Despite the embarrassment of riches in Indian literature across every
language, original English writing is somehow considered superior to
translations.
Arunava Sinha
For
English-language publishers in India, translations from one of the
regional Indian languages into English have been a little bit like a
husband. You knew he could come up with good stuff every now and then,
but there was no glamour or passion. No one told the wife what a
fantastic partner she had. But English language fiction? Ah,
that was the handsome dish down the road – elusive and, often, quite shallow, but what a body. A prize catch, if ever there was one.
Suddenly,
though, the husband is looking more attractive. Maybe it’s the visits
to the mental gym, but he’s competing for attention with the
neighbourhood hunk now, even if he isn’t exactly winning every time. And
there you have the story of translations from the regional Indian
languages – about a dozen of which are active in literary terms – into
English.
While there is no stemming the flow of original works of
fiction in English, India’s biggest English language publishers – the
majority of whom are global corporations – are warming up to the idea of
commissioning and publishing more works in translation from regional
languages. Penguin, Harper-Collins, Random House and Hachette have all
been increasing the number of titles in translation, and the latest
entrant, Bloomsbury, promises to treat translations and English language
fiction as equals. Penguin has an editor dedicated to publishing
translations; Harper-Collins uses its classics imprint Perennial to
channel translations. And the Oxford University Press has long been
producing translations of novels and stories by marginal writers in
particular.
This should be music to the ears of the dozen or so
translators in India who have been fighting on gamely over the past
decade in particular to get their works onto the desks of editors. Many
members of this vanguard are veteran warriors, and have now translated
around ten or even more books each. Their ranks have now been swelled by
later entrants with one or two published translation each. Their energy
is just as remarkable and their reading ranges more among contemporary
works than classics – which is gradually changing the flavour of the
portfolio of translated literature.
Why publish translations when Indian writing in English is thriving?On
the face of it, the logic behind publishing translations in India is
impeccable. Unlike fresh works in English, these are not shots in the
dark, having already enjoyed critical and/or popular acclaim in their
original language – provided the titles are chosen with care. The
authors, too, have some currency already – often going back years or
even decades. And a sociological change sweeping India, where younger
people – 60% of the population is under 30 – can no longer read in their
mother-tongue fluently, preferring to read in English, is creating
large swathes of readers who are keen to read the books their parents
rave about but cannot till these books are translated into English.
However
– and it’s a big however – readers haven’t exactly been queuing up to
pick translated literature off the shelves. Why? Well, many readers are
suspicious of anything with a whiff of the ‘literary’, which
translations inevitably reek of. This is somewhat ironic, because many
of the texts were meant for contemporary readers in the original, but
have acquired the "classic" tag in translation. But then, most
translations have in the past been positioned the way antiques are –
valuable to those with discerning tastes, but not necessarily cool. As a
result - there have been exceptions, of course – even novels that have
sold in hundreds of thousands in their original language have sunk
without a trace in the translated version.
But with the recent
renewal of vows, publishers are now giving translations a lot more
attention. State of the art cover design, top-flight editorial
attention, and even positions as leads or second leads in monthly
catalogues – translated titles are beginning to blush with the glow of
marketing love. Instead of quaintness – "Oh look, how marvellous, a
Malayalam (or Telugu, or Marathi) book of short stories, how original!" –
translations are now being presented as examples of best in class
writing, with all the attendant trimmings. The one piece in the puzzle
that’s yet to fit in: global sales. Written for readers within the
country, most translated fiction does not really decode India for an
international audience.
What to translate?But
who picks the books to be translated? The sheer diversity of Indian
languages makes it impossible for an editor to be well up on the
literatures of half a dozen languages. Typically, an editor will be a
voracious reader in English and, perhaps, in the language of the region
of India they belong to. So, a single editor might at best be able to
identify titles in that one additional language. It is up to the
translators themselves to play talent scout, literary agent, and, of
course, translator, rolled into one.
By a strange quirk of
publishing history, many of the first set of editors in India were
Bengali-speaking. Not surprisingly, this was the language that was
represented the most in the first wave of published translations.
Fortunately, energetic translators from other languages, combined with
the sensitivity of the next generation of publishers and editors, are
now ensuring parity between languages.
Translators also have to
double up as agents and scouts simply because India’s regional
publishing industries are too focused on their local markets to be
concerned with marketing their titles for translation into English.
Leave alone reach a global audience, even a pan-Indian readership is not
on their radar screens. For the longest time – and, possibly, even now,
even as you read this – there have been few or no formalities involved
in translating a book from one regional language into another.
Permission, rights and royalties have seldom played a part in the
proceedings – at most, the translator or the publisher may have casually
informed the writer. The trouble goes deeper, with much of publishing
in the regional languages taking places without formal contracts or
assignation of rights. And since local publishers have no interest in
selling translation rights, they neither secure these rights, nor
attempt to market them.
Is translation a profession or a vocation?For
all the mouthwatering growth that English publishing appears to offer,
very few resident English language writers can actually make a living
out of their identity. Those that do are either published extensively
across the world (Amitav Ghosh, for instance) or do not live in India
(Vikram Seth or Jhumpa Lahiri, for example). The other flavour of
authors who can, if they choose to, live off their royalties are
extremely successful commercial writers. A segment of one at the moment,
it consists of Chetan Bhagat, who has inspired not only sales of a
million copies of his books, collectively, but also, probably, a million
wannabe bestseller writers.
No wonder, then, translators make
even less than writers, and inevitably have day jobs to pay the bills.
(More translated words are written at night in India than, perhaps, in
many other countries where translators can hope to live off their work.)
Unlike in Europe, for instance, translators in India usually get a
share of the royalties rather than a translation fee. Ranging between
2.5% and 5%, this will seldom amount to earnings of more than Rs 50,000 –
going up to Rs 100,000 – if they happened to get out of the right side
of the bed. As a result, the work is done for love, not money.
This
isn’t necessarily bad, actually. The gap between current earnings and
the minimum required to make a decent living is so high that there can
never be any hope of a life as a professional literary translator. So,
these translators are fuelled by their passion for the craft, for the
texts they translate, and, yes, by a desire for fame – all of which,
arguably, makes them strive harder to produce memorable translations.
Despite
this passion, unfortunately, literary translators in India are not
connected in communities. There are no formal groups or networks to
enable regular meetings, conferences or exchanges. Having day jobs
leaves little time for most translators to do anything beyond reading,
translating, and proofreading. Only the occasional encounter at literary
festivals or book launches allows them to exchange notes and catch up
on one another’s work. In psycho-emotional terms, this means working in
isolation for the most part without the benefits of a support group –
but, more important, it also means that a standard of commercial norms
over rights and payments for translations has not evolved.
Nor is
there any formal training or mentoring programme for literary
translators. Thus, neither craft and technique nor practical issues like
the need to secure permissions and sign contracts are taught to
aspiring translators. Practising translators in India are almost
entirely self-trained, honing their craft as they go along. What the
successful ones do have in common is that they have spent the formative
years of their lives in communities and geographies where their source
language was common currency – a good translator from Bengali to
English, for example, will have lived in Bengali, so to speak, even
though they may have been educated for the most part in English.
Translation prizes! Aren’t they game-changers?With
the gap between critical and popular acclaim growing ever wider, the
few prizes for literature in translation that there are do little for
sales or even awareness among people. As a result, they are only
celebrated within the closed circle of publishers, authors and
translators. The pre-eminent among these prizes is the Crossword Book
Award for Best Book in Translation – part of the Crossword Book Awards
series for fiction, non-fiction, children’s writing and translation –
with the not inconsiderable sum of Rs 300,000 as prize money, shared
between the writer and the translator. Just about the only benefit,
besides a night of glory, is that the takings might finance the next
translation for the winner.
The other two translation-specific prizes – from the state-owned and –managed Sahitya Akademi and the literary journal
Muse India
– are yet to make their mark either on the public (or publishers’)
imagination or on sales. This, even though the Akademi awards have been
around for several decades now and assiduously seeks out worthy titles
in 22 languages year. With all these awards, the approval of a
critically-minded jury seems to make little or no difference to India’s
reading choices.
The two other major local literary prizes that
Indian fiction is eligible for – the DSC South Asia Literature Prize and
the Hindu – let books translated into English compete on equal terms
with books originally written in English. This is a bold declaration of
parity between the two kinds of fiction, and a translated winner should
offer a big boost to the category – if only because the winning books
get the kind of media coverage that most fiction is deprived of. True,
this may be because of the prize money – Rs 2,500,000 for the DSC and Rs
500,000 for the Hindu – but once a translated book wins, as it surely
must soon, angels shall sing.
A new direction for translation in
India may come from the ambitious government of India- sponsored project
titled Indian Literature Abroad. Funded by the central government but
wisely left to people from the publishing business and academia to
execute, ILA envisages translating classics and contemporary works from
regional Indian languages into the UN languages – Arabic, Chinese,
English, French, Russian and Spanish. While it will be difficult, if not
impossible, to find translators into all the other languages besides
English, once the programme starts commissioning translations and
funding them, there will certainly be a flurry of activity. At the
moment, the first set of titles is being finalised.
What about students? Don’t they read translations?If
irony is understated in Indian writing in English, it is abundantly
represented in the literature classes in the country’s colleges and
universities. Every liberal arts campus in India is represented by both
undergraduate and postgraduate courses in English literature. Until the
1980s, these courses were dominated by… well… works of English
literature. It needed minor revolutions in syllabus management over the
next couple of decades to introduce, successively, American writing and
then Indian writing in English. Since then, college professors with
greater freedom to design bespoke courses have brought in works from
global literatures – Latin, European, even Oriental – but not many
colleges actually teach Indian fiction in English translation.
Will
this change? Well it might, for the simple reason that college and
university professors are now themselves involved in translating fiction
from their mother tongues into English. A new market for translations
will explode in India in that case, encouraging publishers to invest
more resources in translated titles.
And what will change all this?One
guess – or rather, wishful thought: an Indian writer, who doesn’t write
in English, winning a major international literature prize. Such as,
yes, the Nobel Prize. One Indian writer who has long been in the running
is Mahashweta Devi, who writes in Bengali. Should she ever win, though
it looks unlikely with every passing year, translations of her work –
her best fiction has in fact been translated, published, and become hard
to find already – and, perhaps, those of others, will get the big boost
that we translators have been waiting for.
This essay originally appeared in In Other Words
, the journal of the British Centre for Literary Translation.
