TRANSLATE KARTO, KAR RAHA HOON... HE KA?, YE KYA HAI? MUMBAI YA BOMBAY YA BAMBAI?

This article appeared originally in Mumbai Mirror, of the Times Of India group.

LOST IN TRANSLATION

Rishi Majumder takes the translation trip with the Hindi and Marathi renderers of Suketu Mehta's Maximum City, a Mahanagar

"Listening to the Hindi and Marathi translations were a strange experience for me. I could hear the voices of the characters in their original languages!" relives author Suketu Mehta of the crowded launch of the Hindi and Marathi editions of Maximum City: Bombay Lost And Found, two days ago. Word is, that translations are underway in Spanish, German, Italian, French and Hebrew. Greetings Mumbaikars. The Maximum City has arrived. Save the celebrations though. A book about Mumbai will first test its acceptance in Mumbai (It's only fair that the gangsters and bar girls – quoted in the book – get to read what they said). Mehta, himself working on an English translation of Mahatma Gandhi's Aatma Katha said at the book launch: "My book like Mumbai is full of paradoxes". Both the Marathi and Hindi translators of this "Best book written about that great ruined metropolis" (courtesy Salman Rushdie)… are Delhiites. Beat that paradox Mr. Mehta.



PROCESS

"A translator has to be a brilliant in the language he's translating into," points out Mehta as a must. Yogendra Kumar, the Hindi translator, is an official translator for the Lok Sabha Secretariat with post graduate degrees in English literature and translation theory: "After reading the book once, I read a chapter. Then I translate paragraph by paragraph." He doesn't go line by line, as that "breaks the thought", and insists on taking a break after each paragraph: "I visualize the entire situation in the para before writing!" While Kumar's made a maximum of two short visits to this city, Hemangi Naniwadekar, the Marathi translator, was born and brought up here during her first 14 years. "But the middle-class life I lived in Chembur and Bhandup was different from the author's city in this book," informs the journalist cum translator cum inspiring author. So she relied on the book for her references as to dialogue as much as for the city.



PROBLEMS

"Having grown up in Mumbai I knew the different versions of Marathi spoken by different classes," enumerates Naniwadekar. "But I till treated the author as my guide closely." "Suketu Mehta's simple non-flowery rendering made me rely on simple Kitaabi Hindi Bhaasha," provides Kumar. He in turn resorted to Maharashtrian friends who gave him an idea of what the Marathi in the book meant, and suggestions as to where he could use some more: "For bars it was rough Mumbaiya Hindi. In Muslim areas, some Urdu. And for the socialites Elite Bhaasha." That done, what about the writers though. How dd they translate that pain of every translators – his metaphors. "Well I'd try to think of an appropriate substitute in Hindi, where literal translation didn't make sense", comes the obvious reply from both. "Like I said Mehta's rendering is very simple – there wasn't too much complicated language," adds Kumar who's now translating Amartya Sen's Identity And Violence.



CONNECTION POINTS
"I used my experiences with various outsiders from UP and Bihar coming into Delhi to understand Mehta's processes duing translation," explains Kumar. "After all, India too, like Mumbai is about unity in diversity." Naniwadekar was pretty shaken up during translation: "I couldn't imagine a Mumbai with the riots of '92 where I'd grown up. Many myths were shattered." She'd never thought of the Madanpuri gangster in the book as human beings, for instance. "I'd also never thought of the police as being as atrocious as they were during the riots. The book was scary – because it instilled in m the sitution of my own people." They say a translator (a good one!) understands a writer's work better than him at times, because a writer often delivers from his sub-consciousness. How would they have written the megapolis megasaga differently? "Well, I would have oved to see more of the Marathi culture – theatre, writer's committees we hear so much about," offers Kumar. Naniwadekar isn't so pointed: "My maximum city would b a brighter maximum city, but it's have to b non-fictional."