Literature-In Translation-Bangla
By Syed Mujtaba Ali. Translated from the original Bangla by Nazes Afroz
2024
The dobhasi (bilingual) love tale of Shabnam, an Afghan girl, and Majnun, a teacher from ‘Bangla-land’, unfolds against the backdrop of the Afghan Civil War of 1928–29, in the rugged terrain of Afghanistan. These two lovers bond over their shared passion for poetry. As political upheaval shakes the country with the rise of Bachae-e-Saqao (Habibullah Kalakani) and his Saqqawists challenging Amanullah Khan
By Bibhutibhushan Bandyopadhyay. Translated from the original Bangla by Prasun Roy Fingerprint
Prasun Roy’s translation keeps alive the uneasiness about the ghosts, whether they are antagonistic or friendly and generous, and their doings. But there are numerous sentences and phrases that sound grating to the ear. Tautological expressions like ‘a face soaked in emotional sympathy’ (p. 54), ‘was infamous for being uncannily notorious’ (p. 102), ‘immoral wickedness of this boy’ (p. 106), and ‘the forest was infamous for these notorious beasts’ (p. 128) could certainly have been altered to sharper and more cryptic, non-repetitive ways of saying them by the editor(s). Other hiccups that disrupted fluent reading included imprecise expressions like