| Ray as Translator |
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The frontispiece of Satyajit Ray's first published writing in Bengali. It was a translation of one of
Edward Lear's long poems |
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Satyajit Ray's output as a translator is small compared with what he produced as an original writer, but whatever he translated --- whether from English to his mother tongue Bengali or the other way round --- went beyond the pale of mere transliteration to become transcreation. They may not look original but certainly do almost so mainly because of the charm of his free-flowing style, which he used so skillfully to evoke the mood and spirit of the original. The books he produced as a translator are as popular as his original publications.
Ray published four books of translation: Braziler Kalo Bagh (translated into Bengali from Arthur Conan Doyle, Arthur C. Clarke and Ray Bradbury), Nonsense Rhymes (translated into English from Sukumar Ray), Molla Nasiruddiner Galpo (translated into Bengali from Idris Shah), and Torai Bandha Ghorar Dim (translated into Bengali from Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Hilaire Belloc and Darmi Thompson). |
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Naseeruddin represented as
a cute paper doll |
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Much of all that Ray translated came out in Sandesh --- the Ray family magazine for children founded by his grandfather Upendrakishore --- which he had revived in 1961. He also translated into English some delightful stories that Upendrakishore had written for the same periodical, but they remain to appear in book form.
Children are fond of fun, and it was to quench their thirst for funny tales that Ray translated the humorous stories of Molla Nasiruddin, which he had found in a collection by Idris Shah. No one knows if the Molla ever existed at all, or if he did, where he was from. “Many stories ascribed to Molla Nasiruddin have been handed down by word of mouth in various countries of the world for about a thousand years,” wrote Ray in his untitled preface. “According to some, these stories originated in Turkey, because they observe Molla Nasiruddin's birth anniversary there every year.”
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What kind of a man was Molla Nasiruddin? No one can tell for sure. “It is hard to see from the stories about him exactly what kind of a man Molla Nasiruddin really was,” Ray continued. “Sometimes he comes across as a fool, sometimes as a very wise man.” So Ray advised his readers to figure the Molla out: “It is for you to form your judgment.”
As a school-going boy, Ray was a voracious reader who gorged himself on Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle and their likes. The creator of Sherlock Holmes was a special favourite. But Ray never translated a story featuring Sherlock Holmes. Rather he took up for translation three tales of mystery and terror by Doyle, in addition to one each by Clarke and Bradbury, which appeared in his Braziler Kalo Bagh .
As son of Sukumar Ray, acknowledged on all hands as the pioneer of nonsense rhymes in India, Ray had a natural knack of playing with metre and rhyme with effortless grace. Though he never penned any original poems, this talent of his found expression in his translation of some of the more popular nonsense verses by his father, as also of poems by Lear, Carroll, Belloc and Thompson. |
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The hallmark of the design is the striking contrast between solid black and yellow ochre.
( The Black Tiger of Brazil ) |
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The collection of poems translated into Bengali by Ray. Since the
original poems are in English, Ray uses European motifs on the cover |
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As Ray wrote in an untitled foreword to his Torai Bandha Ghorar Dim : "Nearly all poems included in this collection were published first in the Sandesh magazine. If nonsense works are translated verbatim the spirit of the original cannot be retained more often than not. So liberties had to be taken with some of the poems translated. The limericks by Lear were no direct translations; fresh ones were composed by following the illustrations done by Lear."
The slim edition of Sukumar Ray's Nonsense Rhymes containing only ten translated verses bears eloquent testimony to how transliteration can rise to the level of transcreation. Ray was too busy to do illustrations to go with the verses as he was busy doing a film, which surely was a loss for posterity. The rhymes had originally appeared in Now , an English weekly, in 1969.
Sukumar Ray's verses and other writings came out later in translation done not by Ray but by others. If only Ray had done some more of his father's poems! |
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