'I Was Inside Mai, Almost Living It And Certainly Feeling It'

Nita Kumar is a historian, indologist and anthropologist whose pet researchsubject is Benares. She spends most of her time there though every now and thenshe goes on a sabbatical by taking up ‘visiting teaching assignments’. Atany given time, she "has two homes". She is currently teaching anthropologyat the Brandeis University in the US, from where she gave outlookindia.com ane-mail interview.

Please tell us a bit about yourself.
I am a teacher since the last almost 30 years. I have always moved betweendisciplines, my first love being literatures (in English, Hindi, Russian,Bengali, all of which I read), my professional training being History, myattraction being towards Anthropology, my ‘hang-up’, so to speak, Women’sand Gender Studies, and my pastime, creative writing and literary criticism. Ihave some degrees and some published work in all these fields. I continue toteach and write and am doomed to always do so. But I have also moved fromanthropological field work with ‘people’ to more focused activity at acommunity level. When possible, I work rather intensely in an NGO andneighbourhood school to make education more child-centred, environmentallysensitive, gender-conscious, and anti-authoritarian.

Although Mai is my first published translated book (I translated EricSegal’s Love Story from English to Russian in 1971-72), I feel as if Ihave been always translating, between Hindi and English speakers, from India tothe West, my informants to my scholarly audience, voices from the past toreaders of History, and in some of the opposite directions. So translation feelsfamiliar.

Why Mai?
While I was working on ‘mothers’ in Indian history and had just presenteda paper on the subject, a colleague mentioned this book to me. I read it in onego and thought, "It’s what I might have written (but is better). I’d lovefor others to read it." Quite impetuously I wrote to Geetanjali and the planwas made. I knew I was acting on impulse, but had no idea of the labourinvolved.

Was it a difficult book to translate?
The language and style were very compatible to me, so yes, as far as the workgoes, but no, for me and this book.

How much time did you take to translate the book? When did you first startwork on it?
I started in August 1998, paused for many months and did it mostly overJune-December 1999, and submitted the final manuscript in April 2000.

I have heard people say disparaging things about translators, bringing in (Ifail to understand why) comparisons with parrots and suchlike ...
I have no idea what parrots do, and suspect that they are accused quitewrongly by humans of imitation. Translators are necessary for the circulation ofall knowledge and ideas. A translator who does the work out of choice hasobviously felt inspired by what she wants to translate, and then takes it overin a way, forgetting for long stretches of time that it is in fact not ‘hers’but authored by another. The activity of translating becomes a prepossessingcreative act in itself and cannot be reduced to anything else.

How do you come to terms with the necessity of creating something new withthe responsibility of preserving the original?
It’s a huge challenge, a horrible challenge. Often you feel like subvertingthe original. I suppose your sense of duty or truth or something prevents you; akind of obligation that comes with the work. How do I do it? It seems I haveonly been following such rules and obligations all my life!

As you write, how do you make what you write carry the weight of the foreignculture beneath them? At what point are you able to transmit that culture (evokethe same feeling in the translation)?
This is such a huge question, which I have just barely touched upon in part 3of my afterword to Mai. In brief, I would say that I have no formula,nothing I can say neatly in reply. I just feel my way with words, what theysuggest, what they insinuate. I am shifting, so to speak, between writer andreader and critic.

How much is actually lost in translation? What do you leave out and how doyou choose what to and what not to convey? How much is gained in translation?
The most important quality of the work is probably lost, that which cannot bepinned down but is elusively effective and touching. I don’t consciously leaveout anything, unless it would produce the exact opposite effect to what wasintended, and that is something again to ‘feel’, not to rationalize about.What I am saying is surely that a translator must feel a huge confidence as areader of the work: "I know what it’s all about". Including in the subtle,elusive, intangible effects of the words. She knows what was intended andguesses how it is working. Only such confidence can allow her to translate. Whatis gained? All that is gained in translation is that many new readers might getto know and even enjoy the work for some of its original qualities.

How do you react to the Amitav Ghosh incident (withdrawal from theCommonwealth Prize)? Do you think this feeling should have been expressed atleast a few decades ago?
No answer for the present

Don’t you think a number of great Indian writers have not been introducedto the world because of the unavailability of works in translation?
YES. But why put it in the passive voice; shouldn’t we take theresponsibility and do something about it?

Of all the works that you have translated which has been the mostchallenging?
As I said, Mai is my first official translation. But unofficially Itranslate a lot, most recently Hindustani and Bhojpuri song lyrics into Englishfor a study of ‘love’ in the Indian imagination. The most challengingtranslation is in ethnography or history, from incoherent speech or relativesilence to a communicable portrayal of the speech. I would like to develop inmyself those sensitivities that are lost to most modern, educated,self-consciously ‘rational’ people and are educated out of people in theacademy: to communicate beyond words, to make gestures and symbols important, toguess and intuit, to be on certain wave lengths with others.

How important is seeing your work being talked about for you? Does it hurt tosee your work going unnoticed?
Yes, it hurts. So it must be very important to have my work be noticed, but Iknow that it is not as important as for others who then focus single-mindedly onthis. I know that I have neglected doing news-worthy or fashionable things forthe sake of those things I believed in even when I realized they would not catchanyone’s attention. In ‘doing’ I include ways of writing and interpreting.

How important is winning prizes and getting reviewed to you?
Again, very important. But I do have an ironic stance towards myself when Inote this, and to others when I see them consumed by this motivation.

What is the state of translations in India? Is it true that it is not beingtaken all that seriously here? I mean shouldn’t more works in other Indianlanguages be translated into English?
I know little about statistics but I feel VERY strongly that there should bea huge industry, with all the multilingual people we have, of translatingeverything possible from other languages (but obviously, most of all, English)to Indian languages and vice versa, and from Indian languages to each other. Iam most impressed by this in Europe and I think we could learn their example inthis without threat to anything in out culture or nation, but just gain at alllevels. You are stressing Indian languages into English, and that is importantfor us to gain our righteous place in the universal sun. But we should be evenmore worried about from English and other languages into Indian languages. As anation we read so little. I know that children have almost nothing to read.Bookstores are empty. No one has a private library. No one discusses books. Noone spends on them. All these comments should be see in relation to our size andwhat we want to be.

Is translation a mechanical act for you or is there a lot of creativityinvolved?
If it was done mechanically, the translation would probably not be worthreading. The creativity is intangible, but permeates every step of the work.

What has been your experience translating Mai?
I was inside it and almost living it and certainly feeling it.

How much time do you normally take to translate a book?
Since this took a year, I suspect that any book will take at least that long.

How do you go about translating a work? How much help do you seek from theauthor of the original?
Step 1: just put impulsively into the other language what you are reading.

Step 2: read your version independently of the original, just as a piece ofwriting, and make it sound ‘natural’

Step 3: compare with the original to see what has shifted and changed.Compare notes with the author, if possible, re: hints, intentions, andambiguities. Labour at meanings and implications.

Step 4: incorporate editorial and other comments, include your own-now aseditor.

Where are you based now and what keeps you there? Are you working on anyother translation?
I have been at the Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, Calcutta, from1990. Because it is not a teaching centre, I take leave for visiting teachingpositions and am in one such now. I do research on India, often Banaras, and theschool I work with is also in Banaras, where my husband and daughter live. Ihave at least two homes at any one time and cannot find a way to lessen thatnumber. Yes, I am about to launch on a new translation project for the summer.

Have you read the other books shortlisted for the Crossword Awards?
Unfortunately not, but I look forward to.

Do you dream of writing a novel of your own?
Indeed, I have written two and am writing a third. ‘Dream’ is thereforeinappropriate, though I do wonder about publishing them. I think you aresuggesting that creative writing is somehow a higher achievement thanscholarship. I used to think that. But for a long time I am strict with theconcept of professionalism, and to the extent that I work so hard at my Historyand Anthropology, which gives me my bread and butter, and do the creativewriting in my spare time, I must recognize that the latter is a kind of ‘hobby’no matter how much I love it. I think if I was to give it the time any seriouswork deserves, I would indeed be a published novelist. That is, ‘art’ istruly largely labour and dedication. I write novels-and essays and shortstories-but I don’t labour at it and am not dedicated to it beyond everything.Which is the important thing and not that it is a ‘dream’.