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Focus on Books :
Marguerite Duras in Sinhala
Prof. Sunanda Mahendra
Uturu Chinaye Adaravanthaya
By Niroshini Gunasekara
Samayawardhana Publishers 2007
Although there are quite a number of books, especially creative works
flooding into the book market via translations from English to Sinhala,
it is rarely one sees the appearance of works translated from some of
the original languages such as German, French or Italian.
This may be due to the dearth of translators and scholars familiar
with such languages. When such an occasion arises the reader feels the
difference in the very flavour or the original devoid of the unhampered
transformational voyages traversed by the original work via a dependable
language.
I saw this difference in flavour when I read the translation of the
French novel written by the author Marguerite Duras (1914-1996) titled
in the original as La’Amant De la Chine du Nord.
Having fulfilled the needed requirements, such as obtaining official
permission for translation rights, the translator Niroshini Gunasekara,
a senior lecturer in French attached to the modern languages department
of the University of Kelaniya, sets about giving a significant account
of the type of creative works as produced over the years by the original
writer and her life experiences in various social contexts.
Then she outlines the various associations and links with the
literary genres where she is seen as one of the exceptions to the
accepted rules in creativity.
This introduction, I feel exposes some of the significant factors
from several contemporary literary points of view. Firstly, she makes
the reader known that creative works in French literature are more based
on self referential material of the particular writers where literary
schools are concerned.
In the case of Duras, she is denoted more as a French novelist born
in Indo China with experiences on both cultures. Having had the
experiences in a cross cultural milieu which is now known as
‘hybridization’ by some critics, she [Duras] at the age of eighteen had
come to Paris where she studied mathematics, law, and political science.
The experiences via these subjects as well as living in two cultures
with the exposures of varying types of literary nuances makes her a
sensitive observer of human events and they are mostly recorded not in
terms of long drawn passages, but through carefully selected situations,
dialogues and monologues.
Then the translator Gunasekara outlines the thematic structures and
modes of creative communications of the writer where this particular
writer Duras is utilizing the simple poetic rhythms and inner exposures
where the characters and situations of humane content do matter over and
above a conventional story line.
In this manner the translator is just not a transformer of the
original in terms of one language to another (from French to Sinhala)
but also a visionary into the creative ideologies of the original writer
and her work.
The protagonist of the work in discussion is a woman who recollects
her experiences in another background while retaining to the place where
she stays, in a series of flashback-like episodes connected to each
other. There are the briefest situations created where inner feelings
are concerned.
Then the reader comes to know of places where human events happen,
such as for example a restaurant a room a lounge or garden, and the very
same places signify some bearing to the human experiences.
The dialogues that ensue are paced with silences or with pauses where
the reader is made to think of the situation as if turning the pages of
a picture album and/or a diary of reminiscences.
In one way it is a love story of a rare sort that had happened
between a young girl and a Chinese and in another way it is also the
inner conflicts and outer encounters of a woman torn between two worlds,
the family and the outer world.
The events are made to visualise and not summarised as in a
conventional novel, allowing effective reading, and allowing pages move
quickly from the eye. There factors pertaining to strange mannerisms,
strange human relationships connected with customs and habits. But the
writer makes them known as human feelings born in one’s surroundings.
There are moments where people cry and moments where they smile. The
work, though a translation, could be read not as a formal translation
but as an original work written by a local author in its culture bound
experiences.
Perhaps this is one of the most important plus factors that should be
emphasised in creative exposures in contemporary literary experiences.
The fact that something that had happened elsewhere is alien to us
may not be visible in a good translation, though the similarities and
dissimilarities are observable, from a surface layer, and the resultant
experiences ought to add some fresh flavour as an impact of the human
spirit of one culture into the body of another culture, not as a
dominant force but as a human understanding.
Prior to this translation, Gunasekara had translated two more works
of Duras into Sinhala. The two preceded works are titled as Sagarayata
vellak (2003) and Adaravantaya (2005) could be taken as the first two
parts in a trilogy and this being the third one. But even if the first
two parts are not read by a reader this particular work could be
regarded as a separate creative work.
Good translations are needed to dispel some of the critical
misnormers prevailing today in the field of literature, and as taught in
higher education.
She admits that she had improved her texture since then and this time
she had been over careful as to her rendering of the original pattern of
Duras’s creative communication process as closely as possible. The
readers too will endorse her improvement undoubtedly.
The translations selected from various cultures play a vital role in
the growth of a new literary culture and the trend settings for new
creative forms of communication, and this is one such addition to the
contemporary Sinhala literary scene.
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