The world in translation
The coming wave of Indian authors
We are all familiar with authors like Albert Camus, Leo Tolstoy, Haruki Murakami, Gabriel García Márquez.
Quick, what is common to all those names, and many more that I could list?
We have read their works even though they did not write in the English language. Right?
We know well Tolstoy’s wonderful opening line in Anna Karenina: “All happy families are alike, but every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” We don’t think twice about what he actually wrote in Russian. Camus’ “Mother died today” has stuck with us even if we have forgotten the rest of the story.
Somebody somewhere thought it was worth their time and effort to translate those authors’ works into English so that people like you and I could also read those masterpieces.
It also means that there is a world of fantastic literature out there that has yet to be translated into English. Authors writing in, say, Tamil or Malayalam.
I am being intentional in referring to Tamil and Malayalam because even when young I read many works in Tamil, and every once in a while a Malayalam work that had been translated to Tamil. But, what about bringing them to the world of English?
Fortunately, such translation has been happening. And from my visits to the local bookstore in Chennai—the oldest bookstore in India—it seems like every year there are more and more and more works in translation waiting for readers like me.
I think a collection of MT Vasudevan Nair’s short stories that had been translated into English was my first. Oddly enough, I read that collection when I spent a week in Costa Rica a few years ago. Not in India, nor in the US, but in Costa Rica!
From the Malayalam, it was Thakazhi's writings that drew me with the narratives about the regular folks in settings that I could easily identify with, thanks to the visits to Kerala during my childhood years. MT Vasudevan Nair was a familiar name thanks to my peeping into the arty world and, thus, when I saw that collection, I bought it.
Over the years, have bought many books that had been translated into English. Perumal Murugan’s novel and memoir. Sundara Ramaswamy’s Tamarind History. The Booker winner last year—Tomb of Sand. It is a long list.
To the list, I now add more.
I got myself three books. One from Malayalam and the other two from Tamil. One of the Tamil works is by Perumal Murugan. The translator here is the same woman who wrote the book Hitched that I bought a long time ago; it was a book on arranged marriage.
The Malayalam one, Chemmeen, is from decades ago. More than 65 years old the novel is. At home, we have all watched the movie that was made from this story. I watched it way after it was released in 1965. It is one of those classic movies that won all kinds of awards domestic and foreign. I have never read the story though because it was in an alien language. Now, I can read it in translation.
I will take them all with me to America for any interested people to read. After all, these translated works will not be at Barnes & Noble or any bookstore like, well, forever!
I suppose the difficulty arises in translated stories from the fact that they are set in alien lands, with cultural norms and behaviors that are not what we are used to. And the names too. I recall the difficulty in keeping track of the Russian names with all the patronymic and the diminutives, and learning new words like samovars. But, to me, this was also the attraction. I was able to transport myself into a part of the world that was far away from me, that was very different from what I was used to, and understand and appreciate the complexity and charm of our lives.
Daisy Rockwell suggests that we read translated fiction even if we think it might be difficult. "Expand your mind! The language is alive! Translation brings you the world!"