This literature professor in Kolkata has made translation a team work

A recent winner of the Sahitya Akademi Prize for Translation, Prof. Mrinmoy Pramanick has used the talent of his students to bring about collaborative translation of several works; says their creativity goes unnoticed in our education system

Mrinmoy Pramanick | Photo Credit: SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT

A young professor at Calcutta University, who is also a recent recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award, is using an unusual method of translation that is benefiting literature and students of literature alike: engaging the entire classroom in the process.

“Collaborative translation is practised in many places across the world but it is not very common, certainly not in India. Mostly, translation is done by one person or by a group. In classroom collaboration, translation happens along with teaching — as part of teaching. Each student comments on the other’s translation. It is quite unique,” said Mrinmoy Pramanick, assistant professor of Comparative Indian Language and Literature at the university.

Last month, Prof. Pramanick, 37, got the Sahitya Akademi Award for Dalit Nandantattwa, the Bengali translation — from Marathi — of Dalit Sahityache Soundaryashstra by Sharankumar Limbale.

Participatory approach

“Classroom collaborative translation is an academic work of togetherness among the students. It makes their friendship stronger and they engage with the text more [than they would do otherwise]. It is a participatory teaching-learning process, it is about giving authority to the students also, instead of keeping it with the teacher alone,” Prof. Pramanick told The Hindu.

Through this method, his students have successfully translated into Bangla a collection of interviews of Mr. Limbale (published in 2022), the autobiography of Kannada poet Siddalingaiah (published last year), and a collection of poems by Khasi poet Kynpham Singh Nongkynrih (to be published this month). Two translations are in progress: that of a novel by Malayalam writer O.V. Vijayan (Khasakkinte Itihasam, which was the first book to be taken up by his class back in 2016 and which is still awaiting completion) and of a novel in Toto language by Dhaniram Toto.

“This idea came to me when I thought of making internal exams more fruitful by giving marks for translation. And that’s when I found we have very good human resource in the classroom, which often goes unnoticed because our education system does not promote creativity,” the professor said.

‘Need for funds’

He said his department could do with more funds because while classroom translation is free, publication of translations needs money. According to him, he and his students have, on several occasions, spent from their pockets to work on tribal languages.

“I will devote my life to translation, mostly translation of marginal languages. I believe translation can lead to peace and inclusiveness. It makes many invisible languages, communities and authors visible and strongly sends a message to the nation that we need to go out of the classroom and think beyond a particular corpus of literature we have been used to decade after decade,” Prof. Pramanick said.