And native expressions vanished and not using a hint!
— Sundara Ramaswamy (translated by Aniruddhan Vasudevan)
This yr we stayed in a single day at a buddy’s place for Thanksgiving and the following day, as we have been about to depart, he popped into my hand a couple of books from his elegant library. All of them translations of Tamil fiction which I had already learn within the supply language. I left with two of them, Sundara Ramaswamy’s Oru Puliamarathin Kathai translated as The Tamarind Tree by Aniruddhan Vasudevan, and Jeyamohan’s Aram translated as Tales of the True by Priyamvada Ramkumar, however I had critical doubts about my intentions to learn them. For a reader whose bucket record of books retains growing in inverse proportion to the remaining years allotted to him, what might be gained in expending his most valuable mortality on what at finest is likely to be satisfactory re-runs?
Studying translations is an enthusiasm that I take pleasure in every now and then with the mad hope of discovering an answer to among the vexing issues that I had encountered in my feeble makes an attempt at it. I ended up studying each books in a matter of days, which is extraordinary contemplating my studying tempo and behavior of studying translations alongside the originals.
The calculated danger of translating Sundara Ramaswamy
Sundara Ramaswamy’s Oru Puliamarathin Kathai was one among my earliest introductions to the “literary” Tamil novel. Justly revered as a Tamil modernist traditional, it was additionally most likely one of many earliest cases within the historical past of the fashionable Tamil novel the place a topos (on this case a busy intersection of a small city in Tamil Nadu) is the protagonist. Following the protagonist’s unrecorded historical past from its heydays to its eventual demise, we get a brilliantly fictionalised account of a bit of Tamil society in transition. Looking back, the novel was additionally prescient in anticipating the potent combine of faith and politics as an electoral technique and the best way public consent will be manipulated / manufactured with the assistance of a colluding media. That it could actually put on all its socio-historic chops so calmly and so humorously is without doubt one of the causes for its endurance.
I is likely to be flawed, however Oru Puliamarathin Kathai may also be the one Tamil novel to have been translated 3 times! Virtually 30 years after Cre-A printed the Tamil model in 1966, Penguin revealed a translation in 1995 (The Story of a Tamarind Tree) by S Krishnan. Krishnan in his quick translator’s be aware throws up his palms on the impossibility of discovering an English equal for “the particular type of patois” that the characters converse within the unique. His answer is to render dialogue in “easy, even colourless English, eschewing phrases and idioms which might be native to English.” To the disgruntled reader who already has one foot out the door, he presents as enticement his paraphrases, additions, and deletions “within the curiosity of readability.” After such a cop-out of a translator’s be aware, the reader is nearly tempted to agree with one occasion of Krishnan’s generic assertion about “all translations”: his translation is a “calculated danger anyway”. However Krishnan doth protest an excessive amount of, barring his technique to sporadically convert first-person speech to boring third-person reportage his translation fares significantly better than his be aware portended.
In 2013, Penguin revealed one other translation of Oru Puliamarathin Kathai, by Blake Wentworth, a Professor at Berkeley who selected to complicate the simplicity of the unique title with one thing weightier: Tamarind Historical past. Sadly, I couldn’t pay money for this model, so I can’t touch upon the interpretation. However a fellow translator remembers it as being a “very easy” learn.
That brings me to the most recent model of this legendary novel, Aniruddhan Vasudevan’s The Tamarind Tree, revealed by Penguin Books in India and Amazon Crossing worldwide in 2022. What bugged me on the outset was there was no translator’s be aware on this model that defined the rationale for a 3rd translation. The afterword by Sundara Ramaswamy’s kids highlights the continued relevance of the novel. Nevertheless, the editorial selections made through the translation don’t present this rationale both.
The “Oru” in Oru Puliamarathin Kathai has the texture of oral lore, that sometimes begins with generic indefiniteness as in ஒரு ஊர்ல ஒரு நரி இருந்துதாம்… (In a village there was a fox … ). Intuitively one understands that the novel is “a narrative a couple of tamarind tree”. Because the novel unfolds, the indefiniteness steadily vanishes and it turns into a specific story a couple of specific tamarind tree on this specific city in Nagercoil. That’s, the generic tamarind tree acquires specificity (it turns into The Tamarind Tree) thereby aiding the suspension of disbelief. However on the finish of the novel, the tree and the city through which it’s rooted acquires universality, therefore making the novel a story about any city in a state of transition being ushered into modernity.
This motion from A → The → Any – from generic to specific to common – is in some measure the success of the novel. Krishnan’s title is the closest to the unique, The Story of a Tamarind Tree. Blake Wentworth tries to be extra daring (not essentially factor) and opts for a meta-title as if attempting to indicate that the novel is not only a narrative however can also be a historical past of a specific society, not simply official historical past however unofficial oral historical past, historical past with a zing, as if it have been infused with one thing tangy, a “Tamarind Historical past”, so to talk.
Aniruddhan’s translation drops the story/story from the title, maybe with the thought that it would make it too tautological (in spite of everything a novel is a narrative), however one has to chop some slack right here. The translator is in a singular place the place nobody has ever been earlier than – he’s translating a twice-translated novel, and all the easy and zany titles appear to be already taken! However no hurt accomplished, The Tamarind Tree works fairly nicely.
Tamil is notoriously diglossic and this diglossia poses a extreme hurdle for a translator. Buried on this diglossia are shades of that means that allude to caste and standing. Extra essential, the diction modulates the tone throughout an entire vary of feelings. For my part, what is going to endure in Sundara Ramaswamy’s fictional oeuvre is his extraordinary humour, which manages to be each sarcastic and humane. A number of sections of Oru Puliamarathin Kathai are laugh-out humorous and this time, as I used to be re-reading them in mattress, my spouse admonished me to cease rattling it!
An astute reader will even discover on this novel the roots of his erstwhile disciple Jeyamohan’s strategy of modulating diction and use of dialect to traverse the comedic spectrum in each his quick and lengthy fiction codecs. Though the e book is rife with comedic interactions amongst a plethora of characters, three comedic voices make it riotously humorous: the voices of Damodara Asan the raconteur par excellence of the e book, the municipality official Valli Nayagam Pillai, and Isakki the native journalist. In my thoughts, the success of any translation of Oru Puliamarathin Kathai is essentially decided by how these three voices are rendered within the goal language, on this case, English.
Aniruddhan manages to get most of it proper within the episode through which Damodaran Asan manages to stop Koplan from axing the tamarind tree, the marvellous forwards and backwards between the 2. The formality of English as necessitated by the interpretation mutes the comedic register a bit, however that is unavoidable (as Krishnan lamented in his translator’s be aware). However by and enormous, the episode remains to be humorous, even when it’s not the laugh-out funniness of the unique. As a pattern, let’s randomly decide a snippet:
“நீ லேசுப்பட்டவன் இல்லே. நான் ஒன்னெ ஒரு மாதிரி நெனச்சுப்போட்டேன். சாமி ஒனக்குப் பிரத்தியக்ஷமாட்டுல்லா நிக்கு.”
“ஊரிலே அப்படித்தான் பேச்சு.”
“நல்ல பேருனு சொல்லு”
“ஊர்விட்டு ஊரு தெரியும். நெடுகப்பரவிட்டு இப்பம்”
“You aren’t an odd fellow. I used to be flawed in my judgment of you. It’s clear that the deity makes itself identified to you.”
“That’s what they are saying within the village,” Koplan stated, proud.
“So you’ve gotten status.”
“Initially solely folks within the close by villages knew. However now it’s unfold even farther.”
— Aniruddhan Vasudevan’s translation
The entire episode hinges on how nicely Asan strings Koplan alongside on his ego journey and manoeuvers him right into a delicate touchdown. The phrase பிரத்தியக்ஷம் is a heavy one, with Sanskrit origins (pratyaksha, that which is perceptible to the attention), when it instantly exhibits up within the demotic, particularly after these first two sentences, and is adopted by that splendid நிக்கு (nikku – stand), it’s intrinsically humorous, even with out the context. In English the sentences usually are not intrinsically humorous – the comedy wants the context to work. Word additionally how English wants modifiers like proud to convey the tone, which can also be intrinsic to the Tamil demotic. Additionally “I used to be flawed in my judgment of you” is simply too clunky, a easy “I used to be flawed about you” would have labored as nicely. (Krishnan’s translation is easier: “You aren’t an odd fellow, as I assumed.” However he must observe that with a clunky “You’re deep”.)
Typically in a translation, it’s important to bail out and never strive too onerous for precise constancy. Within the latter half of the e book, Isakki the intrepid journalist meets the press proprietor Francis in one among his morning forays. Within the ensuing dialog, the comedic excessive level hinges on Tamil orthography. In Tamil, schooling (கல்வி) differs from intercourse (கலவி) solely by the diacritical dot. Francis asks Isakki if he has ample dot fonts after which makes the purpose concerning the lamentable state of the nation’s schooling by saying that even when Isakki didn’t have ample dot fonts, he might use schooling and intercourse interchangeably and nothing could be misplaced. That is how Aniruddhan interprets this passage:
“I hope you’ve gotten sufficient dots to place above the I. In any other case, you’ll find yourself printing Kalavi (intercourse) as an alternative of Kalvi (schooling). Though it’s not going to be the tip of the world….”
Right here is Krishnan:
Francis requested him if he had sufficient dots to place over the second letter to make it into an “I”. “In case you don’t have sufficient dots, go forward and print it as ‘kalavi’, what distinction does it make?”
He then follows it with an evidence of the “elaborate pun.”
My translation intuition initially went down the rabbit gap of Faculty and Stool however returned to its senses ultimately. Maybe, “Do you’ve gotten sufficient dots to place above ல, in any other case you’ll find yourself printing கலவி (kalavi: intercourse) as an alternative of கல்வி (kalvi: schooling)?
I’m maybe nitpicking, however that is for instance the nuances that go right into a translation. The interpretation runs to 190 pages and barring a couple of hiccups like those I discussed it’s fairly breezy and straightforward to learn. There are some tremendous bits that I relished (“they have been like newsreels on legs”, “return telegram”, “like a desk fan turning he moved his head” [or oscillating/turned his head perhaps?], the scene through which Isakki is bitching concerning the spouse of his late boss and plenty of extra). The narrative parts are ported over precisely with out an excessive amount of fuss and have a chic really feel to them. It is a non-intrusive translation that’s humorous regardless of the lack of diglossic texture. That in itself makes this a worthwhile rendition.
The dharma of translating Jeyamohan
Think about a translator’s debut expending three extra phrases than the unique’s succinct single-word title (Aram versus Tales of the True), after which expending much more phrases explaining this enhance in her translator’s be aware, first rejecting a fairly fashionable and virtually Tamil-sounding different (Dharma) as a result of she has an issue with equivalents of Sanskrit origin, after which invoking Sanskrit (for a citation from the Upanishads) to justify her prolixity. Off the bat, you would possibly say this translator is beginning on a sticky wicket. However fortunately for us, she bats proper via, and after studying 12 splendid tales you’re virtually tempted to imagine that she might need a degree.
With over 300 quick tales, near a dozen novels, a number of works of literary criticism, and a 26-volume fictional recreation of the Mahabharatha (Venmurasu, White Drum) Jeyamohan is arguably probably the most prolific Tamil author of contemporary instances. That begets the query of what number of extra ought to he write earlier than the overlords of the interpretation business deign to bestow their graces on him. However now a number of of his books are lastly within the technique of being translated.
The Tamil phrase “Aram”, sometimes construed as advantage or ethics, may be very rooted within the Tamil psyche; from works as historical because the Thirukkural (one-third of whose 1,330 couplets are dedicated to the exposition of Aram) via its splendid formulation of retributory justice within the nice epic Cilappathikaram all the way down to trendy instances, it has traversed via over 2,000 years of haloed literature, accruing a number of shades of that means, each private and non-private, in that lengthy journey. Ethos is the equal Greek phrase that involves thoughts, which simplistically interprets as “a way of life.” It’s on this sense (by what excellent does one stay?) that Jeyamohan explores it on this set of tales that he wrote in a frenzy in an astonishing span of simply 40 days.
The Tamil studying public is by now fairly used to those “frenzies” of Jeyamohan, the latest one leading to a spate of 100 tales and, in fact, the decade-long one which delivered his 26-part roman-flueve in each day instalments. Though not his biggest work, Aram is likely to be his hottest. It apparently combines biography and fiction, even giving some tales the intrigue of gossip. From fashionable writers, singers, forest officers, and civil service bureaucrats to forest officers, missionary docs, and cranky visionaries, the e book abounds with a plethora of fascinating real-life personalities who make it an intriguing learn. As they go about their non-public and public lives, they reveal each to themselves and the reader an moral epiphany that clarifies issues. Barring one or two tales, Jeyamohan retains it very all the way down to earth with out veering off to a few of his extra esoteric issues.
Priyamvada Ramkumar’s translation is excellent, and I don’t imply it as mere pat-on-the-back phrases of encouragement for a beginner translator. I learn it over a weekend and I hardly felt the necessity to go to the unique, attempting to make clear sentences that sounded clunky. There’s a fantastic rhythm to this translation that makes full use of the vary of the English language to realize its ends.
Tamil is for my part a really emotive language that always veers to the melodramatic. A narrative like Aram that opens this assortment can solely be conceived in Tamil. That we will now learn it in English with out flinching or frowning is a testomony to the standard of this translation. Usually a translator falls into the entice of staying too near the Tamil phrasing leading to a translation that sounds Tanglish, and whereas enhancing they attempt to overcompensate – leading to a muffling of the emotional crescendo of the unique. Ramkumar strikes this excellent stability the place the limpidness of the English sentence is sustained even because it makes an attempt to exit of its consolation zone to realize the emotional import of its Tamil counterpart. I adduce the superbly rendered first part of “Palm-Leaf Cross” as proof.
Jeyamohan is a grasp at establishing the believability of his character and its setting. He has near an eidetic reminiscence, and this enables him to effortlessly amass element upon element to exactly delineate the traits of his characters and make them “people”. Enhancing novice translators for a few of our literary specials, I might see what number of of them have been extra inquisitive about getting the highs of the story, the startling metaphor, or the intelligent flip of phrase proper. They didn’t thoughts lacking out on the, to their thoughts, “minor particulars”.
Because the syntactic constructions of Tamil and English are inverted, a sentence that grows accreting particulars poses a dilemma for the translator – ought to they hold it complete, or chop it into smaller bits, thereby sacrificing the music of the longer sentence? Ramkumar fortunately has prevented this pitfall and I relished (with a jealous cherry on prime) her cake-like layered sentence constructions.
Let’s pattern these traces to provide you a way of what I’m admiring: Right here’s a self-description of the narrator of “Meal-Tally”, one of many most interesting on this assortment:
“தலையில் வைத்த தேங்காயெண்ணை முகத்தில் வியர்வையுடன் சேர்ந்து வழிய கணுக்கால்மேலே ஏறிய ஒற்றைவேட்டியும் பானைக்குள் சுருக்கி வைத்த சட்டையும் செருப்பில்லாத கால்களுமாக பிரமை பிடித்து நடந்து போனேன்.”
“With coconut oil oozing from my hair and mingling with the sweat on my face, clad in a half-length vaetti that stopped wanting my shin, a shirt crumpled from having been saved in a pot, and with ft unshod, I walked in a trance.”
No element is misplaced, every little thing is in place in a single sentence and extra importantly (for me, as this can’t be at all times achieved) the main points are layered in the identical order as the unique.
Right here’s the IAS officer from the intensely shifting “A Hundred Armchairs” describing the sight of his vagrant mom in a hospital shed:
“மூன்றாவது ஷெட்டின் கடைசித்தூணருகே என் அம்மா கிடப்பதைப் பார்த்துவிட்டேன். ஒரு பனம்பாயில் மல்லாந்து கிடந்தாள். பெரும்பாலும் நிர்வாணமாக. கரிய வயிறு பெரிதாக உப்பி எழுந்து ஒருபக்கமாக சரிந்திருந்தது. கைகால்கள் வீங்கித் தோல்சுருக்கங்கள் விரிந்து பளபளவென்றிருந்தன. முலைகள் அழுக்கு பைகள் போல இருபக்கமும் சரிந்து கிடந்தன. வாய் திறந்து கரிய ஒற்றைப்பல்லும் தேரட்டை போன்ற ஈறுகளும் தெரிந்தன. தலையில் முடி சிக்குப் பிடித்துச் சாணி போல ஒட்டியிருந்தது.”
“Within the third shed, I caught sight of my mom mendacity beside the final pillar. Sprawled on her again, she lay on a palm-straw mat, virtually bare. Her darkish stomach was distended and had tilted to 1 aspect from its personal weight. Her palms and legs have been swollen, stretching her wrinkled pores and skin to a shining smoothness. Her breasts had slumped on both aspect, like filthy baggage. Her mouth was open, revealing a solitary black tooth and leech-like gums. Dirty matted hair was plastered to her head, like cow dung.”
Right here once more, visible particulars are amassed in fast succession in an virtually staccato vogue producing a rhythm that’s poignant (aside from “personal weight” that stands out). And that final sentence is a small miracle!
This was why I used to be mightily miffed encountering, a few paragraphs later a sentence that started like this: “As Amma had simply gorged on one thing, she had discovered someplace to the purpose of dullness…”
Agraharam glowing like “a soft-red brushstroke towards the black canvas of the evening”, “Within the huge sky of vacancy, a solitary soundwave – the only remnant of ‘existence’ – wiggled in awe on the sight of its personal being.”, ‘wavy sweeps of the broom have been punctuated with a wide range of footprints…” I can go on and on however I’ll depart the remaining for the discovering pleasures of the long run reader.
Permit me to nitpick one final time. Not like the Tamil “தாயோளி” using “motherfucker” in its endearing tone or as meaningless superfluous slang is just not as prevalent as “fuck”, “bastard” and even “asshole”. It labored for me when the context was one among rage however jarred elsewhere.
After I met Sundara Ramaswamy within the early Nineteen Nineties, we talked about Spanish literature in translation. He advised me that to translate the “greats” the translator wants mighty wings that can permit them to soar with the authors. After studying The Tamarind Tree and Tales of the True, I’m happy to understand that the way forward for Tamil literature in translation is in good palms.
Nambikrishnan writes and interprets in English below the pen title Nakul Vāc. His English translations have appeared in Sahitya Akademi’s Indian Literature journal and a number of other on-line literary magazines. Nambikrishnan’s first assortment of Tamil essays Pandiaattam was revealed in 2020. His second e book on TS Eliot was revealed in 2023 and his newest assortment of essays is slated to return out on the Chennai Bookfair in January 2024. He writes and interprets fiction, essays, and poetry.