’ and upholds ‘the writer’s capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to revitalise the original’ as an essential feature of Indian literary theory and Indian literary traditions, which he terms ‘traditions of translation.’
Further, Professor Sundar Sarukkai and Madhava Chippali have presented an interesting case shifting our focus ‘to the possibility that the notion of translation is already prior to any notion of a language.’ It is in line with the above-presented view that it is the movement and not the ‘origin’ of words and texts that makes languages and literatures. Translation in India, therefore, both makes Indian multilingualism and critiques it. The concept of translation, too, varies in its definition and scope. One is often left asking, ‘Did translation happen or not?’
What does the current translation landscape in India look like? Are there existing networks of translation and writing?
Translations—in both the loose and strict senses of the word—in India have a long history, as discussed earlier. In the mediaeval and early modern world, where things, people, and ideas were always on the move, active translation of texts between languages was one interesting sphere, as evidenced by scholars. Literature and ideas in translation also characterised the time of and fuelled the struggle for independence. Translations from and into languages both near and far illustrated an important aspect of the literary consciousness following the making of the nation, too. The setting up of institutions such as the Sahitya Akademi and the National Book Trust in the 1950s was a watershed as the two institutions would begin to make ‘Indian literature’—expectedly through translation. And not to mention the Akademi’s series of biographical monographs, Makers of Indian Literature, that began in 1964 to encompass writers from ancient to modern India. Many institutions, publishers, writers, and translators working in the Bhashas also took translation up independently, addressing a wide range of requirements of their respective literary spheres, from readership to activism.
While its size cannot be communicated in approximate numbers, we know, through collected data that we hope to make publicly available at the Bhashavaad conference (where we are also hosting several distinguished publishers of translations), that the translation landscape is huge. This is also turning out to be the decade for translation, although largely for translations in English, owing to the success of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand in Daisy Rockwell’s translation and the like. Yet, many interesting things are happening, and new translation networks are being laid down by, among others, small independent publishers working in and between the Bhashas. It is their commitment to literature and, in some cases, support for translation driving this further and far, which I have written about elsewhere. Support for translation ranges from awards—such as the annual prize for translation instituted in 1989 by the Sahitya Akademi and now given in 24 languages recognised by it—to fellowships, such as the New India Foundation Translation Fellowship. The Centre, though still young, is becoming one of the nodal centres for translation in India.
How does non-fiction find its space in the global but also particular Indian translation landscape? What is the Centre doing to focus on this?
While Indian non-fiction certainly lags behind globally for not adhering to the post-Midnight’s Children formulation of categories such as ‘the Indian novel,’ which is perhaps the most translated, read, and discussed category. (It is, after all, also evident in the general making of non-fiction as a negative genre: that what is not fiction.) Within India, too, particularly for the English readership, literature in translation has only meant fiction for far too long, as discussed in detail by Arpita Das in a recent article. On the other hand, between the Bhashas, non-fiction has travelled and influenced writers, thinkers, and activists across geographies. (The credit goes to the bilingual translator, proficient in at least two Indian languages, now a receding figure, with forms of literary bilingualism, let alone multilingualism, becoming uncommon as a result.) It is also worth noting that it has been the fiction writers writing in Indian languages who have produced a variety of critical and theoretical thought. (I am reminded of the Kannada writer-critic UR Ananthamurthy as his novel Samskara sits on my table, translated by the poet-scholar AK Ramanujan.) The writer and translator are, in fact, thinkers thinking through languages, genres, and knowledge systems.
The Centre’s recently announced series, Chronicles, in collaboration with Penguin Random House and supported by the Manju Deshbandhu Gupta Fellowship, is one groundbreaking non-fiction translation series aimed at bringing creative-critical textual narratives from various Indian languages into English. Our ‘non-fiction’ list includes biographies, autobiographies, memoirs, travelogues, essays, commentaries, scholarly monographs, etc. Our much-lauded Women Translating Women list with Zubaan, supported by the Susham Bedi Memorial Fund, includes both fiction and non-fiction.
To what extent does the Centre focus on translation between Bhashas as opposed to translation to English?
The Centre’s early and current projects, namely Women Translating Women and Chronicles, to be seen in print this winter onwards, are geared towards translations into English. There, the obvious emphasis is on bringing texts forth for a wider national and international audience. There are two other projects, experiments if you will, called Translating Bhakti and Ek Gaana, Kayi Zabaan, where we explore the potent possibilities of taking one poem or one song into several Indian languages while also reassessing and remaking acts of translation. Overall, our projects aim to diffuse the binary formulations of one source and one target, literary and popular texts, and oral and written traditions. It is a many-to-many perspective that interests us.
To that end, the first Bhashavaad: National Translation Conference, being organised in partnership with The New India Foundation on the 23rd and 24th of August at the India International Centre, New Delhi, is one major step towards strengthening our commitment to the Bhashas. As such, ‘vaad’ is also to speak, stemming from ‘vaach’ in Sanskrit. Bhashavaad, therefore, shares not a concern about ‘isms’ but instead about the active ‘ings’ taking place in the wider Indian literary sphere, of which English, too, is a part. This conference is as much about making Indian languages speak to each other as it is about reading them and listening to them.
How does the Centre ensure the platforming of diverse voices?
When dealing with a subject and object characterised by diversity at its very core—a diversity of many layers, often within, to refer to my earlier response—one is faced with a challenging task. Diversity has to be ensured and emphasised (and not erased) across intersecting linguistic, geographical, and social lines. Our publishing projects, Women Translating Women and Chronicles, will continue to platform a diversity of texts, ideas, and forms—as well as a diversity of languages, writers, and translators—as they progress over the years. After all, ours is not the long-standing institutional understanding of Indian literature as ‘one, though written in different languages.’ Situated in the oddity of Indian multilingualism as if it is there now and it is not next, the force of translation is also the one with the potential to accommodate, if not bridge, both diversity and difference against the monolingual and monolithic ideas of singularity, often pushed through under the garb of ‘oneness.’ Translation, for us, is an exercise in democratising knowledge.
This article is part of The Edict's interview series with translators and scholars participating in Bhashavaad: National Translation Conference, scheduled for 23rd and 24th August at India International Centre, Delhi. RSVP here.
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