‘Read the text for what it is’

On shattering the canon, being a ‘self in translation’, and faithfulness in language

Many think that translation is an act of creating a new work. Do you hold a similar view? Is it time to dismantle the original-vs-translation binary? Translation is definitely an act of creating a new work, and new not simply in terms of its appearance in a different language. I firmly believe that the translator should try as much as possible to remain an invisible presence in the translated text, but this is also an impossible task. Every word chosen, every comma added to a sentence, renders the translator visible because these choices are personal, subjective, pointing to the translator’s own creative, aesthetic and political tendencies. Also, different languages behave differently and there simply is no way to adhere to a notion — a false notion — of faithfulness to the original in linguistic terms. Multiple readings can reveal the inherent universal “affect” of a text and, to my mind, a translator’s task is to carry this over as closely as possible. I have found comparisons between the original and the translation — often framed in terms of “lost or found in translation,” and often by people who do not read or understand the original language — redundant and unhelpful. Read the text for what it is.

Do you feel personally responsible for translating more women writers?

I read way more women writers than men writers, and way more writers of all genders from the Global South. I would love to translate more women writers. In fact, the next couple of books I am working on are by women. But I do think that gender is only one of the factors that result in the marginalisation and minoritisation of writers in any given literary canon; it is indeed so in the Malayalam literary canon.

Anthologies, special issues, literary panels, conferences, poetry meets, boards of influential literary institutions that are all-male, or with the token presence of women, are entirely common in Kerala to this day. But equally common is the fact that these spaces remain predominantly savarna, heterosexual and ableist, but this fact is less remarked upon. As a translator, I don’t think my job is to recreate the existing canon in a different language. In fact, translation opens up the potential to dismantle the canon.

You live in the UK and translate from Malayalam to English. How does this physical distance impact your work?

There are positive and negative impacts. I don’t get to read new books as easily as I could have if I lived in Kerala. I am removed from conversations in the public sphere. The positive impact has more to do with my English than my Malayalam. As migrants living in the coloniser’s country, the stories we tell are in constant translation. I am, in other words, a self in translation. As a translator, the question, “What does it mean to live untranslatability?” is something that I grapple with, and I think it has an impact on how I translate.