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Translating Gujarat: A Literary Intervention

November 2022

An intricately carved stepwell in Ahmedabad, India.

Photo by Satyajeet Mazumdar on Unsplash

Guest editor: Jenny Bhatt

Photo of a school framed by two trees

Snehrashmi, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Crossroad

By Varsha Adalja

“Shame on you, boys. Dullards. A girl has outdone you all.”

Translated from Gujarati by Jenny Bhatt

Multimedia

Photo of a man walking alongside his bike on a tree-lined path

Photo by Akshat Vats on Unsplash

To Loved Ones

By Jayesh Jeevibahen Solanki

The bazaar reveals this to us: / I sell / Get sold / Someone buys me / and I buy someone else

Translated from Gujarati by Gopika Jadeja

A game of hopscotch on asphalt

FranHogan, CC BY-SA 4.0, via WikiMedia Commons

Writing in Mother Tongue and an Other Tongue

By Pratishtha Pandya

Every time I write something in English, I’ve been left feeling guilty, as if I had betrayed someone.

A red car with an open hood in a car garage

Martin Vorel, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

The Garage and Rahemat Khan

By Hasmukh Shah

A legend widely believed in Bajana was that there was no car Rahemat Khan could not repair.

Translated from Gujarati by Mira Desai

Tree of life carving at the Sidi Saiyyed Mosque

Bernard Gagnon, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Ahmedabad

By Bharat Trivedi

Those days of leaping carefree into the Sabarmati / Are long gone

Translated from Gujarati by Mira Desai

Jenny Bhatt (left) and Rita Kothari (right)

On the Evolution and Craft of Gujarati Literature in Translation

We do not see translations of books that will unsettle the reading community, and provoke them to be different than who they want to be.

Portrait of Dr. Tridip Suhrud

On Gandhi, Translation, and the Gujarati Intellectual Tradition

Gandhi was a very close reader of languages and literatures.

A colored floral illustration on paper

Detail of “Leopard Bearing Lion's Order to Fellow Judges", Folio 51 recto from a Kalila wa Dimna. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, The Alice and Nasli Heeramaneck Collection, Gift of Alice Heeramaneck, 1981

All It Seems

Even grief now becomes / a kind of delight, or so it seems.

Translated from Gujarati by Meena Desai

Multilingual

A boat on the coast of Gujarat at sunset

Photo by Pandav Tank on Unsplash

Translating Gujarat: On Raising Visibility and Sharing Literary Wealth

For translators from under-represented languages like ours, the act of translation can also be a mode of recovery and reclamation.

Portrait of Dr. Sachin Ketkar

Into English: Sachin Ketkar on Bilingual Translation

Translation is an extension of my preoccupations as a creative writer.

Multimedia