‘Commercial and genre fiction in Indian languages shouldn’t be overlooked’: Translator Poonam Saxena

Works that have shaped generations of readers in North India have often travelled slowly, sometimes reluctantly, into the global circuits of literature. In this long transition, the translator becomes more than a mediator; they are an archivist of memory, a curator of literary history, and at times, an agent of restitution.

Poonam Saxena’s work sits at the heart of this moment. Best known for translating Dharamvir Bharati’s Gunahon Ka Devta as Chander and Sudha, she has gifted English-language readers the works of Rahi Masoom Raza, Mannu Bhandari, and Udayan Vajpeyi, among others. Her anthology The Greatest Hindi Stories Ever Told attempts something even more ambitious: to sketch a living lineage of Hindi fiction across generations.

In a conversation with Scroll, she reflects on the craft of translation, the problem of the “untranslatable”, and the evolving place of Hindi literature in the global imagination.

You began your career as a journalist. How did your early engagement with English-language writing shape your sensitivity to Hindi literary expression?
I studied in English-medium educational institutions all through – first in a convent school in Delhi and then in St Stephen’s College. I was always a voracious reader since I was a child. Obviously, the books I read in the beginning were all English-language books. I started writing short stories...

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