Literary translation and its discontents: An essay by translator Jayasree Kalathil

“You don’t have your own field to plough, so you go to plough in other people’s fields,” said a commentator about literary translators, in the context of an incident that was discussed widely on the Malayalam social media. Maria, Just Maria, Kerala writer Sandhya Mary’s debut novel that I had translated, had just won the Book of the Year award at the Mathrubhumi International Festival of Letters (MBIFL). The organisers called me, congratulated me, and asked me to send a video with a message accepting the award. This was played at the awards function. But it was revealed later that the award was only for the author and not the translator. Their initial social and mainstream media coverage also chose to leave out any mention of the translator. Several Malayalam writers wrote public posts about this exclusion. I too wrote an open letter. In the end, the organisers agreed to revise their decision, and the award was shared equally between the author and the translator.

The posts received hundreds of comments from writers, readers, public intellectuals, and random folk who, well, like to comment. Reading the supportive comments was, of course, encouraging, soothing. Equally important was the vitriol; it revealed widely held misconceptions about the idea...

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