For the third year BA student Mohammed Irshad, the story My Thai Cat by Pratoomeratha Zeng looked similar to the practice of having marriage of frogs to get rain. His classmate Fabina is moved by The Weed , the English translation of the story written in Punjabi by Amrita Pritam, which is about hardship an illiterate woman from a village faces in a city.
These two youths, along with seven other undergraduate students, have gone on to translate the stories they liked into Kannada from English. These translations had been brought out in the book Nammanuvada (our translation), which was released at a function held at the University College here on Tuesday.
The college's Associate Professor Rajalakshmi N.K. said in order to develop proficiency in English and Kannada among students, she thought of involving them in the translation of a few English short stories. “I had a set of 20 short stories. I asked interested students to come forward to translate the stories they liked,” she said. The translation was to be done during the third semester holidays. Rekha B. Shetty translated Arjun , a story written by Mridula Nath Chakraborty which was based on the story of Mahasweta Devi. This story was about a tree that remains intact amidst developments happening around it. The students said it was a challenge to translate English short stories.
“I sat with a dictionary to understand the usage and the context the author uses the word,” said Jayaprakash, who has translated Anton Chekhov's Bet . The book contains stories translated by Shabnam, Nimisha Domili, Sushma, Pramila D'Souza, and Sarita. The book has been published by Anekanta Prakshana, which is run by Ms. Rajalakshmi and her husband Vijaykumar, who is a professor at the College.
