A translator’s note, if anything, can at best be a series of notes – some trilling highs from getting close to the mysterious creative impu...
A translator’s note, if anything, can at best be a series of notes – some trilling highs from getting close to the mysterious creative impulse and some despondent lows that sees art as a ruse. As if to balance the two, is the delight of bringing to the English language reader some things s/he might otherwise never have read!
It all began with a meeting of friends at a literary conference in Mysore a few years ago. “Don’t venture,” I was warned. All the same I called up the author to be told that “a translation was in progress”. A couple of months later, as if to reward my enthusiasm I was asked to translate Chapter 11, for Steel Nibs Are Sprouting.
Returning to this fascinating novel after so many years, this time as the other reader (translator), I was convinced that the text demanded something else of me. To enter the seamless flow of the chant-like rhythms where language and emotion take the lead in turns, I had to bring to it a keener ear – a different kind of auscultation perhaps?
