Speaking with Arunava Sinha about Sanya Rushdi’s ‘Hospital’: A translator extraordinaire
Arunava Sinha greets me on video conference with gracious politeness. With over 80 translations (English to Bangla and vice versa) of classic, modern, and contemporary fiction, nonfiction, and poetry under his belt, he is no stranger to the literary landscape of the Indian subcontinent. I spoke with Sinha about his experience translating Sanya Rushdi's debut novel, Hospital (Giramondo Publishing, 2023), shortlisted for the 2024 Stella Prize and longlisted for the 2024 Miles Franklin Literary Award, two of Australia's highest literary honours.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. What made you choose Hospital? What was the first thing that drove you to want to translate this book?
Sanya's sister, Luna Rushdi, whom I have known for several years, asked me if I'd like to read her sister's debut novel (in Bangla). I said of course, and they sent me a copy. The moment I read the first few pages, I felt this was the kind of novel that one would like to translate. So, I made my decision very early on and I'm very happy to say I wasn't disappointed. When a novel really speaks to me within the first few pages, and I talk to the author and they are okay with my going ahead and translating it, I start translating it right away without waiting to finish reading it till the end. So, reading Hospital in this case was simultaneous with translating it. It was a truly extraordinary experience from beginning to end.
Do you start translating it into your head or do you prepare in advance? What does the process involve?
The curse for the translator sometimes, especially when you're reading from the language in which you're translating, is that a part of your mind is always asking the question of whether this is a book you'd like to translate or not (assuming it hasn't been translated before). So, that part of the brain is always active, and you're right, even if I am not consciously translating in my head, I'm thinking of how it'll sound in English and so on. I'm not saying it happens with every book I work on, but Hospital was one of those books where I knew from the word go that this is a book that would work just as well in any other language.
The prose of Hospital is deceptively simple. It's also a deeply personal book and the reader is constantly in the mind of an unreliable narrator. Did you ever feel that you may not be able to do justice to the narrator's voice? Or were there any challenges, especially considering it was written not in standardised Bangla but in a dialect?
The interesting thing about this book is that although it was originally written in Bangla, most of the conversations in the book, one would assume, actually took place in English (as the book is set in a medical facility in Australia) and much of it was a question of translating it back into English. In that sense, you're just putting it back to where it belongs. That is quite a fascinating challenge in its own right.
It's something you have to keep in mind—not necessarily when you are translating but when you are reading your draft afterwards. In some cases, we talk about text from one language not being translated exactly into the [kind of] English that might be read locally. In this case, this was a bit of a necessity because it would [otherwise] not be believable that the average Australian would be speaking the kind of English spoken in the Indian subcontinent. So, while I didn't make any special effort to speak like an Australian, and because I don't know how they speak in English, I tried to keep it international and neutral. And it wasn't difficult because the prose, as you say, is very stark.
Whenever I am translating, I am always led by the text and how it sounds to my ears and trying to be faithful in taking that onto the new language. I don't think to myself, "Okay, this sentence is very spare or unadorned"; I tell myself, "I am going to write the same sentence in English and my job is to ensure it remains the same sentence". In order to do that, you have to capture not just the dictionary meaning of the words but also the tonal quality, whether there is any ornamentation or if it is direct, and so on. But these things arise automatically out of the text.
Most translators around the world, not all, are not writers themselves. So, it's not that they have a writerly self that they are trying to insert between the text that is to be translated. So, you can be quite attentive to the text in the way it is and be faithful to it. In many cases, when the prose is spare or stark, the job is actually easier. When there is a lot going on in the text in terms of effects or pyrotechnics, or very skilful or clever construction, you actually have to put in a lot more effort. Here, you get into the mood and the sentences flow. I find that the best translations come to life that way. So, Hospital really spoke to me in that way.
In certain parts of the book, you left the original terms in Bangla, such as where the characters are referring to family members as 'Luna apa' and 'Luna'r ma', the narrator's parents affectionately calling her 'baba' and 'ma', etc. Was that a conscious choice to keep the authenticity?
Well, it's verisimilitude. It's important because at the back of your mind, you know that those conversations did not originate in English. When you start using terms like 'dear' or 'darling', you cannot insert a cultural context that does not exist. If you were talking about a family that was entirely integrated into the Anglophone world, and it didn't matter what the origins were, then it'd be fine. But, in this case, the family is not integrated in the sense that they have completely given up their ways of speaking in their own manner, including using endearments, and to gently point out the fact that, at the end of the day, this is a slightly different group of people, therefore those were useful markers.
I'm interested in knowing the reactions of non-Bangla speakers towards making the choice, especially when an apostrophe is used for 'Luna'r ma.' It's an unusual grammatical deviation.
Well, here's the thing. They'd know that it's a special shorthand between the characters. They might not get the exact meaning—although they can make guesses—but it is more important to know that the family has a certain coded way of addressing each other. If you can get the meaning, that's great, but even if you don't, it takes nothing away. If you were to just address her by her name, as might be the case elsewhere, you wouldn't get the sense of uniqueness.
I'm really glad that the publisher (Giramondo Publishing) allowed it.
Far from merely allowing it, they embraced it. Progressive publishers, especially the indies (independent publishers), are very aware of the fact that the world is very diverse, including their own backyards. They don't want to iron out that diversity.
You have been nominated for a number of awards globally, most recently the Stella Prize and the Miles Franklin Literary Award. What does a nomination or a win mean to you as a translator? How do you think it helps a career translator?
There are two aspects to this: as a translator, I am very happy for every honour that comes the way of the author and their book and that translation enables that recognition. For translators, in particular those who are not always acknowledged either in terms of the recognition or the compensation they receive, an award is perhaps in a sense even bigger than for an author. It's a validation of their work in an area where they are not necessarily in the limelight. It's very gratifying; awards lead more people to picking up your book. Eventually, that's why you write and that's why you translate.
Awards like the International Booker Prize shine a spotlight on both the author and the translator. Do you ever feel that translators tend to get sidelined otherwise?
Well, there are prizes that are specifically for translated works which always ensure translators get equal billing and the International Booker Prize is the biggest of them all. But I'm also interested in the fact that, as with the Stella Prize, there are some prizes that consider works written [in the language of submission] and translated works on an equal footing. It expands the literature in that language.
When you read a book, translated or otherwise, you assume you are reading the author. You are not telling yourself that you are reading the translator, right? And it might be a bit of a nuisance actually for the translator to become a constant presence in the reader's mind. So I'd say that recognition among readers is not the most important thing. Sure, they may be curious and might want to know more about the translator and the latter should not remain anonymous or reduced to a footnote, but people in the publishing industry—the ecosystem, for lack of a better word—certainly know translators as well as authors. So I don't think that's a problem.
Run us through the day in the life of a translator. How does one pick up what to translate and is there a choice on what they choose to work on? What does the process involve?
There are many parts that eventually lead to a work of translation being published. In some cases, it's the publisher who commissions the translations and those publishers often have scouts who look for works in other languages and recommend them. In other cases, translators are scouts themselves and they recommend books to publishers or literary agents that they have read and loved and felt that they will have a life in a new language and try to get the publisher to agree to its publication.
As for how these translators make these choices, I don't think it's the same for everyone. Some love certain kinds of books; some choose books that speak to them. Some look for voices that need to be amplified, those that are marginalised and not often heard in the mainstream. Each translator has their own matrix.
In my case, it's all of these. Of all the books I have translated, each one has a slightly unique story although they may broadly fall into one of these baskets. Even so, they'll have a unique backstory as to why I came to translate it.
How much input, if any, does an author have on a translation of their book? Is there a collaboration?
It varies. In my case, since I translate mostly from Bangla, many authors do not feel they need to be involved in the English version. A few, though, like to look at the translated version which is very helpful as they may spot a nuance that you misread or something that you glossed over or not quite interpreted correctly. There's no one standard way of doing it.
Do you consult with the author before starting a translation?
Well, no, I prefer to go directly to the text. As far as I am concerned, I'm not translating the author, I am translating the text. I don't want to go too deep into what the author was thinking or what state of mind they were in or what their objective was because at the end of the day, the average reader will only have the text, they are not going to have a conversation with the author. So I read as a reader would and that usually works best for me.
You know, translation is really not a problem of literature but of language. What I see is what matters; not what literary trend it belongs to or where it has come from or where it'll go. The text stands there; I don't have to think about what other texts it's talking to, where it belongs and so on. I must allow the words and the text and the silences and the music and the rhythm and the imagery to speak to me directly without any backstory.
On the topic of language, you translate from Bangla to English and vice versa. Which one is more difficult? Do you feel a translator needs to possess a great command for a language?
In any translators' case, you have to have a great command of both languages. You have to read deeply and write deeply as well. Some may argue that you need to be better in the language you are writing in but my counter argument is that if you are not able to read the text for everything that it can be, not just what it is, your translation must also enable the reader to read in as many texts as possible that are contained in that root text. So you need to know the languages well enough in order to understand the text in depth.
I am still more comfortable writing in English as I have done the bulk of my translations in English. I took up translating to Bangla for two reasons. One, to push myself and to reestablish my relationship with Bangla, not just as a language I read but also arguably as a language I can write in. Second, to bring some texts that don't exist in Bangla into the Bangla language with the hope that they will become more accessible to Bangla readers.
Is there any work (in any language) not translated by you that you would have loved to translate?
Oh, plenty! There's absolutely no lack of those. Shahidul Zahir from Bangladesh is one writer I can think of. I'd really set my heart on translating Hangor Nodi Grenade (Anannya, 2003) by Selina Hossain but she'd already worked out an arrangement with another translator. There's a tremendous novel by Lokenath Bhattacharya called Babu Ghater Kumari Maach, it was translated before I commenced. I also would have loved to work on Olik Manush (Dey's Publishing, 1988) by Syed Mustafa Siraj. Some of Nabaneeta Dev Sen's works (I have worked on one of her books but I'd have really loved to work on more). It's great that there are a number of translators as you get a wealth of literature in translation; one person can't possibly translate everything anyway.
You are known as India's most prolific translator. What does this responsibility mean to you?
Well, I don't know if it is about being prolific but the responsibility is certainly to ensure that we spark or catalyse a very healthy culture of translation across the subcontinent as we are home to so many different languages. There are at least two dozen robust literatures in this small space although we're the world's largest population set in South Asia. Therefore, a truly rich culture of translation would ensure that these works go across and into one another's languages and are read there.
It is not essential to translate everything into English but it'd be amazing if Bangla literature from both Bangladesh and India were to be translated into other languages of the subcontinent. That is how you can reach the people who are beyond the net of English books.
We know from the sale of English language books in the subcontinent that it is actually not a very large readership. So clearly a much larger readership lies beyond the English language.
Those of us who have had a head start in this type of work, it is our responsibility to contribute to ways in which more translators can work well, be compensated fairly and find the work worthwhile enough to continue doing it. That I think is the single largest responsibility.
Nabilah Khan was born and raised in Bangladesh and currently resides in Sydney, Australia. After more than a decade working in the global banking and financial services industry, she now works in the Australian public service.
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