Unveiling the word

Reading a translation," remarked the celebrated Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, on his trip to India some years ago, "is like kissin...

Reading a translation," remarked the celebrated Israeli poet, Yehuda Amichai, on his trip to India some years ago, "is like kissing a woman through a veil." Despite the sexist and Orientalist overtones one may choose to read into that, I recall being struck by the near-aphoristic quality of the observation.

It’s strangely apt, isn’t it? On reading translations of the Chilean poet, Neruda, I remember being assailed by the feeling that I could almost reach out and touch the Spanish language, its texture, its cadences. And yet, there was also the sense of something withheld — some elusive fragrance, some indefinable, perhaps mythical, essence. (There are also occasions, some self-satisfied translators tell me, when the veil is actually more interesting than a face-to-face confrontation!)

It is easy enough to imagine the enduring fascination that the act of translation holds for so many artisans of the word — the sheer excitement of creatively grappling with language, excavating its latent resources,sifting through semantic resonances, testing the farthest syntactic frontiers… No wonder there are some who prefer to term it "transcreation" — the process is, after all, about transmigrating the soul of a poem into another lexical universe. A birthing of a kind.

Although not bilingually competent enough to attempt it myself, I think I can intuit — and therefore, envy — the thrill of the translator’s challenge that so many of my colleagues at Mumbai’s Poetry Circle seem to enjoy. For Abhay Sardesai, translating from Marathi and Gujarati becomes a kind of idiomatic limbering-up, frequently becoming an inspirational source for his own poetry. For T R Joy, there is the sheer exhilaration of discovering another pantheon of poets in Malayalam — not merely the canon of English poets he was reared on in school and college. Ranjit Hoskote relishes the process of "testing your own language, pushing limits, finding new solutions".

On the other hand, for those of us who read poetry (a small but yetundismissable minority in this world), translation offers access to other cultural sensibilities and mythologies, as well as a glimpse of unexplored linguistic pasturelands. I think of all the poets I could never have read without translation — from Baudelaire to Akhmatova, from Basho to Omar Khayyam. In a subcontinent teeming with innumerable languages and dialects, translation becomes a vital means of understanding one’s own neighbours. As Menka Shivdasani and Anju Makhija point out, the anguish of Partition that permeates the fibre of so much Sindhi poetry, may have been doomed to a circumscribed readership if it had not been for their efforts at anthologising a book of English translations.

Recently, the Poetry Circle, in collaboration with the NCPA’s interactive forum — Chauraha (which I happen to co-ordinate), has been presenting several poetry-related events, entitled the Polyphony series. A section of this series has been devoted exclusively to translation, in which a variety of poetsengaged in such projects, share excerpts of their work.

The next encounter of Poetry in Translation will feature translators from three languages: Kashmiri represented by Ranjit Hoskote, Oriya represented by Prabhanjan Mishra and Hindi represented by Yash Merchant.

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And for those who secretly believe that a poetry reading is about the endless droning monotone of people who love the sound of their own voices, think again. Tomorrow at NCPA, a vibrant variety of poetic voices will be heard — the musings of Lalleshwari, the 12th century woman mystic of Kashmir, seguing with the romantic melancholy of Hindi film icon, Meena Kumari’s verses.

Try it out. Revel in the polyglottal richness of image and rhythm. Share the translator’s perennial struggle to combine the integrity of the original work with the freedom of a new creation. And if you have any views about the translations in question, air them. Because that’s what a forum like Chauraha’ is all about, anyway.Polyphony III: Poetry in translationon June 25, 1998 at the Audio Visual Room, NCPA. Time 6.30 pm.