Found in translation

Translations are opening a new chapter for Malayalam literature and readers of Malayalam. On Kerala Day on Saturday, city-based translators talk about the trend

October 31, 2014 07:31 pm | Updated April 12, 2016 07:46 am IST - Thiruvananthapuram

01tvmp DC Books

01tvmp DC Books

Even as Paulo Coelho’s new Portuguese novel Adultério hit the stands as Adultery , his fans in Kerala were already reading the Malayalam translation of the novel brought out by DC Books, incidentally, an edition that comes with a special message and digital signature from the author himself! Then again, the Malayalam translation of Coelho’s Alchemist is, reportedly, one of the publishing house’s biggest sellers, having sold over 2 lakh copies, till date.

It speaks volumes on how popular translations have become in Malayalam and for Malayalam literature, not to mention how far the Malayalam publishing industry itself has come. In fact, at a recent book sale in the city, Malayalam translations of just about every popular work in several other regional and international languages, were to be found aplenty.

Increasingly, the reverse is also happening with the works of Malayalam’s finest authors, old and new, now being authoritatively translated into several different languages. Point in case English translations of Malayalam novels such as K.R. Meera’s Aarachaar , M.T. Vasudevan Nair’s Randamoozham , Benyamin’s Aadujeevitham, Thakazhi’s Chemmeen ..., to name but a few, which have found their way into bestsellers lists, not to mention O.V. Vijayan’s Khasakkinte Ithihasam in Turkish and German, M. Mukundan’s novels in French, Madhavikutty’s stories in Italian… Translations, it seems, are well and truly opening up the world and world literature to Malayalis and vice versa.

“Translations have always been popular in Malayalam and have been enriching this language of ours for centuries, perhaps right from the time when 16th century litterateur Ezhuthachan translated the Ramayana from Sanskrit into Malayalam. Subsequently, the first novels, plays and the likes in Malayalam were all translations. In fact, it has now come to a stage where we almost identify with translations, even to the extent of treating it as an original, and consider authors such as Premchand, Gabriel Gracia Marquez and Mario Vargas Llosa our own, with readers and students of literature choosing not to distinguish otherwise. Even when reviewing a translation, these days critics tend to treat it as a new work and look at it as an original,” says Meena T. Pillai, academic and author.

Malayalis have always had a fascination for Latin American literature and they still form the bulk of literature on many bookshelves, along with Bengali literature. Apart from classics from regional languages and those in English and other European languages, works of contemporary authors of the likes of Orhan Pamuk, Chinua Achebe, J. M. G. Le Clézio, Robin Sharma, Doris Lessing, Philip Pullman, and Ben Okri are now available in Malayalam.

As it is, literature cannot be readily converted from one language to another; even the simplest of sentences can rarely be translated with the identical meaning in another language. Also, most of the translations available are re-translations of English editions and, often, there are multiple translations of the same book. There’s thus a question of how much is lost in translation. Suneetha B., who has translated Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies and Jaishree Misra’s Rani into Malayalam, says: “It depends on the translator, language and the writer. Jhumpa, for instance, uses long sentences that often go on for one, one-and-a-half pages, followed by a short sentence. You cannot do that in Malayalam and you end up having to break the sentence into smaller ones. Besides, the word order of Malayalam is different from English and one cannot afford to take everything verbatim. The challenge, therefore, is to recreate the nuances, the flavour of the language to the best extent possible.”

Bhawani Cheerath, another city-based author who has translated Bengali short story Gosaibaganer Bhoot and a volume of Tagore’s short stories into Malayalam, agrees and adds: “It has a lot to do with the basic craft of the translator and the style of narration. The best way is obviously translating from the original language, but it’s unfortunate that most of the translated literature available today comes to us via an intermediate language like English, thereby doubly diluting it. Then again, most of the works being translated are current and done with an eye on readability and marketability. So, there is less of a question of customising it to suit contemporary audiences.”

Former banker K.T. Rajagopalan, who translated Sethu's Kendra Sahitya Akademi award-winning novel Adayalangal into English as Once Upon A Time, says that retaining the cultural ethos of the language is the biggest task for translators. “In my opinion, cultural icons cannot be properly transferred without fairly extensive footnotes. The word echchil , for example, has no literal meaning in English, other than vaguely identifying it with leftovers. Most Westerns wouldn’t understand its various cultural connotations – the dynamics of eating from an echchil pathram , for example. Or the symbolism in bali rituals; that of exchanging garlands during a marriage, and so on. That’s why it’s very difficult to translate novels by authors such as Basheer and VKN, who are masters of playing with words. Adayalangal was comparatively easy to translate, especially because it had several conversations in English,” says Rajagopalan.

They agree that translations have opened a new chapter in Malayalam literature, where language is no longer a barrier to the flow of stories and thoughts from across the world.

Word by word

Ravi Deecee, chief executive officer of DC Books, has been at the forefront of the trend, leading the way for over a 1,000 translations into Malayalam, primarily literary fiction from languages such as English, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese to even Catalan, Welsh and Norwegian.

“Malayalis have always been receptive to new ideas and cultures, right from the ancient times when traders from the West came calling. I think the welcome has extended to literature as well. The trend for translations actually picked up in the 1970s when classics from several languages began to be translated. It was in the 1980s that the concept of buying rights came about and we started translating the likes of Marquez and Octavio Paz. In the last couple of years, we have really stepped it up a gear,” says Ravi.

DC Books, like other major publication houses, now has a division solely for translations. “We keep an eye out for books that merit translation, especially literary fiction. Self-help books also have a good readership in Malayalam. We work with authors and their agents, to buy the rights for the books, which is not an easy task and an expensive one to boot. Over the years, we have built up a special rapport with Coelho and his agents, for example, which pays off in exclusive book deals. After six years of trying, we recently clinched the deal with the agents of late French author Simone de Beauvoir for the rights of her seminal treatise The Second Sex,” he explains.

Although sales are going through the roof, the businessman in him says that the genre as such is not that lucrative a business model. “Some books go into multiple editions. Others, though, have to be stopped at the first edition itself. The kind of advances for some of these books is itself comparatively huge. Then again, not all genres of literature are popular in translation; an exception is the self-help genre, the translations of which have upwards of 80 per cent success.”

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