This year’s Goa Art and Literary Festival (GALF) is presenting poets from two different languages, Sanket Mhatre (Marathi) and Rochelle Potkar (English) who have cross-translated 35 each of their poems for a first-ever cross-translated book of 70 poems. TGLife talks to the duo on this unique experiment
BHARATI PAWASKAR
TGLife: Tell us more about this cross-translation project
Rochelle Potkar: Language is mist, never mind its lipi,and once lifted, the terrain of human existence is the same. Poetry connects like ground water under the dermis of dialects, is what I discovered as I translated Sanket’s fulcrum of querying and quarrying. Translating poetry’s intimacies makes one more intuitive and instinctive arounds the bends of words and phrases.
Sanket Mhatre: The process of translation is akin to opening a window into another culture, world and universe. In fact, translations are the only way we can widen the horizons of our language and sensibilities. In that sense, translating Rochelle’s work is an absolute necessity. Her poems are at once an inquiry, a romantic manifesto, a political statement and a deeper excavation into her own past to find her own balance. She writes with a restless ink and translating these poems was an enriching experience. Through her poems, as a translator, I also turned into a seeker.
TGLife: What did it teach you?
RP: I had to invent or discover words. We convert most world currencies to US dollars to gauge their strength, but I didn’t want to make these translations a hasty conversion to English, rather a soulful disrobing to another language.
SM: Translations enable you to find what your language has been missing as much as what your language facilitates, which other languages might not have.Translation teaches you to be anthropological. Besides, you can always create words and that joy, is the most supreme.
TGLife: Does the beauty of one language get carried in the translation?
RP: The essence can be accurately translated, under the fabric of language, the flesh-of-meaning graftable.Poetry, the curation of dreams.
SM: It depends on the way you perceive a particular language and script. I could easily identify with most of Rochelle’s work and her expression, even the tone of it. It was as if, finding my own voice while tracing hers through the stencils of my language. I guess that, beauty of any language is in the quill of the beholder.
TGLife: What is the relevance of such initiatives?
RP: We hope now to bring 100 Marathi poets to English in our next project. Marathi is not just a regional language because I am Indian, but an international language because we are global citizenry. Like every language and dialect from any corner of the earth. We badly need a museum of languages – a well-preserved birdsong-forest.
SM: This decade isn’t just going to be about writing and performing poetry. It’s the age of translations as well. People are now evolved digital-natives and they are seeking voices outside of their own periphery. Translation is just the medium we need to explore new insights and ideas. I think translation if explored through the right cultural context, could become the biggest literary unifier of our times.
TGLife: What is your take-awayfrom Goa Litfest?
RP: Goa is home, and GALF is one of the most egalitarian and inclusive festivals. It embraced me like a maides (native place) always does. You never feel excluded.
SM: Literature festivals are about understanding and gauging where you stand in the larger scheme of things. Besides the fact that you interact with artists, you do know that there is a community that thinks the way you do and understands your intent for constant creation. For me, presenting Marathi poems as well as Marathi translations of Rochelle’s poems to a diverse, multilingual audience will be a great challenge, and hence, more satisfying. When a person (of an entirely different language and culture) resonates with you, I guess that feeling is truly exquisite.
