Liberating Words from the Confines of Language

Yesterday, at the Hay Festival Dhaka, a session on 'Translating' was held with participating writers Mahmud Rahman, Anisul Hoque, Shaheen Akhtar and Kaiser Haq.
The session started with distinguishing the translator panellists from the writer panellists: Mahmud Rahman and Kaiser Haq have translated literature from Bangla to English, whereas Anisul Hoque and Shaheen Akhtar have had their translated works published. Professor Fakrul Alam of English Department, Dhaka University, chaired the discussion.
Mahmud Rahman had his translated work “Black Ice” published by Harper Collins India. The Bangla original novel was written by Mahmudul Haq, and is called “Kalo Borof”. Rahman was drawn to Haq's work after reading an inspirational interview of, and after hours of interaction with, the otherwise reclusive Haq. The decision to translate “Kalo Borof” started from that point.
Anisul Hoque said that the English translation of his work got initiated rather accidentally. His first translator was an Orissi reader who read his novel “Ma” online. It was an Oriya translation published from Bhubaneswar, India. Later, Vaskar Ray, then working at The Times of India, Delhi proactively decided to translate the novel in English. Though Ray found the story of “Ma” more gripping than most translated literature at that time, it was not easy to get a publisher in India for the translated novel. So determined was Ray to get the translation published, he left his full-time job at The Times of India, joined as CEO of a publishing house, and got the work published. According to Anisul Hoque, a lot of proactive passion is needed from the translator to recognise the potential of an original work of fiction.
Shaheen Akhtar's renowned Bangla novel “Talaash” was written against the backdrop of the Liberation War of Bangladesh. Zubaan, an Indian publisher, selected the story to be published in English. Akhtar feels that a writer can never be fully satisfied with a translation, and specifically in the case of her novel, a Bangladeshi translator could add more value. Connecting with the background of the 1971 war was important in this case. Also Bangla as a language takes a different form when one travels from Bangladesh to West Bengal. Finally, “Talaash” was translated by a Bangladeshi translator Shabnam Nadiya, and after 7 years, it got published from Zubaan. Though the sales figures of translated books in question are not very encouraging yet, Akhtar thinks the long-term market for such books gets bigger through translation.
Akhtar feels that a lot of cultural nuances get lost in translation, and Anisul Hoque agrees that not every fiction can be 'universal' in its cognition, though the appeal can be universal.
Kaiser Haq translated a lot of works of Rabindranath Tagore. He also did a lot of 'translations of translations'. In his initial years as a translator, he was drawn to Tagore's novella “Chaturanga”, and he translated it. He recently translated Nasreen Jahan's “Urukku”. According to him, it is important for a translator to engage with the mother tongue of the writer while translating. Languages have some realistic barriers between each other, and for bridging that gap, a translator has to have a lot of heart invested in the original language of the fiction.
The participants mostly agreed that finding a translator is not a writer's job. On the contrary, if a fiction is true to itself, it will find interesting avenues and new channels of getting published -- in other languages or other geographic locations.