On the first day of The Hindu Lit for Life 2015, Mini Krishnan conducted a workshop on translation, titled ‘Word Worlds’.
During the two-hour session, she discussed the many things a translator should keep in mind to effectively express words of a text in a different language. Here are five takeaways from the workshop:
1. While the significance of an Indian woman garlanding a man is obvious to an Indian reader, a foreign reader is oblivious to the same. While translating text, you aren’t just translating language, but also culture and history. It is important to keep that in mind because context is lost when text is translated literally.
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2. When working with regional texts set in a period, say the 1800s, remember that you are translating for a current audience. Texts are also retranslated for a different generation, so don’t worry about how a text will read in a different period of time.
3. The same text, translated by different translators, can be interpreted and crafted very differently. So, don’t let down the original writer. Remember that you are only translating; don’t overwrite, transgress or flatten the text too much.
4. Keep in mind the style of the original writer. For example, if the style is rugged and hard-hitting, the translated work should also reflect that.
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5. To identify if a piece of writing was originally written in a certain language, look beyond the words and examine the ethos of the piece.