In recent years, Malayalam literature has witnessed several notable trends and significant growth, reflecting the evolving socio-cultural landscape of Kerala. The fact that the inaugural JCB Prize for Literature [2018] was awarded to Benyamin and that S Hareesh and M Mukundan were other laureates from Malayalam, is promising for the literary tradition of Kerala. In an age where regional literatures are celebrated, Kerala writing has substantially marked its signature at a pan-Indian level. Initiatives by publishers, cultural organisations, and translators have sought to amplify the presence of Malayalam literature in the global literary arena, thereby widening its horizons.

The recent surge of interest in poetry translation is promising for the genre, which has been relatively less translated compared to fiction. Bilingual writers from Kerala, as well as some major promising translators, are showing a new affection towards translating poetry.

A major challenge in translating a text from one language to another lies in capturing the linguistic and cultural nuances specific to the region of the source work. Malayalam, rich and diverse with numerous regional variations and colloquialisms, is one of the many regional languages in India that has forged an international identity through commendable translations of its original texts.

Since the beginning of the literary tradition, translating works from Malayalam into other languages has provided a gateway for non-Malayali readers to explore the innate literary expressions of this vibrant language. The task before a translator of the language is to navigate through this linguistic complexity to convey the essence of the original text accurately. It becomes even more composite when dealing with works that incorporate local customs, traditions, and folklore. However, it is also notable that several accomplished translators have taken up this task and have remarkably attempted to bridge the gap between Malayalam and other languages, especially English. Despite the linguistic and cultural challenges, translators have played a pivotal role in preserving and disseminating the diverse voices that define Malayalam literature.

It is significant to converse on such live topics in literary discussions with eminent writers of the age. K. Satchidanandan, a celebrated poet known for the emotional depth, intellectual richness, and universal appeal of his poetry—communicates about contemporary Malayalam poetry, translation, and its prospects in this interview.

S Suthara: To quote yourself from an interview with Amrith Lal B published online: “As a creative writer, I am enamoured by the idea of the passage of words from one language into another…” What excites you about the process of translation? Is it the cultural exchange and the minute nuances in languages, or the idea of your language [Malayalam] being transported to another and vice versa?

K Satchidanandan: The process of translation, which is ‘intimate reading’ according to Gayatri Chakravarty Spivak, is interesting in itself as a game of words and meanings with their cultural contexts and connotations. We can never translate anything, especially poetry, literally. The excitement lies precisely here: how to replace a word or expression or image in the original word with one in the target language, which may belong altogether to another family, as in the case of Malayalam and English. So much has been said about the impossibility of translation, but so little about its pleasures and possibilities. Translation can only be the creation of a parallel universe, an echo from the forest of language to the call of the original writer as Walter Benjamin would call it. You can hardly imitate the sound of a word, but you can create another sound structure, a parallel texture, an image, a simile or a metaphor in the likeness of the original. In an early poem, I have compared translation to the transposal of heads in the Vikramaditya Tales. It can never be perfect, as another translation is always possible—even you can do another. Those who have looked at the many translations of Pablo Neruda into English know this; it could well be said of Kalidasa or Shakespeare. It is this element of chance, of uncertainty, of yours being just one of the many possible versions, which makes the task challenging as well as interesting. When the languages as dissimilar like English and Malayalam, the risk adds to the thrill. 

SS: I understand that there haven’t been any translation programmes or workshops conducted during your service as the President of the Kerala Sahitya Akademi. What is the current focus of the Akademi regarding the idea?

KS: The Akademi keeps publishing translations, though not done in workshops. Even recently we published “Uneven Haikus”, a translation of the selected poems of Kunjunni, who always chose to write very short poems, done by T R Joy, a poet himself, writing in English. Several collections of stories and novels, even a book on the birds of Kerala, have been published by the Akademi, though the focus is on academic and critical works written in Malayalam. We are planning to hold some workshops between South Indian languages.

SS: As a senior poet from Kerala, what is your take on contemporary Malayalam poetry? How does it feel to translate them into English?

KS: Poetry is now rarely written in meter; this has made translation a bit easier as in many cases meter contributes to the atmosphere and music of a poem and it is hard to discover parallels in another language. The idiom has also become simpler and less Sanskritic than before. Poetry has been democratised in a big way. The younger poets are making use of the new opportunities provided by cyber platforms. All of them may not be equally good, but the very fact that they choose poetry as their first medium of expression is telling. Let time decide what should stand and what should fall.

SS: You have often expressed that your thoughts are in Malayalam when it comes to the question of bilingualism. Do you face interference from your mother tongue in your English writing or translation process? In that sense, is your English usage forced?

KS: I use English when necessitated by circumstances. I have studied Malayalam only at the school level. My second language in college was Hindi—which became very useful when I moved to Delhi where I lived for three decades: I also translated quite a few poems directly from Hindi and have a whole collection of modern Hindi poetry in Malayalam translated directly, besides a selection of the poems of Kabir that I did from Braj, slightly different from modern Hindi, during the days of the pandemic, as part of a series of five books of Bhakti and Sufi poetry. I did my post-graduation in English; my Ph.D. too is in English. I taught English in two colleges for almost 25 years. So English is easily my second language of expression. No, I do not think in Malayalam when I speak or write in English. I do not think there is anything unnatural about my use of English. To write poetry only in Malayalam was more of a choice than a compulsion. It is also because my memories of my early life are linked inevitably to Malayalam. I have several poems, especially on the Malayalam language and its great poets, which I have not dared translate into English as their allusions and suggestions will mostly be lost in translation, and footnotes can hardly be a substitute for the direct experience they provide. But I have found a good majority of my poems—with universal appeal—can well be translated into English somewhat adequately and so far, I have around 800 pages of my poetry available in English, which is almost 70 percent of my total output. To that extent I am bilingual, and many Indian poets writing in English believe that my translations of my poetry are a part of the oeuvre of Indian poetry in English, and that is why they keep including me in all the significant anthologies of Indian English poetry.

SS: Do you assimilate, imbibe, or draw inspiration from the process of translating others? What is its impact on your language, writing, and overall perception?

KS: I cannot claim that any poet I have translated has directly influenced my poetry, but they help me hone my skills as a poet, make me aware of the diversity of themes and forms of poetry, and generally keep me aware of what is happening in poetry across nations and languages. In short, they have helped widen my world of poetic experience and enlarge my perception of language, poetry, and the human condition in general. They also give me the courage to experiment with language and forms.

SS: What is your take on residency programmes and translation fellowships? Isn’t travel and funding important for a writer to transgress boundaries and experience languages and various geo-cultural regions?

KS: Indeed they help poets travel, write, and translate and more than anything widen their understanding of poetry written in other languages. Poetry festivals also do that to a great extent to speak from my experience of having taken part in such events many times on six continents. I have also been part of at least two translation programmes between Swedish and Indian languages and Welsh and Indian languages. I traveled across Sweden to translate Swedish poetry and was in Wales in a workshop where we Indian poets translated Welsh poetry into Malayalam, Hindi, Bangla, and Manipuri. These workshops had their follow-ups in Kerala. I also recall translating Spanish poetry into Malayalam in cities in Spain beginning with Madrid. My poetry has been translated at times directly from Malayalam (as in French or German and of course, English) or via English (as in Arabic, Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Russian, Italian, Swedish, and Welsh besides most major Indian languages (where some were direct, some done jointly with me or some done via Hindi.) I have collections of my poetry in most of these languages. As to the translations done by me of others’ poetry, more than 2000 pages of them, some were done directly, some done with help from another poet from the original language and some from English translations, later read by some scholar in the original language, for reasons of loyalty. 

SS: In contemporary Kerala poetry, how do you perceive the role and status of translators? Additionally, do you see translation as a promising space within Kerala’s literary sphere?

KS: Let me first confess that translation of poetry brings practically no financial gains except some royalty in rare cases or some honorarium when you do a column of poetry in translation as I have been doing for two years now—it is a monthly column titled ‘A House for Poetry’) for a reputed weekly in Malayalam: but this is nothing compared to the work involved. So one can say it is mostly done for pleasure or adding to the wealth of poetry available in one’s language. It is true poetry has taken me to more than thirty countries in the world, chiefly as I had my poetry in translation, mostly in English and mostly done by me. There are very few publishing houses who are interested in publishing poetry in translation (in fact original poetry too, unless it is by a well-established poet with an assured sale of at least a thousand copies) and even when they do, they seldom offer any royalty to the translator. There is only one house that published only poetry in translation, run by the translator himself, about whose financial well-being I know little. Otherwise, it is mostly little publishing houses that publish translations of poetry (unlike fiction, especially novels by well-known authors, especially Nobel and Booker-winning authors, in which case most of the translations are commissioned with an honorarium and find thousands of readers in Malayalam) The positive happening is that novels in Malayalam has now found some good translators into English and some of them have won national awards like the DSC and Crossword Awards.

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Contemporary Malayalam literature is evolving in a continuum with poignant regional voices and by emulating experimental forms of world literature. With the development of technology and the world of cyberspace, it is undergoing rapid growth. To quote K Satchidanandan: "Poetry has been democratised in a big way." I believe that translation is a means of further liberating literature, transcending lexical and cultural hindrances. This phenomenon undoubtedly contributes to the literary tradition: enabling a larger audience to understand the richness of a language and facilitating a greater community to augment a microcosmic culture.