'I decided to retain many Kannada and Arabic words': Deepa Bhasthi on translating Kannada book shortlisted for Booker Prize 2025

In his collection of essays and criticism Salman Rushdie once said ldquoIt is normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation I cling obstinately to the notion that something can also be gainedrdquoThis time this gain is for India mdash in the form of an International Booker Prize nomination for an English translation of a Kannada work the first ever for an Indian regional language Writer activist and lawyer Banu Mushtaqrsquos story collection Heart Lamp Hrudaya Deepa was featured in this yearrsquos International Booker Prize shortlistOriginally in Kannada her works have been translated into Urdu Hindi Tamil and Malayalam but the English translation came only this year Translator Deepa Bhasthi is conominated for the award The winners will be announced on May 20Banu Mushtaqrsquos book explores the lives of women in Muslim communities in south India PicX andothertweetsThis development comes amid English translations of regional literature by multiple publishers especially of Dravidian languages Translated Marathi and Hindi literature is in demand tooMushtaq renowned in South Indian literary circles never anticipated that stories from Hassan a tier2 city in Southern Karnataka would appeal to the Booker jury Lauding Bhasthi Mushtaq is reported to have said ldquoThey understood the culture and the context That is the great thingrdquoBhasthi deserves the credit as translation is often regarded as one of the toughest tasks in literature This thought is echoed even by veteran writer poet and lyricist Javed Akhtar who has translated the works of laureates such as Rabindranath Tagore Akhtar once remarked at a literature festival ldquoTranslation isnrsquot merely about converting words Itrsquos about carrying the soul of a text across languagesrdquoDeepa Bhasthi and Bhushan KorgaonkarSo how did Bhasthi do it She neither came from the same region of Karnataka nor spoke the same dialect nor shared the same cultural or religious background In a conversation with Sunday midday she says ldquoIt is a creative adaptation in a way Every book comes with its own cultural and linguistic complexities I studied the context thoroughly which in this case is a setting in a Kannada Muslim community before rendering it into the target language English I decided to retain many Kannada and Arabic words For example reducing lsquoduarsquo to just lsquoprayerrsquo would lose cultural weightrdquoOn how stories from a small city in Karnataka may have resonated with an international audience Bhasthi says ldquoWestern markets publish very little translated literature But these stories have universal themes such as patriarchy So despite a different setting itrsquos relatablerdquoHowever despite growing interest in regional literature experts say good translations which can appeal to both national and international audiences are still a rarity Bhushan Korgaonkar a Marathi and English writer and translator says ldquoThe demand from nonMarathi speaking populations has increased But the challenge is that certain cultural concepts are languagespecific The book I translated Anna He Apoorna Brahma has brilliant wordplay in the title itself but the direct translation would lose the wordplay So in English itrsquos simply called Dalit Kitchens of MarathwadardquoKorgaonkar agrees with Bhasthirsquos approach He thoroughly researches the culture revisits the draft multiple times and evaluates whether it would make sense to a wider audienceBut good translations are seemingly an individual effort Korgaonkar says ldquoTherersquos no organised system for translations Even universities like Savitribai Phule Pune University or Mumbai University donrsquot offer proper Marathi translation studies programsrdquoMalayalam poet and translator Ravi Shankar argues that in a country that speaks over 19500 languages or dialects as mother tongues as per government data knowing English is a privilege and mastering it well enough to translate literature is an even greater one As per the last census only 26 per cent of Indians are bilingual while just seven per cent speak three languages Despite this disparity the National Book Trust an apex government body established to promote reading has published 4000 translations across 58 Indian languages while private publishers have their own separate figuresExperts we spoke to acknowledged the demand which drives publishers to release translated literature However both Bhasthi and Korgaonkar agree that among regional languages only Malayalam and Tamil have relatively strong translation ecosystems Bhasthi says ldquoKannada still lags behind Hopefully this Booker recognition will encourage more translationsrdquoatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params