The  Translating poetry  workshop  was starting at 2.30 PM.

It was 2.26 pm and I still hadn’t found the entrance to the Elphinston college! I walked up and down the side walk and in desperation called Ayesha who guided to to the side entrance. Rushed up looking for room no 108 and reached the class room 5 mins late. I was reliving an old nightmare. The teacher here didn’t look as formidable or as pissed off as the teachers in my nightmare. He just nodded when I panted “May I come in “.

Feeling about 2 inches tall I settled in my chair. Sachin Ketkar, was our Teach for the evening. He has an impressive portfolio. A writer and translator, he has done is PhD in languages from Gujrat. He has translated not only in Marathi but also in Gujarati.

There were nine or ten people. Every participant had some experience as a writer, some in English and a few in Marathi.

Sachin had brought notes for us which also had a few poems for us to translate. We got into discussing poetry and how translating it is different that the prose. Is it possible to translate every poem? Or some are more difficult?

Once when I had read a Haiku, four friends came up with  four different interpretations, all different than mine. Does their point of view have same validity as mine?

When they say- lost in translation, what exactly is lost and how?

What about idioms, and cultural references or poetic forms?

Is it possible to carry these from one language into another?

What is more important, translating the words as they are, or assuming more license while capturing the meaning behind the words?

A poem is open to many interpretations. How do we decide what the poet wanted to say? Then in what way is a translation any less than an original creation? etc etc etc.

Not every answer Sachin gave us was acceptable, and very soon it became a ‘students v/s teacher’ debate, but as in any debate, everyone was left to find his own answers.

We were given a poem where all our questions were put to test.We had about 15 minutes to do it. We had been asked to keep Marathi / English dictionaries with us. But frankly speaking, we didn’t need them. As we had discussed earlier, translating the idiom was the real challenge. We submitted our work to our teacher who while not commenting Rightness or wrongness of anything seemed more curious to see what our interpretation had been.

All in all, while not satisfying completely, it was a good experience.