Ki.Ra’s works are harder to translate than epics, says Chennai South MP

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Chennai South MP Thamizhachi Thangapandian said on Saturday that translating the works of renowned author Ki. Rajanarayanan was “harder than translating great epics”, as his works were full of “dialectical nuances”. She was speaking at The Hindu Lit for Life unplugged event titled “A celebration of one of the finest exponents of Karisal landscape”, held at Kavikko Mandram here.

Speaking on The People of Gopallapuram, journalist Shubashree Desikan’s translation of Ki. Rajanarayanan’s Gopallapurathu Makkal, Ms. Thamizhachi said, “To translate Ki.Ra (Ki. Rajanarayanan) is perhaps the most difficult task; it is even harder than translating great epics because, when you translate an epic, you are translating formal language. But when you translate a work like Ki.Ra, full of dialectical nuances, you are translating sound, smell, texture, you are translating a culture, and she mastered the art of it because of sheer commitment and sincerity. A lesser translator would have sanitised this book.”

Calling it an “eternal work of Ki.Ra Ayya”, she expressed gratitude to the State government for introducing such works to the English audience.

She added: “To speak of this book is to speak of a mirror. When you hold this book, you are not holding the paper. This is not just pieces of paper held together or bound together. I’m holding a handful of black soil. And if you listen closely, you can hear the heartbeats of people who have been silent for too long in the pages of mainstream history. That is where I find this endeavour very important.”

N. Ram, Director of THG Publishing Private Ltd., commended the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation (TNTB and ESC) for this “unusual programme” and said that “it was a unique initiative for governments in India”. “The politicians also deserve a lot of credit for allowing this kind of creative freedom… you don’t have to constantly censor.. look over your shoulder and see what they are writing. To allow that kind of freedom is unusual these days, especially when there is a great deal of communal hate in this country, unleashed by a certain political movement. It is authoritarian, suppresses democratic freedoms, and writers, particularly those belonging to minority communities. So, to bring out these bold works, and provide financial and infrastructural support is special,” he said.

Mini Krishnan, coordinating editor of TNTB and ESC, said, “A lot of work is done to protect tigers or monuments, but next to nothing is being done in our universities to protect our languages, and to see that students learn these languages.” Translation is the language of languages and without translations, if you look at the history of civilization, no culture would have developed…. we would have had not no mathematics, no astronomy, no science, no engineering. All this is possible only because there were translators going back hundreds of years, translating from Arabic, from the Greek, from Latin. 

Dr. T.S. Saravanan, Honorary Advisor, TNTB and ESC, also spoke at the event.