Jaipur, Jan 19 (PTI) Daisy Rockwell, who translated International Booker Prize winning novel "Ret Samadhi", on Thursday said it is tougher to translate terms of kinship in women's narratives as their relationships are entwined "much more inside of families".

Before working with Hindi author Geetanjali Shree on "Ret Samadhi", titled "Tomb of Sand" in English, Rockwell had translated Upendranath Ashk's "Girti Deewarein" ("Falling Walls"), Bhisham Sahni's "Tamas" and Krishna Sobti's "Gujarat Pakistan Se, Gujarat Hindustan Tak" ("A Gujarat Here, A Gujarat There").

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"Translating kinship terms is one of the biggest challenges. I feel it's actually a bigger challenge with women's writing than men's writing. I translated I think three-four books by men before I decided to only translate works by women.

"One of the challenges I found when I switched genders is dealing with the kinship terms because the women's narratives tend to have a lot more relationship type of language going on about because there's so much more inside of families," the American translator said at an interaction on the first day of the Jaipur Literature Festival here.

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Moderated by writer Tanuj Solanki, the session was also attended by Shree.

While classic male novels would see the protagonist use different kinds of names for family members and friends, it becomes "more tricky" when it comes to women's writing, she said.

"You have to figure out how to not lose the flavour of family, kinship and relatedness and this idea that every person is speaking to one another in a relational way. You can't lose it. But at the same time, you have to kind of tone it down... So what I often do is I turn a kinship term into a name so I capitalise it like Bahu, Bade and Beti. So they function as names and I do not switch perspectives," the prolific translator added.

"Ret Samadhi" tells the story of an 80-year-old woman "Ma", who has slipped into a state of deep depression after the death of her husband.

However, breaking conventions, the protagonist insists on travelling to Pakistan to address unresolved trauma of Partition, and on her journey she re-evaluates what it means to be a mother, a daughter, a woman, and a feminist.

Shree's affinity for women's relationships goes back to her 2000 novel "Mai", which was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Award in 2001.

Referring to "Mai", Shree said a woman doesn't need to go out of her house to prove that she is powerful. According to her, as the novel nears the end, both the author and reader "puncture" this very stereotype.

"If a daughter sees the act of her mother being humble or selfless towards others in a certain way, it's her perspective that it is 'athaah kamzori' (an unfathomable shortcoming). What we have taken for granted that these are standards of an unfathomable shortcoming... This is the limitation of our own vision.

"Is that mother really that weak? I don't think so. She is playing a social role and that has been given more importance here. This is not an unfathomable shortcoming. We don't know what all she carries within her. The empathy, the knowledge that she has, that is her power and that is what we need to understand."

Why do we deem someone who goes out to do something only that woman is powerful, asked Shree.

"Why is being at home and doing things quietly weak? Both these books ('Mai' and 'Ret Samadhi') break these binaries... There are different kinds of mothers, daughters and sons. You can see that there is a difference between them keeping the stereotype in mind.

"A daughter who herself has broken social norms, her house will certainly be different where a mother can begin to enjoy more freedom. You don't have to see it in 'either-or', it is a stereotype to an extent, there is a universality or a larger social truth there. But there is an individual side to it."

Terming "Ret Samadhi" a "prose poem", Rockwell said in the post colonial era, it was important for translators to "bridge" the gap between the original language and English.

"Because of the colonial legacy and the way education prioritises English here, it's a really big responsibility to bring anything into this language without being aware of what you're doing. If you liked this book, if it made you curious, if you already know that language somewhat, I want you to go back and read the book in the original (language).

"Now, you have help. If it's hard for you to read in Hindi, you've got a crutch here. You've got a bridge, not a crutch in this book here. It's a bridge. That I think is particularly important for translators to keep in mind particularly in this kind of post colonial setting is to not use your language to efface the original but to bring the original alive," she added.

Marking its 16th edition, JLF is set to cover subjects such as the ongoing climate justice debate under the urgency of borrowed time theme; great women writers and artists focusing on the female voice and identity, crime fiction, memoir, translation, poetry, economics, tech morality and Artificial Intelligence, the global crisis in agriculture, Russia-Ukraine conflict, violence unleashed by the British Empire, cutting-edge science, India at 75, remembering Partition, geopolitics, art and photography, health and medicine, amongst others.

The festival will conclude on January 23.

(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)