This Mehfil explores the exciting world of South Asian translation especially the regional and vernacular literature that has lately been garnering international attention and winning prestigious awards. In Translating South Asia, host Amrita Ghosh talks to two renowned translators from the neighboring countries of India and Bangladesh. The conversation is not only about translations from Bengali to English but also the reverse, and how it plays out in the publishing world in the subcontinent. Arunava Sinha and Shabnam Nadiya take us on their journey into how they began translating and how it became a vocation. They speak about their first books of translation and their initial experiences and challenges in the process. They also discuss how the translation scene has changed writing, publishing and readership on the Subcontinent, spaces that were initially reserved for Anglophone works. Nadiya talks about her latest translation of Shaheen Akhtar’s rich novel, Shokhi Rongomela into Beloved Rongomela and the challenges she faced, along with some of the decisions she made during the intricate process of creating a Bengali worldview for the Anglophone readership. Ghosh talks to Sinha about his translation of the epic novel Dozakhnama by Rabisankar Bal and the challenges of translating an original consisting of multiple language presences such as Urdu and Bengali. In a rich conversation, the writers also discuss the space of politics within translation, the publishing industry and the importance and the limits of adhering to a political position within a work. The episode ends with Ghosh putting both writers to a quick translation test of the word and concept of “Mehfil!”
Shabnam Nadiya is a Bangladeshi writer and translator based in California. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she was awarded the Steinbeck Fellowship (2019); a PEN/Heim Translation Grant (2020); and the 2019 Himal Southasian Short Story Prize. Her work has been published in Joyland, Asymptote, Flash Fiction International, Al Jazeera Online, Pank, Amazon’s Day One, Chicago Quarterly Review, Wasafiri, Words Without Borders, and Gulf Coast. Nadiya’s translations include Leesa Gazi’s novel Hellfire (Eka/Westland, September, 2020), Moinul Ahsan Saber’s novel The Mercenary (Bengal Lights Books, 2016; Seagull Books, 2018) and Shaheen Akhtar’s novel Beloved Rongomala, 2022).
Arunava Sinha is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Ashoka University. He translates classic, modern and contemporary Bengali fiction and nonfiction into English, and from English into Bengali. Over fifty of his translations have been published so far. He has conducted translation workshops at the British Centre for Literary Translation, UEA; University of Chicago; Dhaka Translation Centre; and Jadavpur University. Besides India, his translations have been published in the UK and the US in English, and in several European and Asian countries through further translation. His research interests are focused on the translation of fiction, non-fiction and poetry between the languages of India, including English.
Amrita Ghosh is Assistant Professor of English, specializing in South Asian literature at the University of Central Florida. She is the co-editor of Tagore and Yeats: A Postcolonial Reenvisioning (Brill 2022) and Subaltern Vision: A Study in Postcolonial Indian English Text (Cambridge Scholars 2012). Her book Kashmir’s Necropolis: New Literature and Visual Texts is forthcoming with Lexington Books. She is the co-founding editor of Cerebration, a bi-annual literary journal.
To inaugurate our Mehfil which means a celebratory gathering in Urdu, we asked Uday Bansal to compose a small poem for us. It was read out by Amrita Ghosh at the start of the program.
Tumhaari taal se betaal / Duniya tumhaari shaunq se ghafil hai / Taqaluf Chhod bhi do / Aao yeh tumhaari hi mehfil hai
This roughly translates as "cast off your inhibitions and come join our celebrations."
We want to thank Bansal who writes poetry in Hindustani, the confluence of Hindi and Urdu. Bansal has performed at the world's largest Urdu Literature festival Jashn-e-Rekhta in 2022 and has given a TEDx talk titled "Zabaan-e-Urdu" where he explores the misconceptions about the Urdu language and its relevance in today's times.
