Gained in translation

What happens when a twoword expression you grew up giggling atmdashhearing family elders describe a morose personmdashpresents itself as the title of a classic The English edition of the Gujarati novel Dukhi Dadiba elicited my curiosity followed by a wonderful readSeasoned translators Aban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal have remarkably captured the consummate artistry with which the author of Dukhi Dadiba the prolific Dadi Edulji Taraporewala 18681914 etched credible characters and placed them in upperclass Parsi society of late 19thcentury Bombay The narrative involves a mysteriously missing scion a heroine grappling with the ageold dilemma of marrying for love or money other women characters unusually spirited for their time and milieu and exciting courtroom drama for a finaleSpecialist litterateurs across the genres of fiction poetry and stage writing balance views on the pleasures and pitfalls of GujaratitoEnglish translation Why were you drawn to translating this novelAban Mukherji A friend came across this book while looking through the belongings of a relative who had passed on She asked if I would like to have it I readily accepted little realising its value at that timeTulsi Vatsal We do not read a book with the object of translating or publishing it We were drawn to MV Dhurandharrsquos evocative illustrations and then found that the rather improbable plot with its twists and turns as well as the short chapters made for a quick entertaining read The setting of the tale when Indian especially Parsi society faced the challenges of Westernisation added to the appealAban Mukherji and Tulsi Vatsal the translators of Dukhi DadibaWhat have you collaborated on earlierAM One of our most challenging translations was Karan Ghelo the last Rajput King of Gujarat Being the first modern original Gujarati novel 1866 which has never been out of print we felt very responsible for our translation quality Working on it gave us tremendous satisfactionTV Apart from being the first Gujarati novel Nandshankar Mehtarsquos Karan Gehlo translated for Penguin 2015 set in the time of nascent nationalism tells a story of defeatmdashof the last Hindu ruler of GujaratYour lively lines keep reader attention close to the narrative How have you retained contemporary appeal of a centuryold textAM Taraporewalarsquos style being surprisingly modern and straightforward it wasnrsquot difficult to visualise his characters and their surroundingsTV The key feature of our translation process is reading the original text aloud This gives a feel for pacing rhythm and flow We also read the English translation aloud to see if we have caught the flavour of the original There is a considerable amount of dialogue in Dukhi Dadiba Conversations between father and daughter mother and son should sound as if happening todayAlso readAs Maha govt pussyfoots on PoP ban natureforward bappa bhakts find idol greener than even shaaduWhat challenges were faced while translatingAM Serialised in the magazine Masik Majah Monthly Merriment in 1898 this work was so popular with the public that the magazine sales soared and led to the book published in 1913 a year before Taraporewala died at the age of 46 Serialisation implied a lot of repetition of almost whole chapters at times We had to do away with these in a way that did no disservice to the originalTV The author obviously felt it necessary to recap and remind readers of past events Removing the very tedious repetition while making the text flow seamlessly was a challengeSitanshu Yashaschandra right Murali Ranganathan author of The First World War Adventures of Nariman KarkariaWhich reallife characters inspired Taraporewala to ldquodocufictionaliserdquo their storyAM We have not found anything about the families on which this story is based I feel the novel should be judged on its own meritTV After checking basic sources we havenrsquot been able to find out It seems surprising that a story concerning two of the most prominent families in Mumbai a missing heir and a sensational court trial finds no mention in Parsi Prakash or other sourcesQuotes of Indian saints and poets are interspersed within chaptersmdashincongruous with Parsi authorshipAM Taraporewala was a highly educated person wellversed in Gujarati and even I think Marathi literature It isnrsquot surprising that he would intersperse such quotes in his Gujarati prose the style perhaps borrowed from Farsi literature Parsis then were much more attuned to their Gujarati culture They thought in the language and composed many works in itTV Yes educated people in those days read widely and were familiar with FarsiCommending Mukherji and Vatsal poetplaywright and translator Sitanshu Yashaschandra believes Parsi authors contributed the most enjoyable texts in modern Gujarati literature ldquoTaraporewala describes a culture in transition 19thcentury Bombay where Parsis were a bridge between aggressive exploitative colonial rulers and the resilient clever HinduMuslim society Dadiba is dukhi not only personally but societally He and other characters tell their own stories and a larger story of the fashionable Westernisation of India and assertion of the quietly resistant Eastern culture helping Dadiba to be sukhildquoThe translation is sensitive to this complexity lucid and true to the multiculturality and multihistoricity of the plot I salute the translators and publisher for keeping the Parsi Gujarati title intact The graph of the readerrsquos interest curves upwards as the reading proceeds With neocolonial powers on our doorsteps today the theme of the original book is no more irrelevant Pareen Dadiba and Jehangir make a triangle that is eternal and forming anewrdquoYashaschandra has translated his Gujarati poet contemporaries and essays in Gujarati literary criticism Invited by the Sahitya Akademi to translate his Gujarati poems for an anthology in English he shares ldquoHow hazardous yet beautiful is the road of selftranslation calling for honed skills and alert selfdiscipline at their best The cup never more than the drink a translation should be nearly invisible not a selfimportant language strutting around Translating into English I am not doing a favour to the Gujarati authorrsquos work If at all it is a gift to those who cannot read Gujarati but are good at reading EnglishrdquoTonalities differ particularly in the poetry of the cultures Yashaschandra likens translating from Gujarati to English unlike into Hindi to using an inner audiometer with precision ldquoA certain English whisper can do the work of a specific Gujarati shoutmdashand the other way round Syntax differs too Gujarati in my original poems walks the distances its own way English in my translation of my poems walks quite differently The routes I choose for my poems in English translation are often deviant from those my original Gujarati poems take to travel towards readersldquolsquoLiteraturersquo began being written in English around the 14th century rather than Latin as was the practice till then The earliest lsquoliteraryrsquo texts in Gujarati rather than Sanskrit appeared in the 12th century A translator needs to feel proud and confident that the work has a long strong history This awareness selects texts for their innate strength not as samples of exotica for the amused Western reader Indian writing in English errs the most on this countrdquoTranslating living authors of Gujarati works theatre practitioner Naushil Mehta emphasises ldquoItrsquos important to have an author freely allow you to express the originalrsquos concerns your own way Remaining faithful to the text can be detrimental to the project Taking Gujarati material to English versions my toughest call is selecting the subject Not everything travels well into EnglishrdquoMehtarsquos decision to adapt Madhu Ryersquos Gujarati novel Kimball Ravenswood into the English play A Suitable Bride was a risk in 1996 as Ketan Mehtarsquos TV series Mr Yogi based on the same novel was already aired Proving a smash hit in Bombay A Suitable Bride pulled a memorable performance in Khadakwasla at the NDA before 2500 officer cadetsmdashldquoThe ideal audience for the story of NRI Yogesh Patel come brideshopping to Indiardquo says Mehta ldquoMost of those boys might have gone on to undertake Yogeshrsquos journey in the next few yearsrdquoA colourful 2022 translation is Murali Ranganathanrsquos The First World War Adventures of Nariman Karkaria Part memoirpart autobiographypart travelogue it is possibly the sole trench account by an Indian from 1922 released as a serial in the JameJamshed newspaper Conversant with at least six languages Ranganathan says ldquoLiving in a cosmopolitan building society in Mulund as kids we watched great Gujarati and Marathi television shows like Avo Mari Sathe Kilbil and Santakukdirdquo Interpreting the exploits of his NavsaritoBombay transplanted protagonist who survived action on three fronts with a British army regiment Ranganathanrsquos biggest task was convincing himself about tackling Karkariarsquos Gujarati manuscript without reaching fora dictionaryGujarati was the predominant language of the Parsis till the 1950s Bombay households read an impressive number of journals in their mother tongue including JameJamshed KaisereHind AkhbareSaudagar and Mumbai Samachar the mainstay of every other Gujaratispeaking communityAs Ranganathan said in an interview to Naresh Fernandes of Scrollin ldquoAll communities were writing but the Parsis took to it aggressively There were serialised Gujarati translations of Persian classics The war memoir as a mainstream personal narrative came into being from World War I Karkaria found willing subscribers for his narrative Many lost books deserve resurrection in translationrdquoAuthorpublisher Meher Marfatia writes fortnightly on everything that makes her love Mumbai and adore Bombay You can reach her at mehermarfatiamiddaycomwwwmeher marfatiacom