Thread by @AnushaSRao2

Recently heard an amazing anecdote about translation, reg. Bannanje Govindacharya's 'Matte Ramana Kathe', a Kannada translation of Bhavabhuti's Uttararamacarita. (). In the play , Rama says these lovely lines, ending in (Thread 1/n)

किमस्याः न प्रेयो यदि परमसह्यस्तु विरहः “Everything about Sita is endearing. There’s just one thing that is intolerable: separation from her.” Right after the verse, a doorkeeper walks in, announcing, “My lord, he has just arrived.” "Who?" Rama asks. "The spy, Durmukha". (2)

Remarkable sentence that can be construed with both the previous verse and the next sentence. a) 'he', a particular envoy, has arrived. b) it foreshadows what is to happen next in the play: separation from Sītā, which Rāma was speaking of, has just arrived! (3/n)

This works in Sanskrit because the pronoun ‘he’ can refer to both separation ‘virahaḥ’, (masc. noun in Skt), and to the envoy (also masc.). Govindacharya translates this passage into Kannada, but Kannada, unlike Sanskrit, has no grammatical gender. This is a problem (4/n)

In Kannada, the envoy would be ‘he’, but separation, like in English, would be ‘it’. But Govindacharya deftly remedies this. He translates “Everything about Sita is endearing. There’s just one thing that is intolerable: separation from her.” (5/n)

Then, the doorkeeper walks in, announcing, “My lord, it has already come!” Then, the king asks, “What?”, to which the doorkeeper answers, “The spy's entourage” (savāri/ಸವಾರಿ), which in Kannada, is in the neuter. This way, the Kannada translation maintains both senses! (6/n)

I'd love to have this kind of attention to detail in my scholarship and translation! (n/n)