Lost in translation

We were shocked when we heard that Sreedevi S. Kartha was shown the door at the release function of a book she translated, just because she was a woman. But then you wonder, would she have been treated thus if she was the original writer and not the translator.

The late A.P.J. Abdul Kalam and Arun Tiwari had co-written the book Transcendence — My Spiritual Experience with Pramukh Swamiji, which Sreedevi had translated into Malayalam. If Tiwari was a woman, would he have been asked to stay away?

Perhaps no. The original writers are always given their due respect. It is the translator, who did all the work in between the original version and the one that let us read the book in the first place, who is always forgotten.

Today is World Translation Day held in honour of Bible translator St Jerome. It’s also a day to celebrate writers like Sreedevi, who has translated around 17 books from various languages to Malayalam.

“I have written my own books and translated many others. So I can tell you about the creative process of both. There is absolute freedom to write an original piece, to write and not to write, to publish or erase everything.”

“A  translator, on the other hand, has to understand another language, another geography,” Sreedevi says.

“A book set in Latin America, is for instance, not a familiar landscape to us. A word like njatuvela is ours. It is dangerous; you are under a lot of responsibility. But somehow people feel translation is secondary. They forget that our reading was shaped by the classics, many of which were originally written in foreign languages. It is because there were translators that we could read it. It’s an extremely important job,” she says.

Despite these challenges, young linguaphiles continue to come into this work. Indu Lekshmi, who has written her own books of poems, recently translated Balachandra Menon’s Ithirineram Othiri Karyam to English. She observed the limitations that suddenly came, the creative freedom that was lost. “You will be like a foster mother taking care of someone else’s child.”

It is not the reader but the original writer or publisher who often disregards the work of a translator. J. Devika, an academic and writer who has translated several books, including K.R. Meera’s Aarachaar into English, says: “The neglect of the translator is something one learns to live with, simply because one has other reasons to translate, including the pleasure of translation. Because of the efforts of editors like Mini Krishnan, translators who translate from our languages to English are more respected, but the risk is high. If the translation turns out well, it is the author’s greatness, if it does not, it is the translator’s incompetence, always!”

Writer Suneetha Balakrishnan says this is very true. She translates to Malayalam and English. Even a small mistake would bring you a lot of blame, as opposed to the complete neglect shown if the translated work is a success. She is often not invited to release functions of books she translated, but she has no complaints.

“Once, I came to know about the book release of the Malayalam translation I did of Jaishree Misra’s Rani. I wasn’t invited, but I went and sat among the audience. Jaishree, when she spoke about the translation, spotted me and asked me to come on stage. I went and slipped off as soon as I could.”

Another time, a friend and she went for the launch of two books they translated of Jhumpa Lahiri, and stood at the back, pushed by the crowd, “like beggars at a wedding they were not invited to”.

“Our problems can be summed up in three Rs: Rights, we have no copyrights, Rates — there is no royalty once an initial amount is settled, Recognition — it is the publisher’s ‘prerogative’ not to recognise the translator,” Suneetha adds.

There are exceptions of course, as renowned translator A.J. Thomas would tell. “O.N.V. Kurup, M. Mukundan, Paul Zacharia, etc are the noblest. They always give their translators their rightful due.” But, he adds, it is a fact that most of the celebrated writers of Malayalam do not consider their translators as writers.