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Focus on Books
Fables of Thurber in Sinhala
Prof. Sunanda Mahendra
Ape kale Upama Katha
(A collection of translated fables of James Thurber)
Translated by Gaya Nagahawatte
Published by Godage Publishers, Colombo 2008
87 pages. Rs 150
Although a number of fables, short stories, essays, and sketches of
James Thurber (1894-1961) the American humourist have appeared from time
to time in Sinhala magazines and newspapers, I have not seen a single
collection in the form of a book available for reading in the local
literary scene.
This is the very first moment I can feel the creativity of James
Thurber transferred into Sinhala with an introduction to the selection
which covers a total number of eighteen stories selected from several
original works together with sketches (presumably have appeared from
time to time in The New Yorker where Thurber worked for several years
since 1927).
English readers know Thurber via his galaxy of fables with wit and
wisdom. His was inimitable sophisticated humour interlinked with
simplicity of his line drawings. Several remarkable stories such as ‘The
secret life of Walter Mitty’, which was also made into a humourous film,
have been translated into several languages.
The Translator mentions that this story was the very source of
inspiration for the initiation of this compilation.
Nagahawatte had been experimenting on the use of language for this
translation over some years, reading and sensitively grasping the
essence of Thurber’s specialty and the suitability of the use of
language for each of her translated pieces as selected, taking into
account the use of language in the transfer of folktales from one
language to another.
I feel this is one of the most difficult functions in communication
of a translator, especially when it comes to the transferring of
cultural innuendos from one language to another.
The Translator overcomes this factor with difficulty in some
translated items, and a translation can never be perfect. Even the
translations of Aesop’s fables had become quite anti-harmonious in the
hands of many an English translator when compared with the Greek
originals.
 But the most complimentary factor is the availability of this
compilation as a pioneer source book to ascertain the creativity of the
writer and the artiste known to the world at large named Thurber.
Using the genre known as satire and humour or comedy or whatever you
call it, utilised to change some aspects regarded as evil, adverse or
disastrous to the public at large had been a creative act from time
immemorial, and the best tribute goes to Aesop who may not have had the
chance of foreseeing the birth of another member of his tribe in the
modern world.
There are more similarities than dissimilarities in the two creators:
Aesop and Thurber. They both use a very short narrative form either with
humans or with animals and even unimaginary objects like stars and trees
talking to each other with a moral line at the end of each narrative.
Eventually these morals become catchy wise phrases in the day to day
life. Thurber is well known for his output of short narratives in
thousands which he had published in The New Yorker where he worked with
one eye and went blind later since 1927.
Most of these materials with which he worked and published were
collected by his wife. While volumes of his creative pieces came out of
the press, a number of research works on his creative process have also
appeared on the bookshelves.
I have come across one such work titled as ‘Composing humour: Twain,
Thurber, and You’ (1972). In this stimulating and resourceful work I
found the creative function of Thurber described as a functional
dedication and a commitment confined to himself as a function that is
inimitable by others.
He may not have envisaged his output in this magnanimous manner for
he was a working journalist whose main function was the contribution of
a cartoon or a sketch and a narrative of his own type branding himself
as ‘a professional humourist’.
Though his world was his living surroundings in the US, he is shown
as transcended from the geographical limitations of the same, giving
insights to the world at large. This perhaps was the significant factor
of Thurber creations.
In reality the signifier Thurber had merely used the language English
as a vehicle to transfer his creativity to the world at large, a factor
one should take serious note of. It is this very factor that the
translator Nagahawatte tries to retell in her own terms as the barriers
in the use of a language in the very act of translation.
The local reader is accustomed with the Oriental tales and fables
which run to a few lines with a moral added at the end. These are
observed in such works as Jataka, Panchatantra and other folk and
religious sources of the Orient.
Thurber’s very first collection titled as the Thurber Carnival (1945)
which became one of the best sellers all over the world, came as a
variant to the Aesopian tales widely used in the libraries. Since then
the English readers were bent on knowing more about the Thurber tales
whom they deemed as the Aesopian inheritor.
What is striking about the present flimsy volume in Sinhala is that
it becomes a pioneer introductory volume with an insight into the
creative process of Thurber, which I felt is a pressing need at a time
when most Sinhala narrative writings we encounter nowadays are devoid of
either humour or an eternal value of social significance.
I observe that most of the Sinhala column writings if collected when
once published in newspapers may look banal and trivial and perhaps fail
to transcend the time factor.
I see this happening most often for there are columnists who call
themselves humourists, but the crux of the matter is that these columns
remain as threshold interest pieces devoid of any eternal value.
But I do not intend to moralise or to generalise this concept to all
those who dedicate themselves for the good of the society. Perhaps they
can learn a lesson from this collection as a seminal source of
inspiration.
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