“A poet dares be just so clear and no clearer... He unzips the veil from beauty, but does not remove it. A poet utterly clear is a trifle glaring.”
— E. B. White, from One Man's Meat.
Crossing the Bridge
Multilingual Poetry Translation
Crossing the Bridge – Translation Competition Results
The Antonym and Bhasha Samsad jointly organized the poetry translation competition for translating poems from different South Asian languages into English and Bengali. Following poets from different languages gave us their poems for the translation competition:
Assamese – Sameer Tanti
Bengali – Mohammad Nurul Huda
Bengali – Ranajit Das
Gujarati – Kamal Vora
Hindi – Anamika
Kashmiri – Naseem Shafaie
Malayalam – K Satchidanandan
Marathi – Santosh Pawar
Odia – Saroj Bal
Tamil – Sukirtharani
Urdu – Munwwar Rana
We received tremendous response from the translators for most of the languages. For translation into Bengali from few source languages, we did not receive any responses. As such, no award could be given for those.
Under the stewardship of Sri Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, eminent translator, editor and cultural administrator, a select jury from each of the source languages looked at each of the submitted translations carefully and arrived at the following final result:
Source Language | Poet | English | Bengali |
Assamese | Sameer Tanti | Harsita Hiya | Malay Sarkar |
Bengali |
|
|
|
| Nurul Huda | Indrani Tuli |
|
| Ranajit Das | Padmakali Kar |
|
Gujarati | Kamal Vora | Pratishtha Pandya |
|
Hindi | Anamika | Pallavi Singh | Sriparna Bandyopadhyay |
Kashmiri | Naseem Shafaiye | Mohammad Zahid |
|
Malayalam | K Satchidananda | Azir Kutty K.M. |
|
Marathi | Santosh Pawar | Santosh Rathod | Arghya Dutta |
Odia | Saroj Bal |
| Kausik Banerjee |
Tamil | Sukirtharani | Deepalakshmi Joseph | Sirsha |
Urdu | Munawwar Rana | Tapan Kumar Pradhan | Faiz Ahmed |
We congratulate all the translators winning the Jibanananda Das Awards and Sonali Ghoshal Awards for respective languages.
We will also like to take this opportunity to thank all the translators who submitted for the competition. We look forward to work with you in furthering the cause of translation.
For any queries, please reach out to us at kolkatapoetryconfluence@gmail.com
Crossing the Bridge – Where Languages Meet, is a multilingual poetry experience focused on translation of poetry from various Indian languages into English and Bengali. Poets from ten Indian languages will be attending the event to read their poems. Translation of their poems will be performed as well
Calcutta Karavan will string the sessions of Crossing the Bridge in their unique way with tales , verses and anecdotes of different regions of India . The diverse cultural flavors aspire to search a single cohesive dream , named “ Kavita “ . From Epic to grassroots, from stars in the sky to crops in field there is one binding force or hidden love , that is poetry.
Calcutta Karavan will present the poets of different regions through their unique multilingual session where poets will recite poems in their own languages
The poems translated into Bengali and English will be performed by Aparna Sen, Kalyan Ray, Anindya Chatterjee and Sudeshna Roy.
Aparna Sen
Actor & Director
Kalyan Ray
Author & Actor
Anindya Chatterjee
Singer, Compose & Director
Sudeshna Roy
Director
We have chosen 10 Indian languages and one renowned poet from each language. Every poet has provided five of their poems which are up for translation competition – Jibanananda Award for translation into English awarded by The Antonym and Sonali Ghoshal Award for translation into Bengali awarded by Bhasha Samsad. ( 17th February – 31st May, 2022)
Politics of Translation
Translation communicates an extended understanding of varied cultures, which one is not born into. The past few decades have seen a substantial rise in the discourse and practice of Translation, as lingual horizons shrink in a digitally connected world. At the same time, it is getting increasingly complex, as texts are no longer limited to a single language, dialect, or sociolect. This panel will look at the complexity of Translation and consider it as a tool to erase boundaries that has for centuries silenced, stereotyped and marginalized certain languages, cultures and traditions by marking them inferior, overwriting their narratives, politicizing their subject position.
Translation Workshop
June 11 collaborative Poetry Translation
June 12 Translation of lyrical Prose
Workshop Leads
A J Thomas
Poet, Translator & Editor
Nirmal Bhattacharjee
Editor & Translator
Facilitated by Bishnupriya Chowdhury
Editor, The Antonym Magazine
Translation workshop at Kolkata Poetry Confluence 2022
Introduction:
The art and the toil that defines the process of literary translation is generally fraught with a gamut of fundamental questions. Translator carves a way between the source and the target text by finding justified resolves to them. While most of these inquiries have been discussed since long, those who are in the trade, know that they never lose relevance or weight. With each text in need for translation, one has to evaluate matters anew, each time. During the two day workshop at Kolkata Poetry Confluence, we wish to focus on two areas of translation-work: collaborative translation and the challenges and conflicts of Lyrical prose translation.
Workshop Coordinator:
- Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee, Editor, Translator, Author
- J. Thomas, Journalist, Editor, Translator.
Registration fee: 2500/-
Last day to register: 31st May
Seats:
Day 1: Collaborative Poetry (12 people),
Day 2: Lyrical Prose (20 People)
Reward/ Acknowledgements: Certificate of participation, Workshop anthology
Contact: theantonymmag@gmail.com
Day 1: Collaborative Translation of Poetry
Date: June11,2022
In India, a land where every hundred kilometers bring about a new language or a dialect, translation becomes a major if not the most crucial tool for its people to learn each other deeply. We wish to add to the mammoth project of Indian interlinguistic translation via collaboration.
The workshop will kick off with an introductory lecture/ free-form discussion between the poets, language experts, coordinators and participants on translations of poems.
Later, the participants are divided into multiple ( we plan for about 4 to 5) teams. Each team will focus on one National language and shall include the poet, English translator/ Link language mediator, participant translators from Bengali. ( For this session, poems will be translated into Bangla from four other regional languages).
We will have,
Naseem Shafaie (Poet. Language: Kashmiri)
Kamal Vora (Poet. Language: Gujarati)
Sukirtha Rani (Poet. Language Tamil)
Santosh Pawar (Poet, Language: Marathi)
A thorough discussion on the text with the Poet, session mentor(s), language experts/ mediators will take place. The participating translators are asked to work on their pieces separately and are invited for the virtual reading conference.
Day 2: Translation of Lyrical Prose
Date: June 12,2022
The second day of the workshop handles lyrical prose. While it is often maintained that one needs to be a poet to be able to translate a poem, we plan to understand, what does it take to translate a text occupying a middle ground—like a prose which has the soul of a poetry, or a highly lyrical persona.
For this session, the language flow will be from Hindi and Bangla to English. Participants will be given the prose excerpts ahead of time when they register for the workshop.
We will attempt translations of selected works of Nirmal Verma (Language: Hindi)
Parimal Bhattacharjee ( Language: Bengali)
** Participants are given selected excerpts to translate when they register for the Workshop and are requested to mail the drafts with the coordinators ahead of time and bring them at the session to be workshopped.
The session will open with a lecture/discussion on the scope and challenges of the task in hand followed by an open conversation on the drafts with source and link language experts including Anamika ( Acclaimed poet and writer of Hindi)
And Parimal Bhattacharya ( Bilingual writer, translator and Professor of English)
Part 2 (Virtual, Post confluence)
Date: June 18, 2022
Collaborative translation
All participants after a week from the workshop, convene for a virtual reading session of their final drafts. Translated poems along with the originals will be read (even if partially) discussed. Participants also submit their pieces for final selection for the workshop chapbook.
Date: June 19,2022
Lyrical Prose
Readings and discussions on the workshopped pieces and experience sharing.
Part 3: Chapbook launch (Virtual)
Day: July 23, 2022
Final session for the launch of the workshop anthology.
Pre registration and pre work required. Limited seats, if interested please contact theantonymmag@gmail.com
Pre-registration Link is: https://forms.gle/FdqA5ZJRs8hZQ3pK6