The United Nations marks September 30 as International Translation Day to honour translators for their work in bringing different people together and promoting friendship and understanding.
Books in translation have always been around, and they are becoming more popular than ever before. But that’s mostly true when it comes to books for grownups. Children’s literature is still lagging behind in comparison. It is a pity because if you think about it, some of the best-loved children’s classics have come to English from other languages. Tintin by Herge, Asterix by Goscinny and Uderzo, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Heidi by Johanna Spyri, Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren, and many more. Even fairytales by the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen have all come to us through translation.
All credit to translators — some known, others unknown — who have enabled us to enjoy stories from other cultures. Just think of the cleverness and mastery needed for the translators Anthea Bell and Derek Hockridge to translate the puns and wordplay in Asterix from one language to another!
But if you notice, all the books I’ve mentioned are European. That shows us how much of the world is still left for us to sample. In fact, forget the world — just consider India, with its multiple languages, each representative of several unique cultures! Imagine the kind of stories we are missing because they are in a language we do not know! Publishers like Pratham and Tulika are doing good work filling some of that gap, by bringing out the same books in multiple languages, but the majority are originally written in English and are then translated into other languages. There definitely is a whole lot of literature in regional languages still unavailable to us.
Recently, I listened to a talk on YouTube by the Kannada author and publisher Vasudhendra, who mentioned a custom — people who go on a pilgrimage to Kashi, take along a pot of Tunga water and pour it into the Ganga for Lord Vishwanatha to sample the sweetness of Tunga water. And then they bring back a pot of Ganga water and pour it into Tunga for her to absolve herself of her sins. He compares translation to this custom — since we cannot bring the entire river with us, we bring a sample, and that is what translation does too. This comparison hits upon the essence of translation!
It’s a known fact that children’s books don’t get enough space in bookstores and media. And within that, books in English get wider exposure. However, this ensures that stories from little villages and towns, stories that talk about an India that urban children are not familiar with, are getting lost. I’m hoping that more and more publishers encourage translation. This way, more people will hopefully write in their mother tongues, and with translation, children will be able to get access to stories and worlds that they’ll otherwise not have access to.
The author has written 14 books for children and can be reached at www.shruthi-rao.com
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