Outside the Monochromatic Frame

The Man Booker International Prize (MBIP) was awarded this year to Han Kang, a South Korean writer, for her novel The Vegetarians.* The MBIP 2016 attracted global attention not only due to the merit of the novel but also for the fact that it ‘celebrated’, as a MBIP web-post states, ‘the finest global fiction in translation’. Deborah Smith, the English translator of the novel, was thus accorded equal recognition by the MBIP committee: the prize money was evenly shared by them as was the glory. Indeed, as a Literature Across Frontiers report suggests, due to remarkable increase, in the visibility of translated books, and the translators themselves, translated literature (TL) is no longer a niche interest which ‘appeals only to a discerning but limited readership’ (The Guardian, 16 May, 2016). Recent surveys carried out by agencies such as Nielsen show that the global TL market is expanding like never before. India being no exception has also seen a rise in demand for TL or more specifically, Indian Literature in English Translation (ILET). ILET, its long and rich history marked by contributions of the likes of the famous A.K. Ramanujan notwithstanding, always had, due to the predominance of Indian Writing in English, a somewhat small and uneasy presence in the Indian literary scene. But, fortunately, things seem to be changing and ILET is less of a side-player now, thanks to a new generation of competent translators, enthusiastic publishers, and eager readers. This is precisely why writers like Manoj Kumar Panda, who was awarded the Sarala Puraskar for (Odia) Literature in 2015, could find Snehaprava Das, Speaking Tiger Books, and this reader-reviewer to (respectively) translate, publish and read his stories.