“I’m hopeful for the future of translations”

{ INTERVIEW } ARUNAVA SINHA, TRANSLATOR, WINNER OF THE SIXTH VANI FOUNDATION DISTINGUISHED TRANSLATOR AWARD 2022 On how he got started as a translator, and on translating a new Bangla book every four months

1

What drew you to translation at first?

I did my first book-length translation in 1992 at the request of the writer Shankar when I translated his novel Chowringhee from Bangla to English. This was after I had translated some short stories from Bangla for a city magazine that some of us used to bring out in Calcutta. That translation was not meant for publication at that point. It was meant for, I believe, a French publisher to read and decide whether to publish Chowringhee in French or not.

14 years later, Diya Kar – who was an editor with Penguin at that time – wanted to publish an English translation of the novel. Diya got in touch with Shankar, and he told her that an English translation had been done but he had forgotten the name of the translator. Diya got hold of that manuscript, and it had my name on it. She called up to check whether I was indeed the translator. Of course, I was. It was fantastic!

My first book was thanks to happenstance. It came at the right time. I was at the age where I was heading towards a full-blown mid-life crisis of questioning everything that I had done until then. The translation project gave me an opportunity to do something else that I enjoyed and would be meaningful in some way. It has been 15 years since that first translation of mine was published.

2 What made you feel confident that you were equally proficient in English and Bangla, and that you could translate?

When I began translating, I had read and written in English all through my life, school and college and afterwards as a journalist. Bangla is my mother tongue. At that point, I had not written much in Bangla beyond school but I always read in Bangla so I was conversant with the literature. It was not as though I was coming to the language or the literature after a long gap.

As for whether I was proficient, well, you do not know till you try, right? Even now I see translations that are so brilliant that sometimes I despair of ever reaching those standards.

3

You have translated over 70 books. How did you end up doing so much?

I would say a great interest in translation, and a deep love for what I’m doing. I translate a new book every three or four months, and I enjoy that very much. What’s there to complain? In fact, there are about another five or six translations lying with various publishers at the moment.

4

Which translations are you really proud of?

I’m very pleased that I translated Khwabnama written by Bangladeshi novelist Akhteruzzaman Elias. Translations that I did in the first five or six years, I would probably go and rework them to some extent now. I was still learning.