For me, it was important to carry Kannada into another language: Deepa Bhasthi

The award-winning translator reflects on language, cultural rootedness, and resisting the urge to simplify for Western audiences. It is about carrying the rhythms of Kannada into English. 

Anitha Pailoor in conversation with Deepa Bhasthi, writer and International Booker-winning translator

What does winning the International Booker Prize mean for Kannada literature and its translation into English?

This is a big moment for not just Kannada literature but also literature from India and the larger South Asian region. Kannada did not get a new elevated status just because it is translated into English. I truly believe that every language is complete in itself. In that sense, it is English that has gained from its newfound association with Kannada.

You are the first Indian translator to get this global recognition. Do you think the art and science of translation gets the acknowledgement that it deserves? What more can be done?

I am the first Indian translator and, in fact, the first translator of colour to win the International Booker. I would say that things are a lot better now; almost all the publishers put the name of the translator on the cover. This was not the way things worked even a few years ago. Yes, I think there needs to be a larger systemic change in how people recognise, appreciate and acknowledge translators. We have come a long way, but there is still a long way to go. It is thanks to prizes like the International Booker Prize which actively recognise the co-creating writer-translator role of the translators of a book. Hopefully, such attempts will help people — from readers to sometimes writers themselves — recognise that translators are not one rung below the writer.

You have translated three major works. Two of them are short story collections. How do you choose a book?

First and foremost, I have to like the text myself from Page 1 till the end. Translation is such a rigorous act of love that unless you actually love the book out and out, it is impossible, at least for me, to translate a book.

Could you shed light on the process of selecting the twelve stories and the making of 'Heart Lamp'? 

The 12 stories were selected from six of Banu’s collections, which span her career from 1992 to 2023. A lot of factors went behind choosing them. These were stories that I personally liked, and there were stories I thought would work very well in English. There were stories which present different facets of a woman right from girlhood to different aspects of a woman’s experience. For me, a lot of the translation process is also instinctive in many ways. I just kind of felt that these would make a good selection of her stories.

In your note in the book, you say that Banu Mushtaq's entire career can be summed up in one word, 'bandaya'. The chair of the International Booker Prize jury remarked that 'Heart Lamp' is "a radical translation which ruffles language, to create new textures in a plurality of Englishes." Could you tell us about your approach towards translation?

It bears reminding that translation is not transliteration. It is as much about taking text from one language to the other language but also about retaining the flavour of a certain language. I wanted to reject Western centricity, where we are expected to make things easy for the Western reader, and they don’t want to work for a text; they don’t want to be introduced to new words. Because they just do not want to work that much to read a story. I am against that thought. To give a very simple example — if pizza, burger, sandwich and pasta are not italicised, then I do not understand why dosey or rotti or any of our food items needed to be italicised as well. I wanted to actively reject Western centricity and say that English is a very bendable language. And I wanted to retain as much Kannada as possible. For me, it was important to be closer to Kannada and carry Kannada into another language. My approach to translation is multifaceted.

Do you see multilingualism as a step towards making English our own? How difficultis its to tread a different path, both in terms of the process and acceptance?

Multilingualism is a very common part of our lives. We all live in and we all interact in different languages, and forging a new path is, in any case, a hard job, and we have a very long and fabulous history of our texts being translated from and into each other and different languages, and there are different schools of thought and so on. So carrying the Kannada accent — I like to call this translating with an accent, where you are not erasing where the text comes from but keeping the musicality of the language and keeping the laya, as we say in Kannada — to the English language was very important for me. There was a lot of second-guessing, obviously, because I had no precedent to work with. Not many people have probably tried doing what I was trying to do. I am not saying I discovered anything new, but it was almost like a gamble that really paid off.

How did you internalise the stories of 'Heart Lamp' that represent the languages and cultures which were not familiar to you?

I spent a lot of time reading, watching and listening around the text. There were a lot of Urdu dramas that I was watching, and there was a lot of music that I was listening to, just to get familiar with the culture in which Banu’s stories are set. That, I believe, helped me to get under the skin of the characters.

Your translation has introduced a Kannada book to world literature. Your thoughts on this.

I hope this is only the beginning. I want this to be only the beginning because we have such a fabulous literary history with such extraordinary works in the language. And I believe that English is richer now because it has been introduced to Kannada; it is not like Kannada needed the validation of being translated into the colonial language to be considered great. I hope that there are more translations from the language and more readers get to read Kannada literature—whether in its original or as translations.

Which book are you working on next?

Right now everything is on hold. But I am working on Samudyata Venkataramu’s debut novel. She is an author from Shedthikere near Heggodu in Shivamogga. This is a fabulous novel that she published from Akshara Prakashana this January. Very excited to be starting on that, and I am also working on some of my own writings. I write a lot as well.