Hemantha Kalam - 92 ‘Interpretation and Translation – art or a chore?’

 

“It’s not the word in itself that matters but the interpretation”

--- Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

 

The above quote was coined by me when I was in my twenties and now in my mid-sixties, I continue to stand by it. I found in my life (so far) that I have been one of the most badly interpreted and most misunderstood persons, albeit my reasonable success in a communicating profession as a teacher and a trainer.

Any way fret not as this is not the real fodder for this blog of mine. It has been a while since I wrote a blog and a chance reading of “To pierce a mustard seed and let in seven oceans” by Ambai on the 27^th March, 2021 (https://scroll.in/article/990624/to-pierce-a-mustard-seed-and-let-in-seven-oceans-ambai-on-the-art-of-translation) stirred my own memories from a nest that is more complicated even than that of a hornet’s, ultimately leading me to write this blog on my own experiences of interpretation and translation. 

Like Ambai I too was educated in the medium of my mother tongue (Telugu) till my 5^th standard and only from the 6^th standard onwards I have been put into a study through English medium. I trust these initial years’ of study in my mother tongue did, indeed, give me a fundamental linguistic strength. But unlike Ambai I did quite well in both the languages – Telugu and English and stood among the top three in the class till I was in the school. When I left SSLC (XI standard) I was second in the school in English beaten only by one mark by the topper who continues to be a good friend of mine.

During these years, despite knowing two languages quite proficiently (even grammatically) and also knew Tamil to speak ‘fluently’ I was always shy to speak in any other language than Telugu. After I wrote my SSLC Public Examination my dear father insisted that I learn Tamil in the morning and Hindi in the evening properly and thus I pursued learning both of them in a full-fledged manner. Today I can gloat, if you permit please, but certainly thanks to my beloved dear father that I am a sort of hyperglot though some of my close acquaintances don’t consider my Hindi really good. Perhaps! One person used to make fun of my Hindi even 40 years ago calling it ‘tooti phooti’ (broken) while all the time I was considering that I could speak it as sweetly as ‘tutti frutti’ and another person even now keeps correcting my Hindi. I am sure both of them would know themselves when they are reading this blog! J

Yet, I do offer my services in translating from English, Hindi, Kannada and Tamil into Telugu and from Hindi, Kannada, Tamil and Telugu into English. Though I do offer these services professionally, I don’t aggressively market my prowess, whatever might be the degree, as translation can sometime be an art but many times just a chore. While the effort and time one has to put into it is the same, in my considered opinion, in India, translators are very poorly paid (unless you are lucky to be associated with a high end advertising agency) and efforts and time are not commensurate to the work at all.

Trust me, no siree; I don’t think it’s easy to live comfortably as a translator, here. So I pursue this work only when I need a change and not looking for money and may undertake just one or two translation assignments in a year, at the most. Also, when the payment is poor, I do not seriously want to compete with some translator who is trying to eke out some living and deprive of that opportunity for her/him!

Each language has its own dynamics and flavours that are mostly influenced by the geography and culture of the people. Finding equivalent meanings for each and every word is always not possible. I might be causing a debate when I say this, but I am of the firm opinion that Indian languages compete with each other in richness and in comparison, English is quite bland. No wonder so many Indian words are quietly finding their place into the English lexicons.

Yet during the translation time, the translator also becomes an investigator to find the meaning - the true meaning, the intended meaning and sometimes the intrepid interpretation, to handle the same without trampling on the gossamer sensitivities and convey as much fragrance as one can do. There it becomes as much an art and a science; a level which machine translations can hardly achieve.

Before starting on this blog, I went back into my earlier years trying to remember when I had started translating. It started in school as regular exercises and also in our tests and examinations and in two languages – English to my mother tongue and vice versa and almost always I got very good grading and appreciation from my teachers, for my handwriting also used to be quite legible and good (which succumbed to the usage of the dumb mouse now).

There was this time when I did a whole campaign of radio jingle, press, posters and film copy translating from English to Telugu for Fresca soap while working with Godrej Soaps Limited. I am not sure, but I think ‘Enterprise’ was the agency for the product at the time and they got the Telugu copy done at Bombay (now Mumbai) and the copy was sent to the southern office in Chennai for opinion and the bunch of work landed in my lap to be read and commented upon.

I was just a measly clerk in the office at that time and I now realise that my manager late Rao garu must have had real confidence in me to ask me check and let him know of my thoughts. I told him that I can do better copywriting (till last year I have been a member of the Advertising Club Madras – only during COVID-19 I became lazy to renew my membership) and he gave me a deep stare and asked me to go ahead. I did and when the campaign hit the market I was really on a creative high. With less than 2% of changes my copy was accepted and going around for over a year on the whole of the media (in fact, when I resigned and was relieved, the relieving letter also mentioned this work).

A new translator has arrived on the scene and how? But my interest was more on modelling and real copy writing in English. I never really got either opportunity (I wasn’t tall as was needed by the agencies at the time and all big agencies had their copywriters fixed). I did get a chance from HTA (Hindustan Thompson Associates, Madras) who found my sample work meeting their expectations by only about 45% level.

Later a small, Madras-based, advertising agency wanted me to do some work for them and all I got in exchange for the work was just a cup of coffee. It is not easy to get good remuneration this side of the Vindhyas – may be because the supply of educated, intelligent and sincere workers is more around here!

Over a period of time, except for translating letters that came in local vernacular to the various offices I had worked in, I haven’t, rather couldn’t, take up any serious translating assignments.

It was in 2014 that I was totally jobless and with no income in the vicinity that I chanced upon a call from Wyoming University, USA who wanted me to translate two rural Telugu stories into English.

Now this work challenged my senses and also my writing prowess as several of the local words used in the local slang (what we call in Telugu as ‘Maandalika Yaasa’) were not familiar to me. So I had to trace the original writer and check with her on what she had in mind when she used such and such a word and then try to do justification for the same in the translation.

The final work really became no less than an art and I was professionally satisfied that I did justice to the originals of the stories though I had to undertake word to word translation and it was a rigour when compared to free translation where I can just convey the meaning just as an essence in a wholesome manner.

I was paid about US $ 200 for both the stories which I felt were really well earned and timely too then. That it was all of my income during the whole year was a different matter though. But then, I also got a very good endorsement from the University appreciating my work.

The second offer came to me in the mid 2018 where I have been asked to translate a religious book of about 400 pages from Tamil to English. They gave me a test sample and only after being satisfied that I could convey religious texts well in English that they gave me the assignment. The work needed at least about 40 days of rigorous work and the fee offered to me was a tuppence and what I could make in one day of my normal work. Yet I conceded as I was excited that I am going to translate from one ‘foreign’ language to another (as both of them are not my mother tongue).

When the original book arrived by courier, I noted that it was not only heavy but also purportedly written by an allegedly corrupt person in the state whose name regularly figured in scams worth multi-millions. All my zest was lost. I was not interested in associating with such persons. I felt that I was being zipped when they could easily afford to make better payment. Also they could not provide me with an e-version of the book and I couldn’t carry the heavy religious tome wherever I was travelling as I needed to travel often then.

So I returned the full meagre advance they paid me and said that I could not do the work within the time-frame set by them.

The only benefit I got from this episode was my spiritual outlook changed a little upon reading some of the chapters of the book.

During the same year I had opportunity to hire an interpreter cum translator for an assignment in Laos PDR and dear Vi, the guy who accepted this assignment was always found with a Lao-English-Lao dictionary on hand. I used to tease him as to why does he need a dictionary on hand if he wants to be a professional interpreter/translator. He said that while his Lao language was certainly good about which he had no doubts he wasn't sure of my knowledge level of English. So to be sure and to meet my requirement he used to frequently refer to the dictionary. I loved that guy's sincerity as, though very young in age, he had that zeal of translating the right and tried to do it well too. 

During the COVID-19 lockdown - work from home only scenario, I got a small assignment of translating from English to Telugu some skits that were to help in the women empowerment through livelihoods. I worked swiftly and I was quite happy with the work. I was paid well and commensurately too. However, I had a dampener as the font that I was using could not be understood by my principals and I couldn’t work on a font sent by them. We tried to work on a middle path but it didn’t work out well for either of us. So we parted ways.

So translation is not a piece of cake eating and has its own variety of headaches. But when you really do a good translation and it is appreciated by the readers the satisfaction can’t be measured.

Nowadays I do some rare office related translations and a bit of interpretation whenever I travel on office work.

To conclude, when the job is done satisfactorily and also is well paid, the work is an art J and whenever you need to translate on WhatsApp, it becomes a chore which I do only for some close pals.

Until the next,  

Krutagjnatalu (Telugu), Nanri (Tamil), Dhanyavaadagalu (Kannada), Nanni (Malayalam), Dhanyavaad (Hindi), Dhanyosmi (Sanskrit), Thanks (English), Dhonyavaad (Bangla), Dhanyabad (Oriya and Nepalese), Gracias (Spanish), Grazie (Italian), Danke Schon (Deutsche), Merci (French), Obrigado (Portuguese), Shukraan (Arabic and Sudanese), Shukriya (Urdu), Sthoothiy (Sinhalese) Aw-koon (Khmer), Kawp Jai Lhai Lhai (Laotian), Kob Kun Krab (Thai), Asante (Kiswahili), Maraming Salamat sa Lahat (Pinoy-Tagalog-Filipino), Tack (Swedish), Fa'afetai (Samoan), Terima Kasih (Bahasa Indonesian) and Tenkyu (Tok Pisin of Papua New Guinea), Malo (Tongan), Vinaka Vaka Levu (Fijian)

 

Hemantha Kumar Pamarthy

Chennai, India