Time they are found in translation

With the world’s eyes on India, now may be the best time for Indian language writers to go global. G Sampath reports

The Indian publishing industry has two step-children: poetry and translations. Unless the poets of the world unite and take over the means of publishing, it will continue to remain almost impossible for you to get your poems published at someone else’s expense. As for translators, they are expected to approach their projects with the generosity — spiritual as well as material — of a social worker.

Not surprisingly, resentment has always simmered among the poorer (literally) cousins of the Vikram Seths and Salman Rushdies of the world toiling away in an Indian language, unread, unrecognised and unpampered by a global readership only because nobody is around to translate them into English. And if someone did translate their books, nobody would publish it.

And if someone did publish it, the English media would mostly ignore it, so that readers didn’t get to know about it, and sales remained modest. And because sales remained modest, publishers and wannabe translators had even less incentive to take up new translation projects.

As a result, while English-speaking readers of India gladly pick up a Pamuk or a Murakami or a Marquez — all in translation — from a bookshop in London, New York or Mumbai, you can’t seem to find a single Indian language writer in the same book rack. Does this mean that, of all the authors writing in any of the 22 official Indian languages today, not one is in the same league as Pamuk or Marquez?

There are many factors working against Indian language writers, says Urvashi Bhutalia of Zubaan, a Delhi-based publisher with a strong translation list. “First of all, language publishers never considered selling translation rights as a key source of income. A Kannada publisher, for example, did not try to sell the English rights for his author. So a Kannada writer would be widely read in Kannada but little known in the English-speaking ‘mainstream’.”

Another factor working against Indian languages is that their speakers did not colonise other people halfway across the world. So their profile remained ‘regional’. “Spanish and Japanese are national languages, and therefore have an international stature. Globally you are likely to have more people — with a literary inclination — who know Spanish and also English, as compared to, say, Marathi and English,” says Butalia. “As a result, these languages have a wider pool of potential translators.”

The biggest problem, according to popular Tamil novelist Vaasanthi, is the dearth of good translators. “Translators need special training. But India does not have a translation infrastructure. So translators are paid peanuts, which means poor quality work.” she says. “If you read Marquez in English, you don’t feel you’re reading a translation. Our translations are seldom as good. But you must also remember that the cultural gap to be bridged between an Indian language and English is far greater than between two Indian languages or between two European languages. So it is that much harder work.”

Mini Krishnan, consulting editor, translations, at Oxford University Press, believes the English media isn’t doing its bit to increase the visibility of India language writers. “It is just a matter of letting people know that a particular book by a particular author from a particular language is now available in English. But today, even this information is not provided to readers,” she says. 

Of course, publicity deficiency is an old malady that tends to afflict translations. While publishers like to blame the media for ignoring literary masterpieces translated from Indian languages, the media likes to blame the publishers for scrimping on publicity and promotion.

Krishnan also believes that the cultural alienation of most city-dwellers from their native roots has something to do it. “Many who grew up studying in English medium schools are language orphans. They rarely know their mother tongue well enough to engage with its literature. So where are your translators going to come from?”

In this bleak scenario, hoping to turn things around is freelance writer Mita Kapur, who has just set up Siyahi, a literary consultancy that hopes to act as a bridge between Indian language writers and English publishers. Kapur, who organised the Jaipur literary festival in 2006 and 2007, believes now is the best time to promote Indian literature in the global marketplace. “The world is interested in India, and publishers in the West want to look beyond Indian English writers,” she says.

To promote the cause of Indian language writers, Kapur is organising an international conference in Jaipur in January 2008, titled, ‘Translating Bharat: Language, globalisation and the right to be read’. The conference will bring authors, translators and publishers together to thrash out the issues involved in making Indian language writers available to a global readership.

But how long will it take before there emerges a ‘level playing field’ between an Oriya writing in English and an Oriya writing in Oriya? “I don’t know,” says Kapur. Perhaps as soon as one can earn a decent living from literary translation.