“Translation is the most important unfinished project of modern India’s linguistic aspirations. This is a country blessed with so many languages with its own literature, and if we don’t have competent translations from one language to another, writers become imprisoned in silos of their language,” Pavan K. Varma, Rajya Sabha member and poet and translator, has said. He was in conversation with poet, lyricist, playwright and film director Gulzar on the last day of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival on Sunday.
The session, while discussing Mr. Varma’s book of sonnets Yudhishtar and Draupadi , also focussed on its version in Hindi, which has been translated by Mr. Gulzar.
Mr. Gulzar said he so enjoyed the form and writing style of Mr. Varma that he decided to translate his book to understand it better. “I translated the book and then presented it to Mr. Varma. In translation, the form evolved. It was out of the original structure, but the drama, structure and rhythmic arrangement of the original were kept intact. This is where an extra effort is demanded from a translator,” he said.
But, translation is not an easy job, said Mr. Varma. It requires a translator to have proficiency in both the languages. “Translation is like transferring perfume from one bottle to another. In the process, some of the fragrance will be lost. No translation can be perfect. Yet we need translations and translators to extend the reach of the poet and his works.”
It is more difficult to translate regional works in English as it fails to capture the cultural essence, Mr. Gulzar said, and added that Hindi, and not English, should become the link language between writings in regional language. The two writers also highlighted the importance of mother tongue, stating that if one loses touch with his/her mother tongue, he/she becomes a linguistic orphan.
The festival saw participation of 60 poets from across the country and abroad. The audience also got a chance to interact with poetry publishers and editors such as Ananda Lal, R. Padmanabhan Nair, and Sandeep Bhutoria.
The two-day event had a separate segment for children, including a writing workshop, and a poetry treasure hunt. The curtains came down on this year’s festival with a performance from Mame Khan and group.
‘Having citizenship isn’t the same as belonging to a place’
“At home, the grass was tall, the milk was sweet, at home there was no need for sugar.” When Tsering Wangso Dhompa, the first Tibetan poet to be published in English, read out from her works on the closing day of the Bengaluru Poetry Festival on Sunday, the audience listened in rapt attention to her memories of Tibet. She shared the dais with Kashmiri writer Ayaz Rasool Nazki, who has published more than a dozen works in Kashmiri, Urdu, and English. Mr. Nazki read out lines from his English book of poetry, Songs of Light.
Ms. Dhompa spoke about how growing up as a refugee in India made citizenship seem all important for her. “Later on I realised that having citizenship was not the same as belonging to a place,” she said.
In the afternoon, Kannada writer Prathibha Nandakumar and group gave a spirited performance where they enacted parts of a poem on the happenings in a oft-visited “coffee shop” in the city, giving a peep into the lives of people who stopped by.
