Working with a translator like working with actor: Kundalkar

Working with a translator was similar to working with an actor as it's important to provide them the liberty to translate, according to author and filmmaker Sachin Kundalkar.
"The author is like a director who has to guide the translator but also let him pollute the work beautifully, much like the liberty given to the actor," Kundalkar said at the Jaipur Literature Festival here today.
The filmmaker, whose Marathi book "Cobalt Blue", which was nominated for USD 50000 DSC prize for South Asian literature, said he was not "too" attached to the book when author Jerry Pinto chose to translate it into English.

"It had already been a decade since I wrote the book. Yes, it was something I owned, I cherished yet it was easy to let the translator beautifully pollute it," he said.
Kundalkar was in conversation with Geetanjali Shree, Carlos Rojas, Rahul Soni at a session titled "Beauty and Fidelity: Texts in Translation" moderated by Jerry Pinto.
However, unlike Kundalkar, Shree, a Hindi novelist whose work has been translated into several languages believes that anxieties stem from the acknowledgement that one's work is being translated.

"Translation is about communication perhaps a major form of miscommunication too. It is like adjusting to the idea that I am no longer the author, I am partially there but mostly it is someone else's work now," she said.

The panel, comprising translators working in English, Hindi, Marathi, Spanish and Chinese unanimously agreed that translation is both a collective and cooperative endeavour.
During the process of translation, the book always comes first while both the writer and translator engage in a cooperative activity, they said.
The speakers also pointed out that translation was relatively challenging since there are many aspects which a language may not permit. Hence it leads to a series of negotiations where the translator deliberately chooses to use a certain way of description.
For instance, in Kundalkar's novel "Cobalt Blue", the transition of tenses was easier when written in Marathi which may not be allowable in English at times.

Kundalkar said he was also touchy about certain words like 'aaji' (grandmother in Marathi) and 'ajoba' (grandfather) in the translation.
"I was concerned about the audio feeling of these words, the sound they created. Thus, it had to be retained in the translation," he said.
On being asked whether or not the translator was visible in his work, Kundalkar said, "It was very important for the translator to be visible as he brought in a different personality to the text.