On May 22, at the awards ceremony of the Man Booker International Prize, the Man Group president Jonathan Sorrell spoke against the urge to simplify that has become the defining characteristic of our times.
The Man Booker International (MBI), according to Sorrell, takes a stand against this tendency: “It’s the imperative to address this compulsion to simplify — to open ourselves up to a multitude of narratives, rather than a single story — that lies behind the Man Booker International Prize.” So, it’s not difficult to see why Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk’s Flights , belonging to the oeuvre described by the author herself as “constellation novels,” won this year.
Cabinet of curiosities
Tokarczuk teases the reader with a narrative like a patchwork quilt — or rather, to use an imagery from the book, a cabinet of curiosities, where the freakish objects on display include Chopin’s heart as it travels strapped to his sister’s leg, a perverse anatomist, a woman journeying across the world to help her former lover die, a grieving daughter writing to the emperor to stop the embalming of her father’s body, among others. The voices come floating from different centuries and, theoretically, in different languages — Josefine Soliman, the anguished daughter, is an African in Austria, Chopin’s sister is Polish, the anatomist is Dutch, and so on.
In Flights , they speak Polish, but those of us who don’t know Polish, can understand them only in the novel’s English translation — a fact that adds another level to the novel’s polyphony. But, of course, MBI’s mission against simplicity includes the promotion of translated literature, which brings a world different from ours swimming into our ken, complicating our understanding of the real.
Tokarczuk shares the award, and the money that comes with it, with the translator, Jennifer Croft, an American who translates from Polish, Spanish and Ukrainian. The £50,000 prize money was split equally between the two. This gives the translator a status equal to that of the author, and the implications are encouraging.
Translation was, and still is, a badly paid job, which is why few people take it up. Even in the 13 years in which awards like MBI have been popularising translations, they have not arrived readily — Flights , first published in 2007, took 11 years to reach the English-speaking world. And then there is the inescapable fact that MBI does not get as much publicity as the Man Booker does. Moreover, till 2016, MBI was a biennial. In its present yearly avatar, it continues to limit itself to books translated and published in the U.K, which leaves out meritorious English translations from other parts of the globe.
Although the Booker or the Nobel can boost sales, not many heavyweight publishers seem to be too keen on translations. Flights is published by the small-time independent press, Fitzcarraldo Editions.
Indeed, this year’s MBI shortlist has witnessed a rise of the indie publisher, with two books from Tuskar Rock Press, and one each from MacLehose Press, Portobello Books, Oneworld and Fitzcarraldo Editions. Tuscar Rock Press, which has behind it the weight of big names such as author Colm Tóibín and Peter Straus, has published the Hungarian writer László Krasznahorkai, who won the MBI in 2015 (the year in which Amitav Ghosh was also on the shortlist). Portobello Books, one of Britain’s younger independent publishing imprints, focuses on translated fiction, and has some of the most celebrated writers from around the world on its list.
Brightening prospect
That these publishers are taking up translations with enthusiasm would suggest that the scene is brightening up, however slowly. Even if we make an exception for celebrity translators like Ann Goldstein, relatively new names are also getting visibility.
MacLehose Press’s The President’s Gardens by Muhsin Al-Ramli, translated from the Arabic by Luke Leafgren, got the PEN Translates award in 2016.
The Translators Association instituted by Daniel Hahn awarded the First Translation Prize this year to the team translating Svetlana Alexievich.
Hahn, a translator himself, said in an article in The Guardian that while Alexievich very much deserves the Nobel, her translator Bela Shayevich (of Second-Hand Time ) and the Fitzcarraldo editor deserve no less — “Nobody is likely ever to give the literature Nobel to a translator or editor — so my prize has gone to them.”
The times are changing for Indian translators too. Translations of both new and older books are doing well, given the rapidity with which they are hitting the market, and in India at least, big publishers are also involved. Oxford University Press, which has been publishing translated works in English for years now, recently expanded its scope to include translations in Indian languages, beginning with Hindi and Bengali.
Because of the diversity of languages in India, there is a broad scope for intra-regional languages translations here — hot from the press is Arunava Sinha’s Bengali translation of Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar , published originally in Kannada. All this would suggest that translators are in demand like never before and the market includes both English and regional language translators.
With luck, translators here too can look forward to honours. The Crossword Book Award and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature includes translated fiction in English. The Hindu Prize 2018, to be awarded next year, will now cover translations of fiction and non-fiction. The recently announced JCB Prize for Literature is going to give a ₹5 lakh cash prize to the translator if the winner is a translated work.
With the national language debate on the boil again, translations should be welcomed all the more in India. Tokarczuk’s take on ‘national literature’ (she is the first Polish author to win the Booker) is significant. Saying she does not believe in national literature, Tokarczuk added, “I treat literature as a living creation that appears in one language and can later be translated into another, which is another miracle.”
anusua.m@thehindu.co.in
