another subcontinent presents: translations of tamil pulp fiction, from the winter 2008 features issue Options

[arnab]

read the translations and the translator's introduction here, and discuss the stories in this thread.

[arnab]

rakesh, pritham,

thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to re-print some of these stories. any plans for a full series on the adventures of sasivaran and sabapathy?

i have some questions about the translations themselves, but i'll restrict myself to one for now: are the challenges of translating pulp fiction from tamil into english more or less than from high literature?

i'll also restrict myself to one question about the publishing end: rakesh, could you say more about what seems to be a commitment on blaft's part towards publishing/translating non-canonical work? i am referring to this statement on your website:

However, in the future, Blaft has much wider goals. We are planning to eventually branch out into translations of fiction from other regional languages of South Asia, English fiction, comic books, graphic novels, children's books, non-fiction, textbooks, how-to-manuals, encyclopedias, and kitchen appliances.

thanks again,

arnab

(please pm/email me to expedite setting up a username for pritham--i'm not seeing a registration request from her in the registration queue)

[blaftlings]

i'll also restrict myself to one question about the publishing end: rakesh, could you say more about what seems to be a commitment on blaft's part towards publishing/translating non-canonical work?

We felt like most Indian publishing in English was restricting itself to a certain limited kind of thing, and we think there are lots of people out there who are interested in reading other kinds of books. What has really struck me since getting into this is the sheer volume and variety of cool stuff in the various regional languages that very few English readers are aware of.

I'm not sure about "non-canonical"... an upcoming Blaft book is a translation (by Pritham, again) of Tamil folktales from a Sahitya Akademi award winner, but it's really different from what's appeared in English so far... it includes a fun chapter on "dirty-word" folktales. So does that count as non-canonical? I'm not sure. Are you giving me a set-up to plug Blaft's coming-soon releases? Should I do it in this forum?