The Dark City and Other Stories

I must now share with the audience some of my own experiences of translating Mohanty from Odia to English. It is famously said by eminent American poet Robert Frost that “Poetry is what is lost in translation”-a statement that is a clear indicator of how much difficult it is for the translator to carry the whole essence of the original text into the translated text. Each language is intrinsically embedded with certain cultural values and nuances specific to its own and which are perhaps untranslatable. Certain colloquial expressions, which Mohanty abundantly uses in his writing, are its best example. As a translator of Mohanty’s short stories, I have tried my level best to negotiate between two languages and two cultures that are perhaps diametrically opposite to each other. It must be understood however that absolute faithfulness to the original text and the original language is an impossibility.

Mohanty, in spite of his greatness and stature as a creative writer in Odia, can at times be accused of unwarranted verbosity though I do understand that a creative writer’s creative process has limitless dimensions. Translating wordy sentences and expressions may look a bit challenging, but it is also a pleasurable experience to simplify the clumsiness of certain expressions in the target language, that is English.