Vaibhav Sharma: “Every translator should really like what they’re translating”

What made you pick Manav Kaul’s debut novel Antima to translate it into English (Under the Night Jasmine)?

I didn’t pick it; it came to me. It was commissioned via my agent Kanishka Gupta. Manav and Penguin India were looking for a translator for this project. I was asked to write a report on a sample translation for this book and afterwards I got offered to do it!

Was it challenging to translate a book which also has a certain kind of poetic narration style?

It was challenging in a few ways. First of all, I didn’t have much time to do it. I got around one month to work on it. Usually when you pick up something, you make a sample and send it to the publisher and then you get a response. So you have done some work. In this case, I hadn’t done anything beforehand. I had to submit it in a month, which was challenging. Maybe that’s why I don’t remember translating half of it because I didn’t have much time with it. Once you are working with Daisy, you learn to do multiple drafts, edit things again and again, till you feel satisfied. There was obviously poetry. I’m not a very good poetry translator, but the good thing about this book was that most of the poetry came from when the protagonist was very young. It’s poetry from a beginner poet who is trying to put together sentences, so that was helpful for me.

You’ve been mentored by the Booker-winning Hindi translator Daisy Rockwell. Tell us about the experience.

It’s difficult to summarise in just a few sentences. It was wonderful. She was extremely generous with her time. I used to send her samples after samples and edits and she would read them again and again and make corrections and send them back. We had zoom calls once a week where we would discuss what I was doing and how I should proceed. She was extremely helpful when I was translating this particular book as well. I had to do it very fast; I needed another pair of eyes to look at it. She gave me some very important feedback and I learned a lot from that. One of the major things I learned was that I don’t have to stick to the original to the point where I am not allowed to move lines around. Many people who start out have this confusion as to whether they can move sentences around or should they tinker with the source text’s structure at all. I can move things around, cut and paste so that it flows well in the English language. I learned that your goal is to make it sound good in English. It’s not a word for word, switching out one language for another, an Al can do that. It’s about what the writer wanted to say, and as a translator you have to convey the meaning. Words can be moved around; lines can go up and down in a paragraph.

What shapes your choice to pick up a book or a story to translate?

When I pick up a book to translate, the first thing I care about is that the story should appeal to me, I should like it. Every translator should really, really like what they’re translating. Because when you are working on something, there comes a point when you would want to throw the book across the room, believe me there will come a point when you are frustrated, but that’s the time when you have to remember, oh, I love this stuff because when I read it first, it was great. I am more interested in writers who use language fluidly and amalgamate words from different languages. I like it when Hindi books have a bit of Bhojpuri, Maithili, Punjabi, Haryanavi, Dogri, etc. Amit Dutta, one of the writers I’m translating, has Dogri words in his book, and that’s wonderful! I don’t have to know Dogri, I can just ask somebody. But I love how two or more languages can give and take from each other. And it makes for a better sentence, a better sentiment. It gives a lot of context where the story has come from, because Hindi is spoken widely across the north, along with other languages of the region, and they give and take from each other but if all the Hindi books that are coming out from those regions were cleansed of all the words from other languages then how would you know where that literature is coming from? What is the context and origin of this particular story? I’m currently working on Mithilesh Priyadarshi’s book Lohe Ka Baksa aur Bandook. It’s a short story collection, six stories, and they’re mostly set in Jharkhand, but in one of the stories, there’s a whole conversation, which is just in Odia. I don’t know Odia, and I don’t need to. But I love that it’s there. I just texted Shivangi, one of my translator friends who knows Odia and sent her that section. She explained to me what it meant.

Any other translated books we should be hoping for from you in the near future?

If I ever finish it, there’s Anil Yadav’s book Courtesans Don’t Read Newspapers. It’s still a work in progress, but it should be out somewhere in 2025 from Penguin. Then I have Amit Dutta’s Kaljayi Kambakht; I’m also working on Mithilesh Priyadarshi’s Lohe Ka Baksa Aur Bandook. I have the rights to translate Ravindra Kalia ‘s short story collection, Nau Saal Choti Patni, but I think that will take a lot of time. A lot of things are in the pipeline, at different levels of completion. But the next thing that’s coming out is Anil Yadav’s Courtesans Don’t Read Newspapers.

Even after an Indian translated book got the Booker prize, it seems that in the mainstream publishing arena, translators still remain ignored. How do we make things better?

First thing is to name the translator. Jennifer Croft, started a movement regarding naming the translator on the cover. It’s important that we are given the right recognition along with the author. Because once it’s translated, it’s as much my book as theirs. Once you place the translator’s name on the cover, then when people talk about the book they talk about the translator as well. Then, I think it also matters that you ask for it. I know translators who are working at a terrible per word rate and they, more often than not, don’t ask for names to be put up there or a better word rate because they think they won’t get it. And they’re not wrong. Most people will deny it, but you must ask. If you ask, then sometimes you’ll get it. And sometimes is much better than zero times, right?

Is it challenging or easer to translate “nayi wali Hindi”?

I don’t think it matters, honestly. Because what is nayi wali Hindi? Let’s say it is something where it is written more casually and there’s a bunch of English words thrown into it. More often than not, I will have to remove that English and put in new words because the English used in nayi wali Hindi is mostly not well placed. The sentence is not structured how it should be structured. So I don’t think it matters for the translator. You anyways have to do it all over again. It’s neither easier, nor harder. But if nayi wali Hindi fits into the other classification, I’ll come back to my earlier point, that are they taking stuff from other languages like Bhojpuri, Maithili, Awadhi etc.? That is fun! It’s fun because it gives way to a collaborative process; then you expand horizons widely. You can say things you might not have been able to otherwise.

Chittajit Mitra (he/him) is a queer writer, translator and editor from Allahabad. He is co-founder of RAQS, an organization working on gender, sexuality and mental health.