PS: My thanks to Rajesh Sharma, Daljit Ami, Surjit Singh, Nirupama Dutt, Chaman Lal, Deepinder Kaur, Abhirami Sriram, Kumar Anupam for immense help with information and guidance with this article. I am sorry I could not include everything but I am enriched by your support.

Please read.

I see writing as an effort to make sense. Making sense, is, for me, the most fundamental human occupation because unless we know what is happening we do not know what to do. To figure out what is happening between languages while I am translating Sepia Leaves into Punjabi, I noticed something very small and maybe even inconspicuous.  

In English, if you give someone something, you say: A gave something to B. The sense I get from this sentence is that A is standing here and B is standing there, and there is a distance between them, and an object to be given, and the language (English) is filling that distance. The whole sentence falls between A and B.

In Punjabi, or Hindi, or Oriya, if you give something, you say: A to B give something. Here A and B are together and the sentence falls outside where they are standing. Wonder if that makes sense? To me it does…

What does it tell us about the differences between Indian languages and English, and the way the two kinds of languages are put together? More examples:

E: A wants to go to the market.

I: A market wants to go.

E: A loves B.

I: A B loves do.

The more I think about it, the more differences I see building out of this simple grammatical structure. Let me explore more or extrapolate more and I will keep returning. In the meantime if you think of something please tell me. I mean I know no body really reads all this stuff  

When I started writing Sepia Leaves in English I realised that the dialogue did not come out anything like I could recognise as real. I worked on it and learnt from other writings that a conversation in a work of fiction does not have to be real. It should create reality. I try to do that in my writing. But now that I am translating Sepia Leaves into Punjabi I am surprised at how when I am writing a scene I can almost see it in my mind’s eye. Earlier too I could see it, but it was silent. I had to give it words. Now I see it in dolby sound.

At the same time, since the dialogue in Punjabi comes from the English version and is filtered through my  understanding of how it should create reality I am almost achieveing both: reality and creating reality. It is a sense, a sense that what I am doing works for the translation. But it is also a satisfaction that I am getting it accurately.

I learnt Punjabi very late in life. Almost when I was four or five years old. For some reason my parents wanted me to start with English and Hindi. Still, when I am doing the Punjabi I am feeling closest to the story. Closer than ever before. I now think that maybe in the English version the centuries of langauge and its politics came in between me and my writing.

I feel the act of translating is opening up both languages to me like never before. The reason is this: when you translate you try to find word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, expression, thought, intention, emotional content, equivalents in another language. That separates your thoughts from your expression in the primary language and it begs you to use the language in which you are translating in a way which comes closest to your thought and not in the way it is expressed in the primary language.

Your thought starts standing independent of the rules and limitations of the two languages you are using: the primary language of the text and the language in which you are translating. That puts your thought in direct contact with your subconscious disregarding the way in which one language or the other is trying to control your thinking. That frees me up, frees my thoughts. Then, I try to look for rules of the language and express the thoughts in the chosen language.

Wonderful. Indian writers who mostly function is different language spheres must try doing this. I am sure it will help the writing, whether in English or in a native language.