The present volume comprising English translations of some canonical Punjabi short stories, and others quite contemporary in character, is truly an exercise in academic and creative adventure, carried out by select academics and scholars in a translation workshop. The translated versions convey the intimate spirit of Punjabi dialect, syntax, folk idiom and cultural richness in English language to its best possible equivalents. The volume is sure to make the Indian and international readership have the feel of Punjabi creative richness while enjoying its transference into English suited for such an act.
Manjit Inder Singh teaches in the Department of English, Punjabi University, Patiala. A scholar with wide academic interests, Prof. Singh specialises in post-colonial literatures, diasporic studies, literary theory, Indian literatures and translation studies. His publications include V. S. Naipaul and George Lamming: The Poetics of Alienation and Identity; V. S. Naipaul (Diasporic Writers Series); The Critical Space: Studies in Literature, Theory, Nationalism and Diaspora; Contemporary Diasporic Literature: Writing History, Culture, Self, and Nation and Beyond: Perspectives in Contemporary World Literature in English.
The present volume is a culmination - and indeed an immensely satisfying one of the three-day Workshop of Punjabi-English Translation of short stories organized by the Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi from September 13-15, 2008 at Shimla. In a way, the workshop was unique and path-breaking in several ways: a small group of academics, teachers and critics, besides translation experts, collecting to make it worthwhile; the mechanics of the workshop which were worked out well in advance; the select Punjabi texts, older and contemporary, which were selected and mailed to the translators a couple of months in advance; the selection of people who would be able to put in their best to do the job, etc., and much more. What ultimately transpired was nothing shorl of a creative intellectual bonanza, in equally beautiful and salubrious setting of Shimla. As Director of the Workshop, I was one of the first to welcome the participants, as they slowly descended at the venue, with high hopes and expectations writ on their faces. The weather was just beginning to get chilly, and in the following days, over hot cups of coffee and tea, the intensive discussions got under way. One of the best things about the Workshop was the congenial atmosphere and the sense of camaraderie in which resource persons and participants put in their best in the otherwise lengthy and brainstorming sessions, stretching into late evenings. The sessions the participants had separately with resource persons proved arguably fruitful wherein subtle nuances of language, syntax, dialect, dialogues and cultural aspects of the original Punjabi texts were discussed and in which intricate details were shared towards working out the final versions of English translations in this volume. En route, the translators. themselves had much to learn, absorb and communicate for satisfying themselves about the final product of their work. What turned out to be both challenging and rewarding was finding suitable parallels to the dialectical subtleties of Punjabi short stories that had been written by some of the canonical writers from Majha, Doaba, and Malwa, besides some diasopric Punjabi stories. What was imperative was to arrive at the near-correct expressions to convey the sense and the spirit of original texts something that the present lot of translated stories bear witness to.
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