Understanding the Art of Translation

Welcome to another session of TBR Talks, where we discuss the art of translation. This session of TBR Talks is moderated by Maitreyee Chowdhury, Managing Editor at The Bangalore Review.

Panelists

1. Sukrita Paul Kumar is a poet and critic. An Honorary Fellow of the prestigious International Writing Programme at the University of Iowa, she is also a former Fellow of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Kumar is Honorary faculty at the Durrell Centre at Corfu. Her books of poems include Dream Catcher and Without Margins in addition to bilingual collections such as Poems Come Home with translations by Gulzar. She was the Guest Editor of Crossing Over (University of Hawaii). A number of her poems have emerged from her experience of working with homeless people, tsunami victims and street children. She has also published many critical books and translations.
2. Rohini Chowdhury is an established literary translator and the author of several children’s books. Her published writing, in Hindi and English, covers a wide spectrum of literary genres including translations, novels, short fiction, comics, and non-fiction. Her translations include the seventeenth-century Braj Bhasha text Ardhakathanak, the first autobiography in an Indian language, as well as Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas, the sixteenth-century retelling of the story of Ram. She also writes Eaten by a Fish, a newsletter on Indian literature. She is published by Penguin Random House India, Scholastic India, and Rupa Publications.
3. Bhaswati Ghosh writes and translates fiction and non-fiction. Her first book of fiction is Victory Colony 1950, published by Yoda Press. Her work of translation from Bengali into English–My Days with Ramkinkar Baij–has been published by Niyogi Books. This work also won her the Charles Wallace (India) Trust Fellowship for translation in 2009. Her stories have appeared in Letters to My Mother and My Teacher is My Hero – anthologies of true stories published by Adams Media.
4. Fehmida Zakeer is an independent writer and author based in Chennai, India. Her articles have been published in various Indian and international publications, National Geographic, The National (UAE), Ozy, GOOD, Hakai, India Today, The Hindu, Mint Lounge, Open Magazine, Himal Southasian, etc. Stories written by her have been widely anthologised. The Dreams of a Mappila Girl, is her latest work of translation from Malayalam by B. M. Zuhara.