Where precisely is the harmony achieved? In language, in expression, in meaning. It is this self-talking, this internal monologue posturing as dialogue, that the reader reads as the translated text. Often, within the translator, they are both the same person, the translator themselves, now acting as one, now as the other.
The translator embraces both the speaker-writer and the listener-reader within themselves and then proceeds to create a nuanced, lengthy dialogue with them both. Everything else is simply its expression, an expression negotiated with the writer and reader through the text. The harmony really exists within the translator, for it exists in the language-less zone. Translation is quite simply an act of bringing in harmony and balance. Sensitivity is its own kind of skill in this enterprise, as skill in translation is necessarily expanding one’s sensitivity to rhythms of language, meaning and expression in both languages – really, in the language-less zone that underlies both. The sensitive, skilled literary translator is no traitor, either to the writer or the reader. On the other hand I feel that translation is moulded, quite intuitively, by samvada and samanyava, harmony and integration. “Translator / traitor” is a well-worn phrase, but I think it is an idea that comes out of a culture that sees literature, and everything else, as the product of agon, or conflict and contest. Nor are the writer and translator in competition. No, translation is certainly not in the “service” of the source text. My understanding of translation is more in line with Kalyan Raman’s perspective than Ambai’s, perhaps because I am a practising translator. This ties to what I perceive as a general lack of critical discourse in the larger English-driven Indian literature space.Īs both a writer, writing in Tamil, and a translator working between Tamil and English, and thus perhaps as someone who understands both sides of this debate, I have a few things to say on this matter. This is important, for we have so few literary translators around us, and hardly any discussions of their craft, either in print or in literary festivals or otherwise. That is, translation is not finding an exact equivalence of the source text in the other language – it is not in the “service” of the source text – but rather, it is an act of creating a negotiated text that does justice to the source text while creating a literary piece in the target language. N Kalyan Raman’s response, from a translator’s perspective, was to clarify the practices in contemporary translation. Her protests were a writer’s, and, despite some generalisations that I couldn’t entirely get behind, I could sympathise with her writer’s need to be well-represented, her apprehensions about certain perceptions of a hierarchy between English and Tamil – consequently, between the translator and the writer – and the demands of the market.
Ambai had written about her perception of certain inadequacies in literary translation from an Indian language like Tamil into English.
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