Translator Translated_ A Novella - Anita Desai [14]
Instead of the ardent admiration I had felt once for the author, the excited joy with which I had set to work rendering my childhood language as faithfully as possible into English, I now looked on Suvarna Devi's work with a much colder eye. More professional perhaps.
I began to wonder if publishing such a disappointing novel would be good for Suvarna Devi's reputation, which I had worked hard to establish. And what would it do to my newly created career as a translator? That too had to be considered, did it not? Having linked myself to the author, didn't it require the best from both of us? And what about the reputation of Tara's press and this imprint she had introduced with Suvarna Devi's short story collection as its first publication? All these factors had to be considered.
Prema took the manuscript across to Tara. Of course Tara could not read the language and would not be able to judge it till it was translated, but Prema felt compelled to warn her that this was not the masterpiece for which they had hoped. Yet she could not let Tara withdraw from the project and bring her new-found vocation to a halt. The warning would have to be delicately phrased, Tara's interest in it kept alive but no false hopes raised.
Fortunately or not, Tara was distracted and did not seem too concerned by what Prema had to tell her. 'I trust you, Prema,' she said, without too much emphasis. 'I know I can rely on you. Not like the translator of this Urdu novel I was pinning my hopes on. It's a major novel by a brilliant new writer, and the first chapters the translator sent in were wonderful. But now he's gone off to Beirut, never answers letters, just makes promises over the phone and never keeps them. I am so annoyed. I was going to give it special treatment.' She tapped the Urdu book on her desk with a pencil impatiently, then glanced at the manuscript Prema had brought in without much interest. 'You are such a relief,' she sighed. 'I know I can trust you to do your job. It's OK to take your time, no need to hurry.'
Prema bridled, thinking: all this pandering to the Muslim minority, hadn't it gone too far? Really, Tara seemed not to have taken in any of Prema's cautiously worded assessment of Suvarna Devi's novel—as if it didn't matter.
So she picked up the manuscript and carried it away with an aggrieved determination to make of it something Tara would notice.
The next step was to make room for the task by taking leave from her college. The principal barely reacted and the students saw her off with undisguised joy: they had been told the substitute would be a Miss Batra, who was known to be younger and livelier, dressed in jeans, was seen to smoke, and intended to introduce them to contemporary American authors not yet admitted to the academic pantheon.
Through the suppurating heat of June and July, under a slowly revolving electric fan, and with perspiration streaming down her face in sheets, Prema settled to trying to rediscover the joy she had initially taken in translation. She suffered from a sense that she was struggling, like a drowning fly, to raise herself up from the dull, turgid prose before her and somehow recover the art of flying.
I knew this was the hardest task I had set myself, the greatest challenge (aside from my initial decision to make this language my field of study). I felt a pressure settle upon my head that was uncomfortable but somehow not suffocating. In fact, the challenge was like a terrific headache that might leave one dazed but also uplifted.
A faithful translation would clearly make for a flat, boring read. I saw that what was needed was for me to be inventive, take things into my own hands and create a style for the book. So, instead of a literal translation, I decided to take liberties with the text—to begin with, Suvarna Devi's modest syntax. And once I did that, I began to enjoy myself. What a difference