Books: Arunava Sinha’s secrets of translation from Indian languages

108405976 EP1: Books: Arunava Sinha’s secrets of translation from Indian languages Arunava Sinha translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and non-fiction from Bangladesh and India into English. He also translates fiction from English into Bengali. Over 70 of his translations have been published so far in India, the UK and the US. He has won India's top translation prize, the Crossword Award for Translated Books, twice. He was born and grew up in Kolkata and lives and writes in New Delhi. He teaches at the Ashoka University, where he is the co-director of the Ashoka Centre for Translation. He is also the books editor at Scroll.in. He is currently on the jury of the prestigious literary prize, the Dublin Literary Award. Tell me Arunava, 70 books! You are prolific. How and when do you find the time to translate? I think I pretty much translate the majority of my waking hours other than when I'm teaching or doing things at the university and when I'm working on my other gig, which is to edit the book section for Scroll. But other than these, I think I'm translating all the time. So, basically, you live and breathe and everything to do with translation is. You could say that yes. Years ago, I remember when you were talking about you entering the translation space. You said that it was still a very new idea you were translating most often on your phone and on the move. Does that still hold true? No, I'm not sure I meant that I translate most often on the phone or on the move, although that did happen a fair amount of time during the day. And it still happens. But no, I am fortunate enough now to be able to work mostly on my laptop, but I do manage to do it wherever I am, so I usually carry my laptop wherever I go, whether I am at home, or whether I'm at the university or whether I'm travelling. Any time that I get, I will compulsively translate. So, when you do that, you mean to say you carry the print edition of the book with you that you're translating or you keep the soft copy files open on your laptop, and then you translate. How does that work? Yes, usually these days PDFs are available, so that's not a problem. On the rare occasion that PDFs are not available, I scan the book up and turn it into a PDF or if I don't have the time to scan it up, I actually just take photographs with my mobile and then construct a PDF out of those images. But yes, so on the lefthand side of my screen I always have the original text open and on the righthand side of my screen I use a very basic writing software which only literally allows me to type and nothing else. There's no formatting, nothing fancy, there’s no thesaurus, no spell check, nothing at all. But it just keeps me undistracted. So I can type in a flow. So you prefer working from soft copy to soft copy rather than reading the print and then putting it onto the soft copy, right? Oh yes. The amount of effort involved in swivelling your head to the left to look at the print copy and then swelling it back to the screen is quite a lot when you're doing it constantly. So, I use a laptop with a small screen so that I can take the whole thing at one glance. So, it’s just my eyes flicking from the left to the right and back, but nothing more than that. That's very interesting, Arunava, because my eyes begin to water after a while by looking so intently at the screen. So, it's quite remarkable that you've managed to translate over 70 books in this manner. Well, I think the screen and I have become very close friends now and I don't seem to have a problem, although I have a fairly high-powered set of glasses. Oddly enough, it doesn't seem to trouble me to look at the screen for as long as I need to, so I'm good with that. Oh, fortunate you. You should teach me some of those tricks as well. Even this business I told you about, head and eye movement, is something that I've realised. It's not as though I set out or strategise to do it that way. It just turned out to be the most convenient way of doing it. But it's a very critical point that you raise in terms of health management and being a prolific translator, these are little details which people forget you know to take into account. So, it is very important that you raise it isn't? Could be. But I think these are things that you just pick up as you go along. I don't think you can consciously adopt these practices because everyone has their own comfortable way of working. And I don't think you can actually copy someone else's. If you translated 70, it means you have read far more to decide which books you will engage with. How do you actually select the books that you wish to translate? Well, there are a number of criteria. Initially, when I started out, it was relatively easier because there was this entire wealth of untranslated literature in Bangla and there are so many great writers and so many great books that it was a problem of plenty, if any. But since then, things have changed. Many more translators have come into the picture. Publishers’ priorities have changed. So, my criteria at the moment are, unless I'm actually commissioned to do a particular book, which I like very much, my criteria are in no particular order. First, that I must really love the book, two that I feel that the book is adding something new to the overall body of writing. I mean, some books are great, but they don't really do anything new. So, I have moved on from those, let's say, and of course all this is, in my view only my perspective, my judgement. Then, if a book is written by an author who is perhaps under-represented or working from the literary and cultural margins, then there is a greater opportunity for amplification. Then I will opt for those writers and those books, so that's about a very broad set of parameters. But within these there are individual quirks and likes and dislikes. Does this mean that at any point of time you have begun a translation and abandoned it midway for whatever reason? Does that also happen? No, no, that hasn't happened. But what has happened is that I have sometimes completed translations and then waited a long time to find a publisher. That's very interesting. You continue to translate irrespective of the translated work finding an immediate home. Is that it? Yes, that's absolutely it. I translate because I really love translating and I really love translating a particular book. So at that point, publishing or publication is not on my mind at all. And somehow it always eventually turns out useful in one way or another. For example, over the years I used to do what I call riaz by translating short stories. Really at random, picking them on the basis of stories that I really love. And poetry as well, and all the work that I've done, without thinking of a particular volume or of the book being published, eventually did find its way to certain anthologies or collections. So, it always eventually turns out okay in the sense that the work does get out there. It's very interesting that you use the word riaz because that is my mantra as well. Riaz is really what keeps us going in the field of literature. Actually, it holds true for any sphere, but particularly in literature where you gain experience and knowledge and awareness by working slowly and steadily and on a daily basis with your craft, isn't it? Oh yes, absolutely. The daily basis, I couldn't emphasise more. It is very important if there's something you want to do and you love doing. It is very important, I think, to do it every single day, no matter how or where or when. You cannot lose touch with your craft. You absolutely cannot. When you translate from Bengali to English, do you only focus upon translating the text and ensuring that it is available in English, or do you also when you go back to do the edits, try and ensure and incorporate the author’s voice that individuality. Is it actually even possible to the tenor of the author's voice and the dialects that they sometimes use in Bangla. Is it possible? Well, The thing is that, you know this phrase ‘lost in translation’ I think starts out by making a very spurious set of assumptions. Somehow the assumption that what is written in one language must sound exactly the same in another language is itself a fallacious proposition. It's not going to. So, I abandoned those thoughts. My thinking is that if I am a very close, attentive reader, there's a lot I'm getting out of a text. I'm getting a basic level of meaning. I'm getting a basic level of music. I'm getting rhythms, I'm getting sounds. I'm getting illusions, I'm getting ambiguities. I'm getting silences. And my objective is to put all of these in the new language in a way that suggests that it is still the work that was first written in Bangla but now is dressed in different clothes. So, when you take off one set of clothes and put on another, it's still the same person, but you're not going to look the same. The whole idea behind changing clothes, in fact, to look somewhat different. So that's what's inevitably going to happen to a translation, but there are all these elements that can be preserved, protected and nurtured. And if you are led very closely by the text, which is something that someone I consider my guru in translations, which is Greggory Rabassa. He said, I am always led by the text and if Rabassa could produce, among others, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the way he did by being led by the text, then that's good enough as a mantra. So, I just am led closely by the text and all that I'm seeing, all that I'm thinking, all that I'm feeling. That I'm hearing, I tried to get all of these across into the new language in a manner that is as close and similar as possible to the Bangla text. That's why I keep emphasising the text; the text, not the voice, not the author, the text. In the process of taking the text into the new language, all the things that have gone into it, also in a good translation, will become apparent in the translated version. That's the way I look at it, but if anyone expects that the English language, which is very far removed from the Bangla language, will sound the same or follow the same principles of, say, sentence construction as Bangla, well, no, that's not going to happen. Then it's not going to read like a text in English anymore. The greatest injustice you can do to a text, which reads beautifully in one language, is to turn it into a bumpy, choppy pothole ride in the translated text because you are so intent on protecting some expressions and some sounds from the original. You can't do that. It doesn't help at all. That’s interesting, first of all I did not use the phrase lost in translation specifically because for me it's a very complicated phrase. Secondly, I am so glad you said that about looking at what reads smoothly and you're talking about the language being riddled with potholes, etc. Is it the experience of reading that you are looking at or is it being true to the text and led by the text? These are such complicated nuances that one brings to play in one’s craft that sometimes it becomes quite difficult to talk about it, but have you noticed over the years whether, as you continue to translate? If it has made a difference to the kind of translating that you do, because this awareness is there in you. Well, yes, most certainly, all that I'm talking about are things that I've gleaned from the experience of translation. So certainly I'm a very different translator now from the time that I started out. And these are things you instinctively, I think, adopt without articulating them or framing them in those terms. But as you go along and you start realising what's going on and then if you know, there are thoughtful interviews like this one, then you can articulate them. But for me, I'm an organic translator, so I don't go by principles of translation or theories. I just work the way that seems most natural. And the point you made, by the way, thank you very much for not bringing up the phrase. Lost in translation, that point you made about the text vis-a-vis the reading experience, I don't see the 2 of them as being different because the text may exist in a certain way, but it is only the reading experience that gives it life. The text in itself unread, untouched by eyes, is nothing, right? It's just out there or locked away somewhere. It's only when I read it that it comes alive that it becomes a real living entity. So for me, the reading experience that I will offer to the reader in the new language is paramount. It is absolutely crucial. But I don't see it as being distinct from the text itself. The two of them are the same really. Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, co-founder, Ace Literary Consulting and Associate Professor, School of Modern Media Studies, UPES University, has been associated with the publishing industry since the early 1990s. Audio production: Anil Chauhan 108405977 EP2: ‘Startups are not going to become unicorns by translating great works of literature’This is Part 2 of a conversation with writer and translator Arunava Sinha. In part one, Arunava had discussed how he translates, what are the criteria that determine the book he selects for translation and how he translates from Bangla into English, defining himself as an organic translator. We pick up where we left off, with Arunava Sinha talking about the text versus the reading experience. Jaya Bhattacharji Rose: How much of yourself do you actually seep into the translations you undertake? I'm asking this specifically with reference to your latest translation, Dear Reader: A Writer 's Memoir by Shankar. It's a memoir about writing, but did parts of it resonate with you? Did it make a qualitative difference through the kind of translation you had undertaken? Arunava Sinha: Consciously, I don't put myself into my translations at all. I don't know how much of my subconscious or unconscious self seeps in. But consciously, no; I have no style of my own. I have no thoughts, no ideas, nothing that I particularly want to inject into the text. And I feel that would be unethical in any case. So, while I really love reading the text that I translate, including Shankar's Dear Reader, it resonates with me as a reader, as a lover of books, as a lover of literature. But not necessarily in terms of being a writer. I don't think a translator is a writer exactly. The translator uses the tools of writing, but a writer sits down with an empty piece of paper in front of them, or an empty screen. And they're delving deep into themselves to figure out what to write and to imagine. And to put words to it. The translator is performing a script, a script that's already there and you're performing it, perhaps in a slightly altered medium. So maybe you're singing another version of a song, or you're doing an interpretative dance of an existing choreography. But you're not dreaming it up from scratch and you are not there to showcase your ability as a translator. You are trying to be as transparent as possible; because, let's say when XYZ sings a song, let's say today if someone were to sing a Taylor Swift song, then they would say, OK, this is me singing. But when the translator is concerned, the translator is not trying to say this is me translating and therefore bear with me, live with my peculiar or unique ways of doing things. No. If I am translating Shankar, then it is Shankar that I expect you are reading. And I'm not trying to claim or pretend otherwise, so nothing of me consciously. I'm sure unconsciously things go in the choice of words and so on is dictated by my vocabulary. What is top of mind and so on are things you can't avoid, but also I keep maintaining that a translator's best friend is an excellent thesaurus. The point is not to have everything in your head, but the point is to know where to look. These days translators have so many great tools to use to figure things out. For example, one of the most useful things for me is Google images, because when I see a word, let's say in Bangla, and I'm not quite able to find its English equivalent. Then I will Google it and look at the images and then see what words are being used for the images and try to figure out something. Sometimes you don't even know what something looks like. In an ideal world, the translator should be able to visit the geography in which the book is set and go walk around it or drive around it and get all the individual little details that may be implied in the text but are not visibly present. So, these would be great. But you know a great text will also bring these things alive even without your physically having to be there, so it also works both ways. It's a matter of attentive reading, very attentive, close reading, internalising and then putting it out in the new language. But it is not about putting myself in there at all. Let me pick up that thread you said about tools that are readily available. Maybe we can segue into what is your opinion on AI-engineered translations? That's a tool. Yeah, AI-like translations are good with word meanings. They're good with text where all you're looking for is the content. So, for example, legal documents or technical documents and so on. But they're not very good when much of the value and the richness lies in the language itself. Because AI does not work the way a human mind works, AI works by mining vast amounts of data and text and then predicting the best way of translating something. For example, if the word A in Bangla has been translated as the word B in English, most often on the Internet, then that is what an AI-led program will pick and it will not always be accurate to the context. So that's the next thing, which is that it's good with individual words, but it is not good when it has to interpret words in a certain context. And because language is essentially rich, ambiguous, sometimes deliberately attempting to mean more than one thing, sometimes leaving a lot of interpretation to the reader, AI doesn't do a very good job there yet. Maybe one day it will. If AI programs are built by mining the way human translators think, if they can do that, then maybe it will come somewhere close. At this moment, they're very good for, as I said, technical documents. But not a great deal more, oddly enough, because poetry is very condensed. Sometimes AI programs simply by picking equivalent words for each word, end up with something that sounds like poetry. Because it's not spelled out too much in poetry, right? Unlike prose. But don't be fooled by it, because it is at the end of the day a program that is working without any understanding. It does not know anything, or rather it does not understand what the text is saying. It is simply using linguistic tools to convert. A text from one language to another. And I would argue that if your translator, whether it is a human being or a machine, does not understand what it is doing, then it cannot be a very high quality translation. We never know what lies in the immediate future, but it is a tango which is going to take place rather furiously with human translators and AI engineer translations. This has already begun in the audio book space. Let's see what lies ahead, isn't it? Yes, I am personally very disappointed with this thought that it is necessary to have a work of art created by a human being translated by a machine. As I said, I can understand where volumes and reams of documents have to be translated. I'm fully in agreement there. But a work of art, a story, a play, a poem, a novel has been written by a human being. And then you're bringing in a machine to translate it. You're doing the service to the cause you're doing the service to the text. You are either saying that the human being was not necessary to write this original piece of text, because hey, a machine can do just as well. Or you are saying that it does not matter, I will live with the degradation, perhaps, for the sake of speed, and I don't know that anything more is achieved other than speed. You know, I am a big believer in technology. I've always followed new technology trends, always adopted them, but at the cost of the human imagination and art and the mind, never. That makes absolutely no sense. And it also betrays a very poor understanding of art. I agree with you there. Absolutely you're spot on over there, but a lot of the entrepreneurs etc in the digital space are beginning to think otherwise because they think that the AI interventions increase productivity and thus increase the content and cater to the consumption requirements of the audiences. But that's something which will take place later. I don't think it's going to be resolved. It's going to be a long drawn conversation and probably a battle. No, but yeah, there's a joke in there. The joke is that these entrepreneurs who might be trying to look at literary translation through machines probably have not figured out how little it pays. Their startups are not going to become unicorns by translating great works of literature into other languages because it is such a poorly paid field in any case. That it is not going to make any business sense for them. I'm glad you brought in the cost input because a lot of people are taken in by the glamour, but they don't ever realise the cost, not just in terms of financial but the human resources, etc. How much investment is made. For many translators it is first a labour of love. I suspect more than anything else. Isn't it? Well, I'm OK with that. I think that writing, all art is a labour of love to begin with. The moment you're doing it in order to make money, I think you're already compromising somewhere. I'm not saying that you should not make money, but the moment you are creating art with the idea that this will be a saleable product, then you're immediately thinking of a customer. You're immediately thinking of yourself as a brand. And these definitely compromise the aesthetic and the artistic qualities of the work. So all work, all artistic work, is a labour of love to begin with. Even if it brings in a lot of money, as cinema does, or as paintings do, or in some cases, books too. So that's not the problem. My problem lies elsewhere. My problem lies in the fact that the publishing structure is such today that real works of literature are throttled. The structure does not support wide dissemination of great books at an affordable price. As a result of which, everything has become constricted. Frankly, the only people making money from publishing are publishers themselves and the people who work for them. Who are some of my best friends, and I do not grudge the fact that they earn a living from publishing, but where would publishing be if there were no writers? And yet publishing continues to thrive on its own terms, without ensuring that writers thrive. Translators are a small subset of writers. Can you imagine, for example, in the film business, a director telling a script writer or a director telling an actor: ‘Guess what, we can't pay you very much so why don't you come and shoot at night while you do your day job during the day?’ Can you imagine that happening? It's not going to happen, right? And yet very blithely, publishers and editors have created a structure where the message that has gone down to writers is don't give up your job, don't stop working. Look for other ways to earn a living, but give us your best work and make it so brilliant that we will sell many hundreds of thousands of copies of it. And make lots of money for the publishing company. And if we succeed, then you will get some of the share. There's something fundamentally wrong; this structure is broken. The moment the market has come into literature, it is broken. Because art is not a reproducible commodity, right? You only have one masterpiece, one copy of a masterpiece, the original, and so there will always be one buyer who will buy it. And painters can live on it. If their work is good enough. But books, writers cannot live on their books, never mind translators, simply because the whole industry structure has been created to throttle good work rather than to make sure that it is widely available at prices that more people can buy so that everyone can earn enough to make a living and then go on to write more and better stuff? No. So there's something fundamentally wrong there. You teach, you translate, moderate panel discussions. You're a literary journalist. You commission pertinent articles on publishing and books. But you rarely write translator’s notes in the books that you work upon. Why? Why do we need translator’s notes? Author doesn't write a note usually. Why should the translation have a note? I don't think the translation is to draw attention to itself as a translation. I think this is what, in a sense, actually restricts readership. By creating a new additional construct, an additional flow as it were, which is quite unnecessary. The text speaks for itself. Let the text speak for itself. If the translator has not been able to do all the talking through the text, then they failed and there is no need to supplant that with a note to explain. I mean, to me, it's like using footnotes and so on. Then you are copying out. You're saying that I couldn't do it in my translation, so I'm giving you additional explanations. I don't see the need. I mean it's not a case of creating a flying buttress. But it's a case of trying to get a little more of you, or maybe understanding your thought process because you know Arunava, you are so insightful about the work you do, you have that objectivity. And if you write while on the project, you never know what kind of literary crumbs you leave behind. Even if you may forget over a period of time, you still don't think it may serve a purpose? Jaya, first of all, it's alright, if these crumbs are not picked up and eaten, I mean they arise and then they can be strewn and they can disappear. They're not going to change the world. It's the books themselves that will stay. These points can be made in other forums such as this interview. There can be other essays, there can be learned platforms, there can be even separate books on it. But I don't find the need to include them in the translated books themselves, least of all do I find the need to talk about talk as a translator. I mean, the translator just must not be there, and this is an example I can't stop quoting, citing enough of so I will mention it again. For example, one of the most famous lines of world literature is ‘All happy families are alike. All unhappy families are unhappy in their own way’, right? And you ask anyone and they'll tell you that’s Tolstoy, which is correct, but which is also incorrect, because that's not actually Tolstoy. That's actually Constance Garnet, his English language translator. But it does not matter. Constance Garnett is immortal in that everybody quotes the words that she wrote and attributes them to Tolstoy. That is her twofold success; that she is Tolstoy, and nevertheless, she has the last laugh because the words are hers. And that, to me, is the model of the translator. You know, the translators themselves can be known to a smaller community which is interested in translating, which is interested in finding out more. But I would be very happy if the average reader came away from a book thinking I've just read whoever it is, you know. I'm just looking up at the books I've translated, so I've just read Shankar, I've read Taslima Nasreen or I've read Akhteruzzaman Elias, or I've read Manoranjan and not added in translation. I would like them not to add the words in translation. I would like them to think in their heads they've read their authors. The translator is starkly visible on every word because it is their choice. But also in my ideal world, completely invisible. So why intrude? Why insert yourself suddenly, in there with learned notes and comments and explanations of your choices and so on. Not necessary. Those can happen on separate platforms. Jaya Bhattacharji Rose, co-founder, Ace Literary Consulting and Associate Professor, School of Modern Media Studies, UPES University, has been associated with the publishing industry since the early 1990s. Audio production: Anil Chauhan