The story of ebbs and flows of translated works in India
There have been periods of great momentum, with star publishers involved in these translations. But there have also been periods of languish. Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand confirms that we can tell the world stories from all the languages of the land, p
The story of translations from Indian languages to English has been one of constant ebb and flow. Charismatic editors create space for them within the institutions where they work and fuel their publication. They publish a body of work that feels fresh and exciting. After some years when they leave, the list loses momentum and languishes till someone else arrives and revives the list.
When I edited my first translation in the early 2000s at Orient Blackswan, two major figures had done ground-breaking work and retired from the company. While V Abdullah had published a range of writers such as Vaikom Muhammad Basheer and Ashokamitran, Priya Adarkar published the pioneering Poisoned Bread: Translations from Modern Marathi Dalit Literature (1992), edited by Arjun Dangle, featuring Namdeo Dhasal, Baburao Bagul, Kumud Pawade and others. By my time, the literature in translation list had lost its ballast even if it hadn’t ground to a stop.
During this period, Mini Krishnan who was working for Macmillan, then Orient Blackswan’s neighbour in Chennai, had found funding outside the company and had begun publishing the dazzling Modern Indian Novels in Translation project. And when she left Macmillan, they stopped publishing translations though she revived it at Oxford University Press.
Even if one were to dismiss this as the story of translation lists in educational publishers dipping their toes in trade publishing, things weren’t all that different in Penguin India. Penguin had always been publishing translations, from O V Vijayan’s Legends of Khasak to Haksar’s translations of secular Sanskrit classics, but not in even close to equal numbers to original writing in English. Penguin’s first real success, critical and commercial, came with Sankar’s Chowringhee, translated in 2007 from Bengali to English by Arunava Sinha.
sset in a hotel in Calcutta, telling stories of its workers and visitors, the novel enthralled its English readers as much as it had its Bengali ones. What made it click? The excellence of the content and the translation is not a sufficient answer, for if that were so, many more books should have succeeded before and since. Was it Vikram Seth’s endorsement on the lovely front cover? Were English reading Indians in 2007 getting curious about stories told in the mother tongue? Was it because it was a perfectly carryable small format paperback of just the right thickness and price?
Chowringhee sold more than 25,000 copies. It was published in the United Kingdom, France and more countries. But it took another five years for Penguin to publish a comparable novel in translation, one with the ability to cross over languages and communities and speak intimately to every reader. That’s not because such novels were not available; us commissioning editors weren’t really looking for them. We were not confident of fiction in translation in the way we were about, say, Amitav Ghosh’s novels. When J Devika introduced me to Benyamin and Goat Days, I agonised over signing him, though Aadujeevitam was already well on its way to being a phenomenal success in Malayalam. It was clear to me this story could travel the world, but I wasn’t certain if it would appeal to my colleagues, to critics, to the book trade—all those entities making and lining the path to readers.
Goat Days was lucky. Close to its publication in 2012 we had a new publisher in Penguin who pushed us to publish the book unapologetically, exactly as we would a novel originally written in English. It got a fabulous cover and a thoughtfully conceived publicity plan. We were introducing Benyamin to the English press, so we put together a portfolio—photographs, a long biographical note, Aadujeevitam’s reception in Malayalam. It worked, a buzz was built, we never looked back. We began to publish with ambition and energy: Shamsur Rahman Faruqi’s The Mirror of Beauty, Sachin Kundalkar’s Cobalt Blue, Perumal Murugan’s One Part Woman (all three in 2013), KR Meera’s Hangwoman (2014).
Part of the ambition went into building the Penguin Modern Classics list by bringing together the 20th century masters from as many Indian languages as possible. When I began working on the Hindi and Urdu writers, I discovered that a number of the key texts had already been translated even if the translation hadn’t survived or thrived. There had been projects initiated and nurtured by Katha, Rupa, the Sahitya Akademi, that had flowered and dwindled. Again, the flow and ebb.
Translations took a long time to get the big (non-state-sponsored) prizes though. They were shortlisted for the DSC Prize year after year. All of us agreed they told the unique stories of our lives but we couldn’t make the leap over languages; till a new prize with serious money bullishly put translations at the same level as English writing. Once Jasmine Days (Benyamin’s Mullapoo Niramulla Pakalukal translated by
Shahnaz Habib) won the inaugural JCB Prize in 2018, an opaque and persistent barrier was breached. In quick succession, other translations began to win prizes.
I took a break from book publishing for a few years to return in mid-2021. I am astounded by the changes. Three of the four JCB prizes have been for translations, the DSC prize went to a collection of Kannada stories in translation. And now Gitanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand, Ret Samadhi translated by Daisy Rockwell, has won the coveted International Booker Prize.
International prizes are important. They are mirrors that show us to ourselves. The Booker for The God of Small Things proved beyond doubt to Indians that English had become an Indian language. The White Tiger showcased us in conversation with the world, telling our particular story and its universal anti-values. Tomb of Sand confirms that we can tell the world stories from all the languages of the land. If, like Gitanjali Shree, some young writer is fluent in English and their “milk tongue”, they have the tremendously freeing option of choosing to write in one or the other, or both, without restricting their readership.
I believe this is only the beginning. There will be no more ebbs. We don’t need star publishers to make translations flourish. It is not a trend. This time, it is here to stay and grow. What we urgently need to do is to offer time and space to writers and translators so that they can continue to tell us who we are.