English! Come home to mama!

The apparent purpose of translation is to convey truthfully in one language what has already been conveyed in another. The politics behind the purpose, a most fiercely discussed contemporary affair, is neither my area of expertise nor the purpose of this essay. I shall, instead, discuss translation as a revitalising and a significant shaping influence on language and literature.

The most crucial of the revitalising influences of translations lie in its ability to create what I’d like to term the ‘first utterance’ affect. By ‘first utterance’ affect I mean the use of a word, a combination of words, in a manner that is reminiscent of that phase of language when the metaphoric potential of an expression is still relatively uncharted as its meanings are not yet fixed across multiple contexts. Since it is often difficult to find equivalent words while translating, the equivalent phrase, neologism or compound expression manufactured to approximate the original word, tends to create the ‘first utterance’ affect in the language it is carved from.

Girdhar Rathi and Mahendra Bhalla have translated Bhalla’s Hindi story Kuttegiri into English (published in Indian Literature). While I haven’t had opportunity to read the Hindi ‘original’, the title of the translated version, ‘Doggery’, should sufficiently illustrates my point about ‘first utterance affect’. The translators explain the term in a rather curious footnote: “In India most dogs are stray. The term (here it is not clear whether they’re referring to Kuttegiri or Doggery) has come out of their way of existence.”

True to the promise of the footnote, a great deal of Doggery does stray into the story. The narrative opens with a declaration made by the narrator’s friend – “I import dry fruits from Pakistan. That keeps me going. As for the rest, well, I’m free to indulge in my doggery.” In another dialogue between the doggers, the word is re-constructed:

“We human beings have just one Coffee House, but these parakeets –they have by the thousands, I bet...”

“Doggery?” I needled him.

“They are all real doggers…and not just them. All birds.” He insisted.

“Then why not call it parakeetery?”

“Do, if you wish. However, doggery is the thing. Dogs are dogs even if they live in a city.”

The term is further fleshed out later in the story: “Suddenly it occurred to me that he was making a fool of me, and that he had been doing this all along. Always cheating me – drinking coffee and whisky out of me, all under the guise of a feigned submission. If that was part of his doggery, he was certainly a successful dogger.”

The use of the term Doggery is possible only because it was being translated from the Hindi kuttegiri, a term in circulation; if one were for a moment to assume that the story was not a translation, that the writer were penning it in English as the original, a whole set of paradigms involving ‘doggery’ would change. Doggery, to begin with might be replaced by loafing, or described through a phrase or description where loafing is the functional word. Doggery, with all its associations of life in the alleys, stray dogs, cunning, sexual scavenging, is less likely to seek birth in a work that is not a translation because the local social context within which ‘doggery’ functions precludes English. If kuttegiri lived long enough, and got translated more often, not only will loafing have a more lively bastard sibling, but doggery is likely to inject a new spirit into an idea that is now socially passé.

My experience with translating texts, especially ones that are removed from contemporary language not only by linguistic difference but also by time and taste, has led me to that oft acknowledged by-product of the process of translation – rediscovery and refashioning of literary form and the reconfiguring of contemporary sensibilities, however transitory and ephemeral they might be and however limited be their scope of influence. My interest is definitely not something novel. The blank verse owes its pedigree to tinkering with translations of the Greek Alexandrian line, the hexameter. The English sonnet, the villanelle, the ode, the eclogue – all were not native to the English tongue at the time they were fashioned. It was a combination of an active interest in the Latin and Greek forms and an ongoing process of translation from these languages into English and the consequent formal adjustments that gave English language more than half of its standard, canonised literary forms.

On wonders, however, why then, has English not been able to fashion in its three hundred odd years of interaction with languages of India, a single recognisable form? Perhaps, it has to do with the difference in the relationship that English shared with Latin and Greek, from the relationship it shares with Indian tongues. Perhaps the time was not ripe. But the possibilities are aplenty, and it is bound to happen when English transcends its function as a language of utilitarian functions and begins to seep into the collective consciousness of India, the moment we have sufficient versions of English that correspond to the innumerable micro-communities that make up the subcontinent.

There have been tentative beginnings. Rukmini Bhai Naiyar’s attempts at an English shloka, are delightful in the manner they mirror the Sanskrit form. Rukmini’s versions too, like the best shlokas in Sanskrit, lend different meanings if split at different points of the conjoint compound words; they are essentially based on a quantitative meter, and don’t rhyme as their Sanskrit originals don’t. Where they probably fail is in their inability to duplicate the compressive power of the shloka and their lack of courage to substitute ‘compression’ with a new function or functions.

Since, Rukmini’s English shlokas are not strictly speaking translations, here’s an example of a translation that learns from her formal experiments. The Sanskrit original, is probably one the best known shlokas from the Gita:

Nainum chindanti shastrani, nainamdahati pavakaha

Na chainam kledyantyapo, na shoshayatihi marutaha



Nevershallitshallnevernowordsever

Shallneverknowhurtshallitnever shrivelinnoflaming

Fire. shallitneverwetineverwetwater

Noraridairdryitshallnevernever



But there are other forms that are begging to be looked at: the chaupai, the epigrammatic doha (Pope would have flipped on it!), and in prose-poetry the paheli. Another interesting form from Tamil literature, an oral tradition of performed poetry that is essentially ‘travelogues in verse’, appears to hold great promise for anyone who has the courage to seize upon its potential as a literary form. I do not claim these as forms that will remain, that are sure to offer definite answers to how a fledgling Indian English can grow, but they are sure to point out directions for its growth and appear the best way to bridge the gap between a foreign tongue and an appropriated one.

My own translations from Sanskrit and Hindi literature have, I confess, offered me far more by way of formal possibilities and challenges than any contemporary work in English has. The forms are startlingly original. Had the author/authors of the Kathopanishada approached a modern publisher, he/she/they would have faced one pointed question – What kind of work is this? As a translator, I ask myself, what the answer should be? These are not extended poems, though they are in verse; these are not short stories, though they are stories too; and of course these are not just philosophic aphorisms and ruminations though there is a healthy matrix of both.

The verse form used in Taitriyopanishada, ‘the anuvakaha’ anticipates the modern prose poem in its terseness, its alternating use of heavily end-stopped lines and precariously incomplete sounding endings. Sample this:

Haa vu, Haavu, Haa vu!

I am anna, I am anna, I am anna.

I am annada I am annada I am annada.

I am the maker of shlokas, the maker of shloklas.

I am the first born among the seasons.

Before the gods out of the belly-button.

He who gives me away

Protects me.


I am anna who eats the eater.

I have contempt for the world.

- Taitrriyopanshida, Bhrigu Valli, Dashama Anuvakaha



And this



When man will be able to wrap the sky

Like skin around him,

Then,

Even without knowing gods,

Pain and grief will be destroyed.

- Shwetaashwataropanishad, Shashtha Adhyaya



And this



I am the bearer of the tree.

My fame is like the mountains.

High and pure of men

I am my own nectar.

The effulgent flow.



- - Taitrriyopanshida, Shiksha Valli, Dashama Anuvakaha

My translations of these verses, the anuvakaha, led me to fashion a corresponding English rhythm that was closer to the contemporary style, less earnest in tone, but one that retained the incantatory, prose-poem like sounds.



I am well versed in the rites of the visit.

I have stories and tales. I have talk.

I have he wisdom of laughter.

I have the wit of a smile.

I have the measure of the roads.

I know m city.

I am curious. I speak with strangers.

I listen to friends. I have no foes.

I balance my tongue with my ear

I balance my eye with my nose.

I am prepared. Always.

I wear light clothes.

I wear the fragrances of flowers on my sleeves.

I keep my feet clean.

I keep my coins in my purse.

I keep my hands in my purse alone.



Where I am invited there I go

And the bell rings always

When I am come at the expected time,

In my ladies chamber.

Over steps that lead to the shrine.

- From Atithi, (unpublished work)



In addition to the vigour that re-discovery of forms through translation infuses into a literature, translations also contribute in fashioning a new rhetoric of the language, first within literature, and gradually even in speech. My Penguin edition of Bhagwat Gita, a translation by Juan Mascaro opens thus:

“On the field of Truth, on the battle-field of life, what came to pass, Sanjaya, when my sons and their warriors faced those of my brother Pandu?”

Now, this is a translation of the celebrated opening:

“Dharmakshetrey, kurukshetrey, samveta yuyutsava,

mamakaha pandavascheyva kim kurvata sanjaya”


I do not pretend to stand judge on the quality of the translation; each translator has his own parameters of translation and seeks a different kind of truth-telling in the translation. I would, however, like to point out what gets left out, what added, and how the very manner of telling gets affected by the shift in language, and how this change in the manner-of-telling can affect subsequent literatures being produced in that language even if they are not translations.

In the above example there are several things happening: for one, the translator chooses prose over verse. The result is a certain flattening of the declamatory tone – not necessarily a negative as the English language is not given to a rich hyperbolic poetic tone (Swinburne was crucified for it, and Dylan Thomas escaped because he died too soon). The translation also loses out on the literal meaning rooted in the story of the Mahabharata, when it attempts to reach into the philosophical basis: “the field of truth” and Dharmakshetrey are not synonymous; while “the field of truth” points only towards the metaphysical battlefield of what is right and what is not, “Dharmakshetrey” signifies much more – duty, action and responsibility. Similarily, “the battle-field of life” misses out on Kurukshetra as a tangible geographical entity entirely. The term “yuyutsava” that means an anxious eagerness to do battle, so crucial to the opening scene of the Gita, is entirely left out for the sake of brevity and simplicity (perhaps).

Yet, the translation fashions a new rhetoric for English language in India. It sidles away from the heavy-laden-with-multiple-meanings construction to a simple more prosaic one where the metaphysical and the physical are kept neatly apart. It chose, however to retain a version of ‘elevated speech’ that is created by combining clichés from ‘oriental stories’ like ‘the field of Truth’, ‘the battle-field of life’ and ‘what came to pass’. Once the translator is better aligned with the contemporary post-modern ear, one is more likely to get a translation that reads like this:

“In the battlefield of Kurukshetra and Dharma, collected, arrayed, eager to battle, my sons and Pandu’s boys! Sanjay, what are they doing?”

Raja Rao’s Kanthapura benefits immensely from a combination of standard English and English usage that came into circuit and became acceptable only by the influence of translations into English of Indian works. Sentences that could never be conceived of in English except as translations from another tongue dot Raja Rao’s narrative and consciously help achieve two things: a) communicate the fact that while the language is English, the context, the narrator and the speakers are not speaking in English, and b) to thus attempt to synthesise an Indian English that could be read without their British, American or other foreign associations. Thus, the opening

“Our village – I don’t think you have ever heard about it – Kanthapura is its name, and it is in the province of Kura. High on the Ghats is it, high up the steep mountains that face the cool Arabian seas, up the Malabar coast is it, up up Mangalore and Puttur and many a centre of cardamom and coffee, rice and sugarcane.”

Now, where the “is it” and the “is its name” comes from, and where the seamless narrative will become clear from the following translation of the “translated tongue”:

“Humaara ganv (a sigh here) – mujhey nahin lagta tumney uskey barey mein suna hoga – Kanthapura hai uska naam, aur woh tehsil kura mein parta hai. Unchey Ghat par basa hai who, unchey paharon par jo samandar ko muh kiya hua hai, Malabar key tat sey uttar ko hai woh, Mangalore she bhi aagey, Puttur she bhi aagey aur…”

It’s a crude translation, and ideally should have been in tamil I think, but Hindi will do here to illustrate my point. The only reason why Raja Rao was able to use an alternative rhetoric and deviations from standard syntax is due to the pre-existing “translation English” that is recognised as “Indian” as against other standard forms of English.

Sometimes, this “translation tongue” can form a separate idiom by itself, almost a sub-language, a little like the Anglo-Indian community in India that can choose to lay claim to a dual parentage, but almost always, tend to align themselves to one or the other. Here’s are two amusing examples of this “translation tongue” that could easily form the basis of another poem on Pushpa T:

“Desirous of sustaining the life of his wife, as the month of Sravana was drawing nigh, and therefore intending to send tidings of his welfare (to her) by the cloud, the Yaksha (himself) delighted, bade welcome, in words full of affection, to the cloud to whom an offering of fresh Kutaja flowers had been made.”

- Cantos 4, Purvamegha, Meghdutam, The Meghduta of Kalidasa, Edited by Gopal Raghunath Nandargikar

And, in case it appears an exception, or a case that afflicts only Indian translators, here’s another:


With relish due ambrosia, a dog eats a meatless bone,

Wormy, spittle-wet, putrid, and vile. He would eat

Without qualm even if he saw the lord of gods nearby.

A wretch does not assess the poverty of his lot.

- Among Fools and Kings, Poem 30, by Bhartrihari, translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

These, obviously are no Ezra Pounds at work. But if they were, perhaps, English would have interiorised the shloka and the rasa, the ghazal and the nazm, as much as it has the Haiku. If English literature is to come home to India, creative translations, even mistranslations, if they are better than the ones I have just quoted, will need to lead the way. It is common knowledge that languages are always rooted to experience native to their people, but it is also a fact that languages change, grow and evolve, that when a word is appropriated by a powerful people, it will lend the meaning it is ascribed. If that were not the case, India would have been known by a different name.