Poetry is what is lost in translation (Robert Frost)
Poetry is what is gained in translation (Joseph Brodsky)
It all depends on your frame of reference, how you want to look at it. As you change your language, it is akin to change your eye lens, and the red appears in a slightly different hue, your old view is lost, your new view is gained, have your pick. It all depends on the context (that includes the quality of translation).
But what is more important is that the urge to translate is a true urge, and I am trying to fathom why does this urge exist? To get a complete picture, you need to see the object from different perspectives, and perhaps translation provides that slightly different perspective. You may like it, you may not, but the urge to view it differently is real. There may be other reasons that manifest into this urge to translate, but for me this is the foremost, and so far the only, reason.
Hence I have decided to translate Tagore's songs (Rabindrasangeet) into English. Well, as I claim in my disclaimer, it is not really a translation, but more of retelling.
These songs are among the most basic ingredients that constitute my being, having grown up with these, and will die with these as my last companions, like the dog who accompanied Yudhishthir in his final journey.
As it very often happens in projects that involve slightly crazy ideas, I am not alone. Pratik Majumdar is my accomplice here. and lets see how long this translation bug stays with us!!
08 October 2010
23 September 2010
4 Years Hence
4 years, and I have not written anything here, actually I have not written anything that really matters to me in these 4 years...
That makes me wonder, will this life slip by without me writing anything that matters to me? Is there any other act, form of expression that may matter more to me...?
But, these years, I have never stopped thinking, reading, analyzing, arguing (most of the time, due to lack any company, the arguments have all been born and exterminated inside my cranium), without stopping... add infinitum...
I have to find more time for myself, to gather my thoughts in a cohesive manner, and put pen on paper, rather, this keyboard on the monitor, the virtual medium.
We live in an era when we don't really have time for ourselves, the race of the daily sustenance occupies the major chunk of our time, and whatever crumbs are there for us we let the media overwhelm us during those moments of solace. Ironically the same media exhorts us to rediscover our inner self, that is the in-thing to do. Let me see, how much I can accomplish, without feeding on to the media, the hustle-bustle, the sustained insecurity of our existence.
That makes me wonder, will this life slip by without me writing anything that matters to me? Is there any other act, form of expression that may matter more to me...?
But, these years, I have never stopped thinking, reading, analyzing, arguing (most of the time, due to lack any company, the arguments have all been born and exterminated inside my cranium), without stopping... add infinitum...
I have to find more time for myself, to gather my thoughts in a cohesive manner, and put pen on paper, rather, this keyboard on the monitor, the virtual medium.
We live in an era when we don't really have time for ourselves, the race of the daily sustenance occupies the major chunk of our time, and whatever crumbs are there for us we let the media overwhelm us during those moments of solace. Ironically the same media exhorts us to rediscover our inner self, that is the in-thing to do. Let me see, how much I can accomplish, without feeding on to the media, the hustle-bustle, the sustained insecurity of our existence.
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