Translations?

This is a work in progress. (My work is always in progress. Ever been to Delhi? Seen the roads? The work is always in progress there. Actually, here. But all that is neither here, nor, as you would know by now, there.) To submit revisions or new entries please email me.
I can't help but begin by shamelessly plugging Dougals Hofstadter's latest book: Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language. [Oh, read him, read him -- to read anything by him is sheer pleasure. Just do an altavista search on him and it should surface a couple of thousand times, I guess. Ergo, no link. Look it up yerself. Oh, what the heck, maybe I'd add one here: Le Ton beau de Marot: In Praise of the Music of Language ] Yeah, so this book which includes 88 translations of a 27-line French poem (what a pathetic description, it isn't just that, but I digress. One of these days...) is the inspiration behind this page where I cordially invite you to share your translations for the fun of it.

Aptly enough, the first two to grace these pages are verses by Sahir Ludhyanvi and Faiz Ahmed Faiz. These are by no means satisfactory even to me but I have put them up here in the hope that you would be provoked enough to send me outraged mail. While I would gracefully decline to respond to invective and diatribe (if it amuses me enough -- for that it has to be real insulting -- I might even append it to this page), I hope it would be accompanied by your re-workings of those bits that you think are particularly bad. Ha, yeah, I know that all of these are particularly bad, and not even fit enough to be called translations. And Doug Hofstadter of course would be more than appalled at this appellation. So I guess I better resign myself to complete rewrites but the truth is that these are absolutely off-the-cuff, clunky, almost word by word translations, mostly typed furiously while listening to the tape of the songs being played.

Later, instead of labouring to perfect these with just the right word etc. I thought I'd simply include the originals in Roman and leave it for you to offer criticism, and hopefully get inspired to perfect renditions in the right meter and rhymes, or whatever it is that such things are called.

If you think this page violates any copyright etc., please go right ahead and sue me. I am in a sour mood anyway and would love to meet you in some Indian court. Actually, no, more likely, I wouldn't bother showing up there too. So don't bother for the sheer pleasure of meeting me.

It must be this sleep deprivation thingie that makes me ramble needlessly. And, look, I know that most of my pages could do with some basic editing and at least a spell-check, but I am a busy man, y'see. Therefore. So I'd stop my windbaggery -- but, hey, you didn't haveta read it, did ya? Why don't you just jump to the verses instead of wondering why the hell I am blathering on?



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Sonny (Sundeep Dougal) Holden Caulfield, New Delhi, INDIA