Are there two Indias out there? One, the India of authors writing in English and the other, the India, that is Bharat, where authors write in regional languages and are often known no further than the ‘choukath’ of their own home states?

If you’re wondering what ‘choukath’ is, let us translate it for you: threshold.

 These and several related issues were addressed at the two-day conference, ‘Translating Bharat: Language, Globalisation and the Right to be Read’, organised at Jaipur from January 20-22, 2008. It was co-hosted by Siyahi, led by author Namita Gokhale, founder-director of Translating Bharat and literary agent Mita Kapur, CEO, Siyahi and Bharatiya Anuvad Parishad. The two-day meet saw authors and creative litterateurs mingling with translators and publishers from various parts of the country.

 Says Mita Kapur, “Translations preserve literary traditions.” And seldom have they been as necessary as today, when we live in an increasingly globalised world. That’s the world where we may just get swamped under the miasma of sameness in dress, palette and language. Translations make available this wealth from across India. It is intellectual wealth that needs to be kept alive and shared.

Inarguably, it is important to translate literature from one language to another. It is also paramount that we translate and bring forward the works of one era to another that may otherwise suffer the amnesia brought about by contemporary lifestyles.

Siyahi played proud ferret and was much appreciated by participants for drawing forth the creative brilliance of the Naga tradition, Ao narration, Mizo stories and the Totos of Bengal.

Creative talent, specially in the oral and performing arts, can surmount certain barriers of language. Tipaniyaji, who symbolises the tradition of Kabirpanthis, remembers fondly a visit to the USA when, after a performance, an American man hugged him and confessed he was deeply moved by the performance, even if he did not follow the language. 

However, comprehension can only be complete once the language is translated. And yet, in a country like ours, which has a rich oral tradition and one that offers the poet much creative license for creativity, translating can come with its baggage. As Malasri Lal, professor of English pointed out, we are fortunate in having a rich and living tradition of mythology, a lot of which belongs to our oral tradition and keeps evolving, changing, taking on regional, locational and contemporary issues.

One legend of Sita she has come across says, Sita made such lovely laddoos, Ravan was smitten with them and just had to have the wonderful cook on his island. So, as Minja Yang, director of UNESCO pointed out, translating from an oral tradition comes with its own poser: the translation of the oral work is in writing, and therefore, sealed from change, unlike the original, which may just move on from there.

But none of this can detract from the core issue that it is time to give translations and translators their due. As one participant pointed out, the difference between reading translations and reading literature from just one language is a little like the difference between a blanket and a quilt. If a quilting bee fascinates you, you’ll almost certainly appreciate the value of translations.

Ideally, there’s a certain sense of comfort if the reader knows that the author has vetted the translation. But that cannot always be. As Ira Pande pointed out, she rues the fact that Manohar Shyam Joshi could not go through her translation of his works. But her readers may draw solace from the fact that his wife did.

 Translating has certainly not got its due in India yet. It can be painstaking and a careless translator is an editor’s nightmare. Says one translator, “The art of translation is filled with frustration.” Some editors recognise the need for a second editor, fluent in both languages, to pull a toothcomb through the final work. That is also where an open market and more translating houses can raise the bar across the industry. After all, translations are unique in that they can be read in the multiple to get a better idea of the original. For years, we’d quote from Sukumar Ray’s classic ‘Abol Tabol’, and leave our non-Bengali-speaking audience with approximations.

Today, this collection of over 50 pieces of nonsense verse has been translated. That in itself is worthy of a standing ovation. Ah, but wait. It has been translated at least twice. The best known versions are by two translators: Sukanta Chaudhuri and Sampurna Chattarji. As poet, author and translator Sampurna Chattarji points out, “The translator has the possession of the piece and also the joy and the responsibility toward the original already becoming its twin.” These, then, are two which must become one. “There are laws but the translator must make her own.”
 
 Translating Bharat went beyond a platform for writer, readers and publishers by bringing in people from different walks of life, to all of whom language and its translation have never been as important. It’s time to open the doors to the Bharat that is waiting to be brought forward.

KEEPING DATA ALIVE

What went down well with some onlookers was the variety that the organisers brought to the table. Just for those who may have believed translating may have restricted itself to the literary, there was an interesting and inclusive mix. In the age of globalisation, India needs to take stock of its entire wealth, literary, poetic, oral and others. As Sudha Gopalakrishnan pointed out, “The future is a dialogue of past and present.” Children of a long civilisation that wrote on virtually every medium possible, from palm leaf and birch bark to ivory, stone and metal and finally, paper,” we have a legacy of 23 lakh recorded manuscripts and more waiting to be ledgered. But somewhere along the way, these knowledge systems became devalued in our own eyes. She pointed out the repository of wisdom that institutions like the National Manuscript Mission are. Worthy of mention here are our medical documents from not one but several schools of medicine including Ayurveda, Siddha, Unani. Some have been lost forever. The rest could be given a new life through translations.

DESI TOUCH TO SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

What was Dr Suman Sahai, president of Gene Campaign, doing at the Translating Bharat festival? Throwing new light on language, of course. Sahai started Gene Campaign in 1993. The Campaign is a grassroots organisation with a presence in 17 states across India. Gene Campaign is a research and advocacy organisation working on farmers' and community rights, intellectual property rights and indigenous knowledge, among other related issues.

These are all regions where language – and its accurate translation for proper comprehension – plays a primal point. “There is a need to bridge India and Bharat, a need to simplify our dialect,” she pointed out. Science and technology continue to be in India, while the people who practice the laboratory findings of science are on the fields of Bharat. She is convinced that it is time that we got down to reporting science and technology in Hindi. And in regional languages, of course.

The time is more than right, indeed, it has been so for a while, to develop a contemporary vocabulary in science and technology. The challenge is not as simple as, say, translating telephone as ‘doorbhaash’. That is one example of how a word can be accepted in the ‘foreign’ language and Indianised with no lapse anywhere: it’s still called telephone, or teliphoon, if you wish, almost across the country. So, the translation has to be simple enough to be taken to the farmer, to be accepted at the grassroots and carry with it some flavour of the technology. 

Well, if you think that’s simple, try this one that kicked up a bit of a debate at the conference: How do you explain gene modification to the farmer? While you ponder on that, here’s a hint from Dr Sahai. Try, gene ‘sanshodhan’. Or would you like to make that simpler?

The fun of language is that it keeps evolving, so the debate goes on. There’s room for several views here, but I get this niggling feeling that the farmer out there will come up with the best option at the literal grassroots.