North South University Department of English ENG 613: Translation Studies

Term Paper: Translation Work On a Birthday: A Translation of Rabindranath Tagores Jonmodine

Faculty: Abdus Selim

Submitted by: Sk. Shafiqur Rahman ID: 121 1218 055

Preface

I have found myself different than Fakrul Alam while I have started translating verse. In Translating Rabindranath Tagores Verse,Fakrul Alam states his feelings of translating verse Translaring Dass verse allowed me to experience the delight of translating verse and I have found myself addicted to this activity. To me, translating verse is not an addiction but like meditation. Why did I choose to translate Tagores verse? I have found intellectual and aesthetic pleasure while meditating with translating verse especially Tagores verse. My first translation is a song of Tagore which I always like to sing and enjoy listening. Being inspired by Professor Abdus Selim, a faculty of NSU and also a translator of various experiences, I render this song into English. Though he warned us several times to be careful of translating verse as verses are sensitive and carries beauty of its own which should not be lost in translation, it was my choice to translate verse and Tagore. Like Yeats, I do not have any fascination of whats difficult, but it is a kind of meditation to me enjoying Tagores verse and songs, and finally rendering them into English.
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The Memories of that past days How you can forget Those soul memories that you have seen with your eyes. Is it possible to forget?

Come my friend, come de novo, ( Latin- again / afresh) Come to the soul, We will share our bitter and blithe memories That will calm our souls. At dawning, we flowered For the festival of Holi. And musing the reed, we sang Under the Bokul tree.

Alas! Got separated from each other, Where are we now? Again my friend if we discover each other, Come to the soul.

While reading the translation of Gitanjali, The Song Offering, done by the poet himself to justify to what extent Tagore took liberty while translating his own verse as I have found claims that he took so much liberty that he paraphrased the verses into prose, and in many place to avoid complexities he omitted several cultural ideas and images. So that, to feel the untranslatability of Tagores verse, I have attempted a suicidal decision to translate a poem from Gitanjali. And, here is it-

You have made me amaranthine With your pleasure. Having emptied you have heaped My bit of luck new and newer. O Krishna, the God with a flute, you enrapture it With symphony time and again Around hills and dales.

With your palpation of ambrosia My heart lets up Its curfew with cachinnation. Maxim pours. Light and night you bestow Me with handful offerings. Epilogue not to come but ages go on Only am I to take.

To show my regards to the person who inspired me to do translations in which I have found my meditation, I have tried to translate a few poems of Professor Abdus Selim into Bangla. Though to some extent he does not agree with me in the field of the use of words in an appropriate context and the simplification of words in a modern Bangla poetry, I want to say I am learning a lot from this old man (not by age but by his practical experience in the field of theatre and translation) .

If tonight be my last night Abdus Selim If tonight be my last night on this earth Id wish to think I lived meaningfully after birth. I longed to see dew drops on the green grass And I never cared to run after brass. Thus if the end embraces me tonight Id surrender uncomplainingly and without fright. Perhaps that would be a dignified depart of life Id welcome the end without complaint and strife.

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A long, long wait for you:Abdus Selim Youve been a long, long wait for me. I was content with everything I had, Knowing not what really it all meant. Suddenly there it happened one day, I had the revelation, there were more On this earth that I was worthy of, It was just that it didnt come by. And I was not bothered about What I really deserved. You have turned my world upside down Embracing me warmly within your heart, My long wait has thus been really worth.

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How Much More Love Abdus Selim How much more love You need from me

To make you love me? Ive given you more than Any lover can offer. But you fail to perceive How consummate my love is. Yet I can vouch on my life Even if granted two lives I would fail to give more than What Im committing now. For be it known to you Ive more love in reserve still And Ill go on devoting it Ceaselessly until one day You find how true my love is.

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In this poem How much more love, I cordially accept the suggestion of Professor Abdus Selim that- love in English has its several meanings. In translation, as a translation of love is not appropriate with its context. In the metaphysics of love, its better not to specify the relationship as - universal love but - love making between two couple. Here, I want to take Sujit Mukherjees opinion that sometimes through translation we give birth something new that is what we say transcreation.

On a Birthday

1
It was my birthday. Praying in the morning I opened my sight to the rising horizon, And saw the rained-dawn Depicted a delineation of sandal-light On the delicate ice-white brow of Himalayans. That space at the heart of the whole world, I saw that form Upon the throne of Himalayans. Ages after ages with absolute gravity Nourishing shadows of unknown In the midst of trackless forest Encircling the far-off sky In an impregnable, pathless area In a gyre of spring-decline. Today, in this birthday A feeling of distance arrives densely in my heart As the path of that distant star Through nebula-light-vapor Is covered with mystery, I see my distance in impregnabilityAn indiscernible traveler, ones unknown future. Today, in this birthday I hear the plod of that distant traveller From solitary sea-shore.

2
In many birthdays of my life, I saw myself in diverse forms. Once in a new year, at Atlantic I was brought To waves of immense words From directions to horizons To the empty blues To the denial of shore. That day, I saw an indifferent worldWhen the first delineation of creation Submerged the future, Everyday to the rising sun Searching myself. To the covered-mystery of life To the veiling waves Stared and thought, Still my life-casing is not openedFulfilled am I That is still an unseen secret. In every new birthday, The line which is drawn with an artists brush Absolute identification of the picture was not depicted yet. Only I feel, Immense flood of unspoken is everywhere The day encircles the night.

3
In a birth-marry event From different pilgrimage, holy-pilgrim-water

I accumulated, that I remember. Once I went to China Whom I do not know Marked on my brow, saying- you are known to us. Fell down the veiling of unknown, I do not know when; Flashed a glance of that eternal-heart human; In an unexpected acquaintance All the banquette of joy got opened. I hold the name of China and wore the clothing. I understood by my mind, Where I get friends, there happens a new birth. That brings uncommonness. In a foreign flower garden, blooms unknown budsForeigner is its name, Foreign is its birthplace, Its kinship is in the amusement of heart They are always welcome.

4
Again the days of festival comes With umpteen respect of spring Fulfilled botanical branches of poets courtyard With wicker trays of new birthday. I am in a distance closed roomThe invitation of Polash-forest wastes this year My heart says, I sing in a showy spring, Forthcoming sad-dreams grasps in my mind. I know this birthday Makes an indifferent day now Merges with unspotted phase of ages. Shadows of flower trees do not pity this melancholy;

Pain of memories does not response in this whisper of forests Heartless happiness must flute in this festival; Keeping aside of the path, the sadness of separation.

5
When I stepped into the eightieth year of my life This wonder arises in my mindWhere millions of stars And fire-cascades fountain of silent-light flood With unimaginable speed submerging the vector of space Everywhere, In that chest of deep unbounded sky My emergence is all of a sudden Like a spark of a moment in this vast creation In the history of chronological century. I come in that world where ages after ages Lives under sea rise from the oven of sea In the large ventral surface of an object I find my mysterious surprising Identity In a furcate shape of conversion. The infatuated false shadow of incomplete existence Covered the beast-people for a long time; Whose intent expectation Terminate numberless days and nights Arrives with sloth departing In the colored human heart; New lamps are being lighten up one after another Massages are getting new meaning In an unusual light

Men see the beauty of their amazing future, At the theater of the world Consciousness flows slowly seen by seenI am in the group of actors Wearing costumes. I was also a member when curtain falls This is my extreme wonder. Mother is the earth, eternal home of soul, Around you in the sky-light-air Under earth, sea, mountains, Circumambulating the sun in a strange determinationThat was a mystery; I came eighty years ago, And will depart a few years later.

6
Tomorrow morning, in my birthday At this up-hill guest-house A Nepali devotee of Buddha came hearing my massage Settling sitting on floor He sang a hymn of Buddha for my pleasureI accepted that massage. That great man who born in this earth One day made the birth of everyone glorious, From the birth of human being This earth For the arrival of that person, longed for ages For that the intention of creation In an auspicious moment, by holy-hymn Remembering him, I knew, in my mindEntering into Human world eighty years ago,

I was also a holy-sharer of this great person.

7
Came at noon being invited in my Birth-marry ceremony The mountainous people. One by one, they gave me flowers With genuflection. In which time the Earth got Seating on a stony posture This praise after many decades by religious austerities, This flower offering, Will be dedicated in birthdays, I hope. That praise, that genuflection of human beauty Came at my hand, today This is the beauty of reminiscence of my birth. In the star-designed cosmos Is there anywhere in light Have anyone seen this dear-surprising respect.

8
Tore down the chest of todays birth-marriage News of death-separation came; Sadness burned me with its own fire And became glowing. In evening with goodness, the setting sun offers Blessing of pride-blood-glow, It makes a golden face of forth coming night Thus burning flame dragged me to death At the west-end of life.

At light, has been shown Its integrated life, where birth and death mingle; That glow submerges its bright immortality In the poverty of fate, days after days, it was hidden.