Each one of our vernacular literatures is, as well-read natives in the language know, richly nuanced, socially and culturally resonant. But each is rich and resonant in its own way, built and rebuilt over time on the many currents of its own literary tradition, while interacting with imports in form, style, subject, neologism and diasporic feedback, and also reflecting, examining and reexamining, the internal socioeconomic shifts or upheavals and the galvanizing or demoralizing quality of their effects.
‘Translating India’, the topic of the present conference, encompasses translating among the Indian languages as well as translating into English. Both are important for integrative literary exchange as well as for meeting the huge hunger among literati as well as common readers for the works in languages other than their native ones. My talk will focus on the latter, that is translating from Indian languages into English, though some of the points I try to make hold equally well for translation among our many languages.

While translating technical and professional material involves mainly a high degree of precision, translating literary works also involves patient honing of a craft - the acquiring of an eclectic set of skills in cultural expression with words. And, yes, it also involves an art: the inspired art of re-imagining an intimately known literary text into another language of a different society and a different culture. Technical and scientific translators are in demand, carefully screened and well-paid in today’s interactive world of technology and marketing. But literary translation, though of unquestionable value for gaining multi-culturally meaningful self-knowledge, for our learning, as Rilke put it, ‘to be at home in our [variously] interpreted worlds,’ continues to be undervalued and under-evaluated, given very little of recognition, remuneration, and critical attention. A far cry from the prevailing attitude towards, say, music performers and orchestra conductors, translators are often seen as ‘interchangeable flunkies who don’t deserve much credit or reward.’ And this works to the detriment of attracting talents and sustaining development of the needed craft and art.

Quality in literary translation is produced by a combination of the following: careful use of patiently honed skills, many drafts, a deep love for and understanding of the original work, and a very strong desire to pass that love and understanding to a world unable to read the original. Boris Pasternak, who was also a dedicated translator throughout the Stalinist years of censorship and persecution of writers, remarked in 1944 (two years before he started to write Dr. Zhivago): ‘A translation must issue from an author who has experienced the effect of the original long before he embarks on his labours. It must be the fruit of the original, and its historical consequence.’ Good literary translation seeks to render not only the literal meaning but also the tone, texture, rhythm and feelings of the original - no matter whether the sentences are of easy-moving simplicity or of convoluted complexity. It strives to combine fidelity to the original with breathing life into it in another language. A striving driven by an urge to re-imagine, to transcreate, a beloved text into a very different linguistic culture. A literary translator must combine dedication to excellence with self-effacement, true to Isaac Beshevis Singer’s remark that a translator must be a combination of a fool and a sage. ‘Something of an anti-hero,’ a translator spends years developing and applying skills that society neither understands nor values enough but cannot afford to lose.’ Yet he goes on doing it out of a keen appreciation, an intense love for the original work, charged by an endless fascination for the work’s tone and texture, its idioms and metaphors, its theme and interiority of characters - things he simply aches to convey to the non-native readers. The ease of excellence that derives from an ungrudging willingness to work through multiple drafts has to derive from a deep commitment, which may arise spontaneously, but may also be actively promoted in a number of ways that I will come to in a short while.

Of the best literary translators, some are authors themselves, perhaps translating their own work, perhaps translating others’ inspired works to overcome a writer’s block, or as with Pasternak’s, to stay creative in a crushing regime or in other kinds of hard times. Some, like most translators of the classics, are language scholars, philologists highly specialized in the source language. But some are just bilingual literature-lovers, well-versed and well-read in both the source language and the target language. I would like to belong to this third category. I came from social science to study vernacular literature as social commentary, translating my selections from among the best in Bengali literature - best in both artistry and significance of social perspective - and providing substantive introductions from the viewpoint of social history. Concerning the problematic quality of most translations from India’s vernacular literature, we all know of Salman Rushdie’s sweeping assertion that, aside from an exception or two like S.H. Manto, India’s vernacular literatures have failed to attract high-quality translation and remain insignificant in critical literary appreciation at the world level. This assertion has produced much resentment and criticism among bilingial writers, critics and readers who have close knowledge of the literature in at least one of the Indian language. Yet, they cannot quite deny the fact that our great vernacular works seriously lack in quality of their English translation, even when available. The potential for quality is there, often in personal sources of inspiration, as with most literary translation anywhere. The question is how to systematically promote and foster it, how to counteract society’s underestimation of the work of translation, how to teach the craft side of the work and recognize the art inspired translations represent, how to develop a corpus of translation review and criticism.

One point generally agreed upon, though in need of stressing, is that an important literary work should be re-translated at least once in every generation. Not only because the target language (English here) is a living, changing entity. But also because, as Scammell, a recent re-translator of Eugene Onegin, remarks, ‘a translation is only one of a myriad possible readings, . . . a version limited and defined by the translator’s talents and the intellectual currents of the time.’ There is a third related reason why re-translation is so important: as Hofstadter, Solzhenitsyn’s biographer and Russian literature professor, puts it, ‘. . . two or more translations of a great work, taken together, give a powerful impression of what the underlying original work had to be like.’ He compares this process to "the nautical notion of triangualtion, in which having two different landmarks to sight on a coast allows you to pinpoint just where at sea you are.’ Multiple translations of a great literary work enable the experiencing of such triangualtion, allow ‘a kind of intellectual stereopsis,’ offering clearer glimpse of what the original may be. A fourth reason is that re-translation, by allowing comparative analysis, heightens critical interest in, and deepens literary appreciation of and scholarship on the original work.

Re-translating the great works of a language is, of course, a daunting, challenging task, a tall order even if the talent and the incentives were there. If there is a preference, moreover, on the part of writers in vernacular language to translate their own works by themselves, it can ultimately impede the process of multiple translations recharging non-native appreciation of their works. There seems to be a trade-off here. Let me cite a point Sujit Mukherjee made in connection with Tagore in his book A Passage to America. Tagore’s own English translation of his Gitanjali poems, though no doubt excellent enough to earn him a Nobel Prize and enthusiastic reception in the U.S. at the time, was within a short span of years quite easily confused by critics and readers in the West as English poetry penned by an Indian poet. The confusion contributed to their missing the Bengali original’s cultural and idiomatic resonance. One could also argue that the following generation of potential Tagore translators might have felt inhibited about re-translating what he himself had translated; as a matter of fact, it would take nearly five decades before that inhibition would be overcome and energetic re-translations produced. Spanish translation of Tagore’s poetry, in contrast, not having suffered a similar prolonged hiatus, flourished more freely and plentifully much earlier on.

If we can agree that ‘important works of literature should be re-translated at least once in every generation, [that] . . . the greater the original, the more translations it can bear,’ then we have to wonder if this productive process (which occurred for the ancient classics, the bible and our own epics, as also for the great Russian writers) might in the long run be retarded if authors undertake to translate their own works. In any case, by taking an encouraging and supportive attitude towards re-translation, Sahitya Akademi could generate quality and vitality in a long-run programme of translating India for the world.
Quality could be fostered also through specific measure such as: more systematic bilingual refereeing of translation manuscripts to screen for both fidelity and rendering, and arranging for closer interaction between the copyeditor and the translator (and the author, if possible) for sensitivity to the rhythm, texture and sentence structure of the original, while trying for better readability, and managing in the process also to build up and maintain over time a pool of copyediting expertise specialized in working with literary translators.

The by-product I mentioned last, which can really be a major facilitator of quality, can come only through concerted policy and effort of the major publishers of literary translation. It is worth the effort. It may not come with casually contracted copyeditors who, uninformed of the original text and the principles of literary translation, would like to break up Proust’s long sentences and join together Hemingway’s short ones. Sometimes a text’s departure from linguistic conventions is a key element of its literary value. This is why a translator must have native or native-like knowledge of what constitutes convention in the source language and what is deliberate departure on the author’s part from that convention. A translator’s task is to pull together the act of balancing fidelity to the original’s style and texture with need to be idiomatic and readable. This must not be undone by uninformed editing. A publisher of literary translations serious about keeping intact the style, texture and rhythm of the original work should ideally entrust the copyediting to a bilingual who has read the original, at least provide adequate opportunity to confer and consult, and make sure that the final set of proofs is seen and approved by the translator before it goes to the printer.

On the subject of organized ways to sustain quality production and critical appreciation of literary translation from our vernacular languages, I see three crying needs. One, the need to set up a centre for translation studies, with the capability and the resource to organize workshops for studying excellence in translation, to undertake or commission comparative studies of alternative translations of major literary works, and last but not the least important, to produce a high-quality journal comparable to, say, the Translation Review, which will bring out the results of translation workshops and studies.
Two, the need to have a change in the prevailing attitude of India’s writers, publishers, and hence of the reading public, towards translators. The attitude tends to be one of either indifference or condescension, often treating them as hacks seeking to bask in the author’s reflected glory. Attitude problem is not a small factor in the inability of India’s vernacular literatures, unlike other non-Western ones (e.g., Japanese and Russian), to attract and retain top-quality translators motivated enough to strive through many time-consuming drafts in order to render a balance between fidelity and readability as perfect as possible.
Three, the need to ask ourselves how seriously we care at this point about international recognition for our vernacular works of literature in translation as world-class literature. Translations that are not to remain just run-of-the-mill grist for language specialists here and abroad, or semi-finished raw material for sociologists and writers to use towards their own projects. I believe it is quite within reach of our own bilingual talents to produce fine English translations, and do so with a serious sociological focus in selecting the texts for translation.

A related general question that now we must also ask ourselves is how seriously we value excellence in literary translation for the sake of the fast-growing numbers of our younger generations, both local and diasporic, all those who are highly literate in English but not so in the native languages of their parents and grandparents. How much do we really want those among our children and grandchildren to read and appreciate, at least in translation, the great literary works in India’s vernacular languages? The demographic explosion in the younger age-groups and the globalization of their ranks at an unprecedented pace - these are two powerful realities that make it imperative that we put far more energy in producing high-quality English translations. We should do it if we do not want more and more of them to feel frustrated with the quality of available translations and conclude, agreeing with Rushdie, that the works of literature in India’s vernacular languages do not represent nearly as valuable a contribution to the world of books as the ‘Indo-Anglian’ works do.