Adiga's 2nd book to be translated

MANGALORE: Man Booker prize winner Aravind Adiga's second book `Between the Assassinations' will be translated into Norwegian. And translating it will be Hege Mehren, literary translator, who is a member of the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators.
If you think translation is easy business done with the help of a dictionary, Hege begs to differ. Having translated about 50 books in her 12-year career, Hege says literal translations lead to big misunderstandings due to cultural differences.``We have to understand the cultural nuances, we have to get the smells and taste of what the author has imbibed to get our translation right," notes Hege.
She is being assisted by her husband, Iska Rodge, who is a multi-lingual translator and in the business for 30 years. For both this is the first Indian novel to be translated as Adiga's work has fascinated Norwegians. She will deliver the manuscript to the publishers by December 16 and the book will come out within two months. Adiga's first book `The White Tiger which won the Booker prize has already been translated into Norwegian by others.
They walked through the map, which has been handwritten by Adiga in the hard cover of the novel. ``We zeroed in on the imaginary `Kittur here. There are a lot of similarities with Adiga's Kittur and Mangalore," says Hege. Isak adds they had to experience something like a `beedi or `paan to make it understandable to Norwegians as a beedi translated to cigar would be highly misleading. ``Likewise upanayanam (thread ceremony) which is an alien concept in Norway has to be explained and without seeing it, we cannot write or do justice," says Isak. ``It's like an actor living the role. We do the same in our writing," adds Iska, who has translated 300 books so far.
Adiga's second book, `Between the Assassinations, features 12 interlinked short stories. The title refers to the period between the two assassinations of former Prime Ministers of India, Indira Gandhi and her son, Rajiv Gandhi.
“Basically, the India Adiga describes is what we have not heard of. We have heard of Bollywood, colonialism, the Gandhis, border disputes etc. Adiga describes in huge details the corruption, caste system, which we have come here to understand so that we can do justice to the translation, Hegde observes. Both have not met Adiga in person, but have been in contact through mail. ``Some writers are very willing and some are not. This does not make a huge difference (to translation)," Isak adds.
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