Not lost in translation

Daisy Rockwell suggests that we read translated fiction even if we think it might be difficult.  "Expand your mind! The language is alive! Translation brings you the world!"

Translated fiction is not new to me.  Through my formative years in India, I read quite a few Russian works that had been translated into the English language, which itself was a second language to me.  And, of course, I had to translate for myself British and American English to my version of Indian English ;)

I suppose the difficulty arises in translated stories from the fact that they are set in alien lands, with cultural norms and behaviors that are not what we are used to.  And the names too.  I recall the difficulty in keeping track of the Russian names with all the patronymic and the diminutives, and learning new words like samovars.  But, to me, this was also the attraction.  I was able to transport myself into a part of the world that was far away from me, that was very different from what I was used to, and understand and appreciate the complexity and charm of our lives.

Without translators and their translations, would I have been able to read and enjoy Haruki Murakami's short stories?  Gabriel Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude or Love in the Time of Cholera?

A couple of years ago, reading Tamil works that were translated into English was quite an experience.  To read in the English language and to simultaneously think about the Tamil words that the author might have used in the original was a unique experience.  

After reading Perumal Murugan's One Part Woman, I emailed the translator, Aniruddhan Vasudevan, appreciating his work.  "Your translation works awesomely well. As troubling as the content is--Perumal Murugan's work on the human condition is one of the best in the Indian context--your translation was wonderful."  

Vasudevan replied: "That was my very first translation project, and I am acutely, and perpetually, aware of its shortcomings. So it really means a lot to receive this email from you when I am in the middle of reading through another translation manuscript, feeling both exhilarated and vulnerable!"

Later, it turned out that Vasudevan was collaborating with Archana Venkatesan on a huge project "to produce a complete, scholarly, fully annotated literary English translation of the Tamil Rāmāyaṇa of Kampaṉ."  It is a small world in which the degrees of separation are often not that huge as we might think.

Which brings me to the work in translation that is next on my reading list.  Ties by Domenico Starnone.

I had no idea about this Italian author and perhaps would never have known him if not for Jhumpa Lahiri.  After critical and commercial success that rarely comes to authors, including a movie adaptation of her work, Lahiri packed it all up and moved to Italy.  And she started writing only in Italian.  Not in English or Bengali, which was the language spoken at home as she grew up here in the northeast.  She wanted a language of her own, and not something that was thrust on her as a result of the accident of birth.

I found, and continue to find, this mind-boggling.  Here I am struggling to keep up with Tamil and English that I have practically known all my life, and she just adopts a new language and becomes an expert at it?  

Lahiri also became a translator of Italian works.  A few months ago, she wrote in The New Yorker about an Italian author whose works interested her enough for her to translate too, and about the process of translating.

If an author who was unknown to me was good for Jhumpa Lahiri then who am I to think twice about it?  Unfortunately, the book that she talked about was not available in the local library.  So, I am off to reading Domenico Starnone's Ties, which is not translated by Lahiri.

What is your favorite fiction that was translated into English?