Bhashavaad: on being in and between the Bhashas

The Ashoka Centre for Translation (ACT) organised the inaugural Bhashavaad: National Translation Conference in partnership with the New India Foundation at the India International Centre, New Delhi.

The inaugural Bhashavaad: National Translation Conference, held on August 23rd & 24th, hosted distinguished writers, translators, publishers, and scholars working in and between several Indian languages. The Conference marked a memorable moment in the journey of the young Centre, which was established in December 2021. Joining in the celebration of 10 Years of Ashoka University, the Conference strengthened the Centre’s—as well as the University’s—commitment to translation from a many-to-many perspective to foster India’s multilingual ethos.

What’s Bhashavvad?

For ACT, Bhashavaad is an attempt to listen to what’s left over, as opposed to what’s lost, in translation. As such, ‘vaad’ is also to speak, stemming from ‘vaach’ in Sanskrit. Bhashavaad, therefore, shares not a concern about ‘isms’ but instead about the active ‘ings’ taking place in the wider Indian literary sphere, of which English, too, is a part. This Conference was as much about making Indian languages speak to each other as it was about reading them and listening to them.

The conference…

The Conference opened with vision statements by the Centre Co-directors and Professors at Ashoka University, Rita Kothari and Arunava Sinha, and the Managing Trustee of the New India Foundation and Founder at Ashoka University, Manish Sabharwal. The announcement of the ongoing and forthcoming publishing projects by the Centre—such as Women Translating Women (with Zubaan, supported by the Susham Bedi Memorial Fund) and Chronicles (with Penguin, supported by the Manju Deshbandhu Gupta Fellowship)—received much applause. It was followed by a keynote address by the philosopher and author Sundar Sarukkai on ‘Touching the Untouched: Language and Translation,’ extrapolating how translation is in a constant search to touch the text or ‘original’ language. Arunava Sinha launched the first phase of a search engine for translations from India (indiatranslationsearch.com)—a resource that is a result of the Centre’s two-year-long quest supported by the New India Foundation.

Day 2 began with the panel ‘Tarjuma-e-Ilmiya: Translating Knowledge.’ Scholar-translators Rahul Sarwate, Sowmya Dechamma CC, Raza Kazmi, and Syed Jaleel Hussain were in conversation with Rita Kothari on the manifold relationship between translation and knowledge. The next panel, ‘Xabd-Setu: Writing in and between the Bhashas,’ brought focus to translation from the foundational perspectives of doing language and writing. It featured celebrated writer-scholars Vivek Shanbhag, Jatin Nayak, Gogu Shyamala, and Kanato Chophy in conversation with Srinath Raghavan, Professor of IR and History at Ashoka University and Trustee of the New India Foundation.

Neeta Gupta, Executive Member at the Centre, moderated the third panel, ‘Antaram: Publishing in and between the Bhashas,’ wherein the Tamil publisher Kannan Sundaram, the Telugu publisher Gita Ramaswamy, the Bengali & English publisher Mandira Sen, and the Hindi publisher Aditi Maheshwari Goyal commented on the varying state of publishing in Indian languages. A multilingual translation readings session by student-translators followed: Ungalei Longjam from Manipuri, Arya Shukla from Bhojpuri, Ayapiri Debbarma from Kokborok, Shivnath Munda from Mundari, and Sumaira Nawaz from Persian. All five readers—from Ashoka University, King’s College London, Miranda House–University of Delhi, Dr. Shyama Prasad Mukherjee University, and McGill University—were selected through a rigorous application process, with a preference for underrepresented source languages.

The Conference was brought to a successful end by the panel ‘Aras-Paras: Weaving in and between the Bhashas,’ led by the publisher Urvashi Butalia. Drawing the threads together, it featured writers, translators, and publishers of note, namely Mamang Dai, Nirupama Dutt, Yogesh Maitreya, and Karthika VK, who detailed the past, present, and future journeys of translation in their respective spheres. Finally, Yauvanika Chopra, Associate Director of the New India Foundation, and Sanchit Toor, Co-ordinator of the Ashoka Centre for Translation, shared their concluding remarks on the Conference and the way forward.

Book released…

‘Kabir: Walking with the Word,’ an outcome of the Centre’s Translating Bhakti initiative, published in collaboration with AfterWord (an imprint of Tethys Books), was launched at the event. The book comprises short essays and translations of 6 Kabir poems into 11 languages to explore and emphasise the comparative and collaborative possibilities of translation.