“Translation, for me, is an act of love. It makes me translate what I read that haunts me,” said journalist Kavitha Muralidharan, setting the tone of the panel discussion on Linguistic Challenges: Editing and Marketing Translations.
Adding to this, Mini Krishnan, co-ordinating editor of the Tamil Nadu Textbook and Educational Services Corporation explained how translation is a retrieval of things that otherwise lie absolutely locked away. “Translation is emotionally important for not just our country but for literatures of the world, and that cross-fertilisation would stop in a day if there was no translation,” she said.
Prabha Sridevan, former judge, Madras High Court opined that a translation was as much a creation as works in the original language. “The only add-on for the translation is that while the original writer has the whole world to paint the canvas with, translators have only the world described in the original.” She further spoke of how translation helped her walk in different shoes, even those that she may not have otherwise walked in. She also wants to take Tamil writing to English as she believes that it hasn’t got its due, and stressed the need of good editors in Tamil.
For D.I. Aravindan, translator and journalist, translation is an act of passion, not towards translation, but towards his language, Tamil. “When I read something important, I feel it should also come to Tamil. As a Tamilian, I am tempted to translate anything good I read, into Tamil. Apart from getting the meaning right, the soul of the translation lies in getting the soul of the author into Tamil. In other words, it should read like the author’s writing, and not the translator’s.
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