Topic started by Traveller (@ globalc34.citicorp.com) on Tue Jul 17 09:03:38 .
All times in EST +10:30 for IST.
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I feel the books given below should be translated to Tamil.
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Responses:
- From: Traveller (@ globalc34.citicorp.com)
on: Tue Jul 17 09:04:38
Please add your views and your list of books.
- From: Bala Pilla (@ nas1ppp54.apic.net)
on: Tue Jul 17 10:21:08
More than the translation of books I think a movie should be made. Transposing the confident, secure, win-win, resourceful Sangam and pre-1000 Tamil mindset with a US Founding Fathers medley founding a new cyber state. After all, a state is nothing but an imagined community in our minds.
Done in an epic "Gandhi" movie style with the story-telling pizazz of Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel. (This Diamond book answers Papua New Guineans question how come they who were way ahead of the whites 10,000 years ago now have to import washing machines from the whites in a superb historically cause-effect explained in storytelling form way)
- From: Vishvesh Obla (@ 63.65.68.246)
on: Tue Jul 17 12:18:13
Hi traveller,
Nice to see Pilgrim's Progress in ur list. John Bunyan would move even the hardest atheist by his unaffected piety. I remember that there was some kind of Tamil adaptation of it (if not a translation). If I am right, it was one of the very early tamil prose works too. A few students were trying to translate Walt Whitman's Leaves of grass at MK Univ and they must be available at least as dissertations in MKU.
- From: era.murugan (@ dialpool-210-214-128-143.maa.sify.net)
on: Tue Jul 17 12:31:43
Dear Vishvesh,
i think Leaves of Grass has already been xlated into Tamil as 'pullin idhazhkaL' by SDS Yogi - quite long back.
Though not English in origin, the following books need to be xlated into Tamil :
Novels:
1) Tin Drum (Gunther Grass - German)
2) One hundred years of solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Spanish)
3) Snow Country, House of the sleeping maidens
(Yasunari Kawabata - japanese)
Poetry
1) Maya Angelou
2) Arun Kolatkar (Marathi and English)
- From: Vishvesh Obla (@ 63.65.68.246)
on: Wed Jul 18 12:14:29
My choice could be:
(since i have nothing to do, let me add why I choose them)
1. Women in Love, by D.H.Lawrence
Lawrence explores in this work the very basis of men and women relations as they exist physically and emotionally. He is perhaps the greatest critic of modern civilization which is infested by its obsession to ideas, its shallow consciousness in relating itself inter-personally and to the universe around. He explores his perception of life through the love affairs of two sisters, who are very sensitive though almost diametrically opposite in their psyche. This is a difficult work which needs a discipline in reading but nevertheless could give one a taste of what great literature is.
2. Fantasia of the Unconscious , by D.H.Lawrence
I must say that this is a profound work of psychology, much different from academic and the non academic psychology as well(of Freud, Jung & company). Lawrence brilliantly traces the growth of human mind, its primal modes of consciousness, how it is supposed to develop with an internal balance, and how it gets stunted in its growth by our forced habits and associations. Even T.S.Eliot, who developed an enormous unreasonable prejudice for Lawrence, because of his catholic beliefs, was compelled to openly admire this little book as a profound work of human psychology.
3. On Poetry and Poets, a collection of critical essays by T.S.Eliot
Tamil literary criticm would immensely gain if the entire critical works of T.S.Eliot, Mathew Arnold, I.A.Richards and F.R.Leavis were translated. This particular collection of essays could set the ball rolling to more translations of great literary criticism. Eliot makes very good value judgements on the general nature of poetry and a few poets.
4. Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James
Another difficult work like Women in Love which brilliantly analyses the complex subject of what kind of fallacies one is liable to fall under in one's illusion of intellect and freedom. Isabella Archer, a brilliant young woman, who wants to know life, takes her own choice against prudence and finally finds how wrong she has been. A Jane Austen kind of tale, but set in our times, has more of complex analysis. A great work because it points out the fallacies which one is liable to behind the garb of intellect.
5. Emma , by Jane Austen
This is considered to be the first great English novel and one of the greatest too. Jane Austen is well known for her subtle understanding of essential human relations. Emma, like most of her other heroines, learns about life, through the errors she makes. These errors, in various shades and levels, can be generalized on a broader level to what we all do and hence it is an indirect learning of life itself through the character of Emma one goes through by reading the work.
6. Hucklebury Finn, by Mark Twain
This is a beautiful tale of an unusual bonding that occurs between a white american youth and a black slave. Huck comes to a subtle understanding of human relations through his stint in the Mississippi river with Jim, the slave, which is much beyond the superficial feelings of compassion alone for a fellow human being. Twain has explored how the human mind in its essential unaffectedness (Huck is a fun loving, outdoors kid, and entirely un-bound by conventional morals and education) can react to such a man made issue. His passion for the river mississippi is his passion for life itself, for he found in it a vital element that gives inward nourishment to life. This element combines so beautifully with the outward movement of life that goes through the tale of Huck and Jim, the two swindlers, and the other minor but interesting characters of the novel.
7. Autobiography, by John Stuart Mill
This is an autobiography of an exceptionally brilliant man who traces all his achievements to the exceptional training in education he underwent under an exceptional guidance of his father, who was no less an exceptional person himself. One comes to an understanding, after reading it, as to what basically education is, how it is nurtured by what kind of training, and how it forms one's intellect and character.
8. Understanding Literature, by Robin Mayhead
As the title suggests, this work deals with the issues of what basically literature is and how one ought to look at it from its real perspectives. It deals admirably as to how poetry and novels are to be interpreted. The author takes examples of works of different periods too and demonstrates the kind of sensibility that not make them literary but also give them a cultural standpoint.
9. Evening Tales from Dikanka, by Nikolai Gogol
There are scores of Russian works that on translation to Tamil would be of great service, but I believe most of them are already available by the erstwhile progress publications. All works of Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Gorky, Checkov and even Turgenev have been translated, I guess. Gogol isn't much familiar to the Indian reader as I have seen (his Dead souls could be translated in tamil), unless he is a connoisseur of Russian Litarature. This particular collection is a charming tale of Russian folk life. It shows the amount of passion that Gogol had for his motherland (though he lived most of his life abroad) and how such passion forms the basis of great art.
10. Hard Times, by Charles Dic*kens
This is a typical tale of Dic*kens, mingles with his charactarestic humor and sentiment, but still different from his other semi-sentimental works in the fact that he concentrates more on the devastation of the charming rural kind of life of England by Industrialization. It is a kind of direct social criticism, which is not so profound in his other works. He concentrates more on how it not only affected life in its outward aspects but how it killed the very sap of it in its inward responses too.
Finally, one thing comes to my mind. What is the kind of reading public we have today ? Great works need a kind of discipline to respond to and unless and otherwise we could develop such a discipline which could nurture good reading habits from our schools onwards, there is no point in translating any good work. When we still haven't had a good reading public to respond to our original works in Tamil how can we expect to develop a general taste for greater translated works ?
- From: V (@ 63.65.68.246)
on: Wed Jul 18 12:26:46
Please read the last sentence of 8. Understanding Literature, by Robin Mayhead :
'that not make them literary but also give them a cultural standpoint' as 'that not only make them literary but also give them a cultural standpoint'
- From: Traveller (@ 61.11.32.145)
on: Thu Jul 19 08:19:55
Dear Mr. Visvesh Obla,
Thanks for your good work. We should make them accessible to Tamils and in general to whole Indians.
Obla, let us try to tell them. One day or other some body will come and read them.
Bye
Traveller
- From: Lotus eater (@ cf3k-4.lqy.tsnz.net)
on: Thu Jul 19 16:38:20
Friends, This is a good notice board for knowing the best in English and is worthwhile for that reason alone. There may be pointers for everybody.Thanx traveller and Visvesh for sharing your lists.
However, about translating these into Tamil is too ambitious because there is no readership to justify cost and effort. At the most first edition might sell 1000 that too subscription to libraries under govt subsidies/trusts. Even NCBH and Acedamy Indian languages traslations of outstanding Indian authors dont sell more than first edition (moderately priced at that). Publications done in 80s can be encountered in book exhibitions at ridiculous prices tells it all. Otherway round it seems to work. From Tamil into English is more viable as Penguin has demonstrated. The potential readers for translated books are again people who have read it in English. It is all variables such as milleu/ethos for a connection to be made with say a victorian or early american era and very dicey.
But Books on self improvement, communication skills management books of some kind will find market. Which is a good thing too.
Incidentally Gibran has been traslated. The recent translation (Dont know it is published) by Dr Ramani Naidu (Sands and foam) can be seen in his website or in htpp://www.kaanal.com, last seen couple of months ago.
That aside: However Bala pilla'si suggestion is more transformational and relevent. Fine novels have been written in Tamil so what? Individually Tamils could be educated in many fields but social cohesion and direction is abs missing. Result Slave mentality abounds.
Let me not throw wet towel. It is a good posting.
Pls continue.
I would add:
Robert Bach's Jonathan Livinstone Seagull
\\Thamaraithinnie
- From: Vishvesh Obla (@ 63.65.68.246)
on: Fri Jul 20 09:28:25
Hi Lotu(0)s eater,
Yes, it is sadly true that translated works today wouldn’t be worth the energy and the money spent for them. And it is also equally true that the potential readers for translated books are again people who have read it in English, and that there is no dire need for translations. But still, can we ignore them ? Just because of the fact that poetry is no more read as it was in days of yore, can we prefer to discourage its production? Translations of great works aren’t just thought expressions in one language put in another language. In the hands of a good translator, it opens up more possibilities in the translated language, if the translated work is a great work. Every good work in any language is unique even within its language. This uniqueness could be expressed to a fine degree, even within the limitations of translation, and this could certainly enrich the translated language by opening up new possibilities of expressions, that is so vital to keep a language alive. The English elite, in spite of their mastery of the French language, (and the vice-versa), has translated almost all the major classics of the other language. It is tragic that we don’t have a condition today that would encourage translations, but still we can’t just ignore it, because the life of language needs constant nourishment which could be supplied to a considerable degree by the translations of good works.
By the bye, are you one who has been so tired of wandering that you don’t want to return to your homeland? I guess you are from New Zealand as I can see from your IP address. Maybe it is enchanted enough with its lotos to hold you forever from returning to your homeland ! Sorry, if this doesn’t make sense to you. I was reminded of Tennyson’s Lotos Eaters by your name and I associated your screen name with the tale of that poem.
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