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?

A leopard cannot change its spots

A radio show was also how I got to understand a lot of Americana.  Between watching late night shows and reruns and listening to radio programs, it is a surprise that I had any time at all to earn a PhD.  But, hey, the curiosity to understand society has always been a part of who I am.

The program on radio was Paul Harvey with his signature line "and now you know...the rest of the story."  Of course, there was only so much right-wing commentary that I could digest and I stopped listening to his show.  Despite my distaste for his politics, I liked the tagline "and now you know...the rest of the story."  It summarized my own curiosity to know the rest of the story and, later when I started teaching, what I hoped for in students.

The fact that my career was derailed by a layoff does not mean that I have changed.  It is not that I am no longer curious.  "I yam what I yam and that's all what I yam," to quote the spinach-powered philosopher Popeye the Sailor Man.  The world continues to fascinate me.  I now have more free time than ever before to follow up on anything that makes me want to know more.  The blog posts are getting longer as a result!

So, on to today's version of the rest of the story.

A week ago, I ended the post about the flood of female authors whose works I am now reading with this:

 "The winner of the International Booker Prize is, yep, a woman.  A woman from India.  It is for a work of fiction in Hindi that has been translated into English."

Daisy Rockwell is the translator.  It was time to know who Daisy Rockwell is.

I had assumed that she is from the UK because of the old colonial connections.  There are plenty of Britons who are deeply attached to the Subcontinent and their emotions are far different from the white supremacy that drove the older generations to colonize the brown lands.  I would not be surprised, therefore, if a Briton had fallen in love with Hindi and its literature, and had engaged in translating the best works into English.

I am surprised that Daisy Rockwell is not from the UK.

Daisy Rockwell is an American.

Now that you also know she is an American, perhaps you think about the last name and wonder if she is related to a Rockwell that we are all familiar with.  You know, Norman Rockwell.

She is.

Daisy Rockwell comes from a family of artists — some of whose work may be displayed on your kitchen calendar, or the surfaces of your chinaware, or hanging on the walls at your local doctors office.

Rockwell is the granddaughter of Norman Rockwell, who spent his later years living in Arlington, Vermont. She learned to use a paintbrush before a pencil.

How did the granddaughter of Norman Rockwell get interested in Hindi?

I started off being interested in translation in graduate school, when I began my doctorate in South Asian studies. Before studying Hindi, I had studied Latin for many years, as well as French, and some German and ancient Greek. Classical languages really teach you to break down language into microscopic bits, and that is how I first started translating, although not with the purpose of publication.

My advisor in graduate school at the University of Chicago encouraged me, and I also had the great good fortune to take a translation seminar with AK Ramanujan, perhaps the best known and most talented translator from South Asian languages. My subsequent experiences in academia discouraged me from pursuing translation, as it is not currently considered an academically rigorous form of scholarship, at least not in the US. It was not until I turned my back on academia altogether that I returned to translation.

Academia is a strange world.  What academics value and do not value as scholarship will amaze and amuse the vast majority who live outside the ivory towers.

Daisy Rockwell now mostly translates works of female authors.  Why so?  She explained in this interview in 2018:

I decided two years ago that I wanted to focus on translating women authors. I realised suddenly that I’d only been translating men (Ashk, Bhisham Sahni, and Shrilal Shukla), and I felt fed up with the male gaze. It’s a bit of a Twitter truism to say this, but there are many interesting stories being told by women, and I was tired of translating detailed descriptions of male desire and women’s breasts. All of my most recent translations, therefore, are of works by women, and the stories really are much more diverse.

As a reader, I feel the difference in the storytelling between male and female authors, which is why I am now more inclined to read books by women.  The difference in the storytelling is also why I am feasting on books authored by non-whites.

The interviewer asked Rockwell, "what would you to say to readers who think reading in translation feels like it’s “difficult”?"

Daisy Rockwell's reply?  "Expand your mind! The language is alive! Translation brings you the world!"

Soon I will get on to Daisy Rockwell's translation of Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree--this year's International Booker winner.

He lit the flame ... their dishonor will remain

In March 2016, when the primaries were underway across the country, I was worried sick about the near-certainty of tRump as the GOP's nominee for the presidency.  On March 9, 2016, in what comes across not as six years ago but six decades ago, I wrote about the global fascination with "the strongman" and their blatant disregard for liberty and democratic values.  I worried that the emergence of tRump as a candidate--and, gasp, as President of the proverbial free world--would reinforce the idea that liberal democracies are for pussies!

In those halcyon days, I used to be friends with Republicans and right-of-center people in India.  I did not allow our differences in how we make collective decisions come in the way of friendly interactions.  Two commenters at my blog, who often were the only commenters, wore their political colors quite loudly even when they posted their comments.  One of them responded to my post--may I remind you that this was in March 2016--with insights that, in retrospect, were accurate:

In a recent conversation with my dad, I speculated how much Trump would use executive orders to get his way. I can't imagine Congress giving him everything, or even half of what, he wants, and it seems his personality to respond with an executive order. (In ways he reminds me of a toddler in a sandbox, preferring to go home rather than share his toys.) Can't you hear it now? "Congress didn't pass my ban on Muslim immigrants so I will use executive order." He'll say that he is following the will of the people since the people elected him. I wonder how long it takes to initiate impeachment proceedings?

Ten months before the eventual inauguration, she--a die hard Republican--could see that he could be impeached.  She was incorrect in that it was not one impeachment but two!  Those sentences make it clear that the commenter would never have voted for tRump, right?

Wrong!

One after another, Republican friends embraced the demagogue.  A friendly couple who valued moral behavior as born-again Christians and who were dead set against tRump eventually voted for him.  Across the street, neighbors became jubilant tRump red-hatters.  The commenter voted for tRump.  They all voted for tRump fully knowing how flawed and dangerous he was.  All our friendships ended.

I ended my friendship with her and a few more Republicans who voted for tRump in the November election because of a conviction that there is no such thing as a good tRump voter.

I worried that disasters were bound to happen.  Disasters that I knew I was incapable of imagining.  I was, and am, incapable, because I am a rule-following citizen.  I don't have the ability to imagine actions otherwise.  But, I knew it would be disastrous.

The political rhetoric attacking immigrants, non-Christians, and people of color, was not easy to handle for this brown-skinned, accented, naturalized citizen who came to America in 1987 from Tamil Nadu, deep in southern India.  I wrote a commentary about my existential angst in this unmapped political landscape.  Writing and sharing my ideas with a few others is how I engage with this world.

On January 6, 2021, when the events unfolded live on television and Twitter, I was shocked but not surprised one bit.  I always feared that tRump and his enablers were capable of actions that were well beyond the rule-of-law and my imaginations.

Source

After all that, an overwhelming percentage of Republicans continue to support tRump.  I am sure the people with whom I used to be friends will even gladly vote for him again if he contested in 2024.  Being in power and owning us liberals are more important to them than democracy, rule of law, and plain human decency.

Against such a dark backdrop are a few voices like Liz Cheney's.  After her father's involvement in the Iraq War and waterboarding of prisoners, and with the daughter's politics not being different from her father's, I never imagined I would ever write with profound appreciation.

In a liberal democracy, we get the leaders that we deserve.  Our collective future depends on what half of the electorate decides about their views of tRump and democracy.  I hope that they listened to Liz Cheney who made it clear:

I say this to my Republican colleagues who are defending the indefensible.  There will come a day when Donald Trump is gone, but your dishonor will remain.