Not written with an eye on the market or with the zeal to make money, regional literature brings forth a form of writing that is perhaps the most authentic form, says translator Arunava Sinha.
"They (regional writers) don't care for technique, they haven't got Master of Fine Art degrees, they don't care for impressing anyone and they don't write for a western market. It is perhaps full of flaws, angularity and full of strange construction," says Sinha who translates Bengali work from India and Bangladesh into English.
Speaking at a session titled 'Why translations of regional Indian literature are the best reads?', organised here recently by Readomania, which calls itself a literary social network, Sinha chalks out the trajectory and growth of the Bengali novel to show the diversity and variety that can be found in regional literature.
By analysing the themes, issues and language form of the first Bengali novel Durgeshnandini by Bankim Chandra Chatterjee to the works of Rabindranath Tagore, Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay to the modern day writings of Sunil Gangopadhyaya, Sinha reflects on the the journey traversed by Bengali literature.
Referring to Durgeshnandini written during the 19th
century, Sinha says it is "a novel written in high Bengali which borrowed a lot from Sanskrit which is a synthetically constructed language which created gap between those who knew and those who didn't know it."
Sinha highlights that Bengali literature was brought from the ivory tower to the people by Rabindranath Tagore both in terms of usage of the language and the issues addressed in his writings.
The conversion from classical to colloquial form of writing happened in other other regional literature including Hindi, Urdu, Marathi, Tamil and Malayalam.
In Bengali literature, Sinha says that the themes raised in the Bengali novel have become more wide-ranging and intense as it has traversed from the 20th century to present day. From questioning the political, individual, social and psychological issues, the novels also experimented with patterns, meanings and philosophies to challenging the depiction of reality as well as the topic of idealism.
On the art of translation, Sinha says that the idea is to convey the meaning, the rhythm, the sounds, the thoughts and the impact of the original text but in a way that when the reader is reading it in English, they don't feel it yet there must be something to suggest that the text was not written in English.
"You try to become completely transparent. You don't want to come between the text and the reader at all," the translator puts forth.
Sinha was the speaker for this month on the Readomania #TalkFest, a platform for talks, lectures, debates and discussions around the theme of literature and art.
