Tag: Ukrainian

Categories
Celebrating Humanity

In Quest of a Home…

“One night, the mortar launcher awakened superstition from its sleep and dragged it away with an F-16 saying, ‘I cannot exist . . . unless there is a refugee.’”

—Ever Since I Did Not Die by Ramy Al Asheq, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair 

We celebrate the human spirit in those who surviving war-torn zones or climate disasters reach out for new homes or refuges in safer places. They are referred to as refugees. Yet, many people who are living without the fear of having their homes ransacked, burnt, bombed or annihilated because of reasons we don’t quite understand — for who could fully explain the logic of war, floods or fires — find it hard to allow the dispossessed shelter within the bounds of their safe haven. They get blamed for creating scarcities of resources.

“Is it our instinct to always blame the victim?” asks Ramy Al-Asheq in Ever Since I Did Not Die. We share more such questions from him and others in this special issue. He was born and bred in a refugee camp, eventually incarcerated and suffered till he found a safe haven. An account from Timothy Jay Smith on the plight of refugees who escaped to Lesbos from as far as Afghanistan and Iraq brings to the fore the crises faced by host countries too. Shaheen Akhtar’s short story takes us to a refugee camp for Rohingyas, people who have lived in the region of the Rakhine state from the seventh century but in the last few years have been facing violent displacement. A UN report gives out they are being beheaded, shot and burnt out of their homes.

We have poetry from a refugee from Ukraine who is trying to rebuild her life in Scandinavia, Lesya Bakun, and from Ahmad Al-Khatat of Iraq.   Michael Burch brings in the story of Christ while talking of modern day refugees, given that he describes the Child as a ‘Palestinian’. Though did these borders drawn by political needs exist at that time? LaVern Spencer McCarthy questions laws and attitudes that nurture such fences while Ihlwha Choi of Korea talks of love and acceptance being the best balm for refugees — whether North or South Korean or Ukrainian. 

The flowers are already in full bloom,
In the hearts of the Northern and Southern Koreans,
Also in the hearts of the people of Ukraine and Russia.

-- Flowers of Love Bloom Everywhere by Ihlwha Choi

When will we find a way to get in touch with the same ‘flowers of love’ and acceptance for all humanity living on this beautiful green planet? Do we need to redefine our norms to let our species survive and thrive? Let’s ponder with these writers…

Poetry

Flowers of Love Bloom Everywhere by Ihlwha Choi. Click here to read.

Are We There Yet? by LaVern Spencer Macarthy. Click here to read.

The Grave is Wide… by Michael Burch. Click here to read.

Flowering in the Rain & More Poems by Ahmad al-Khatat. Click here to read.

I am Ukraine by Lesya Bakun. Click here to read.

Prose

An excerpt from Ramy Al-Asheq’s Ever Since I Did Not Die, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson. The author was born in a refugee camp. Click here to read.

Mister, They’re Coming Anyway: Timothy Jay Smith writes on the refugee crisis in Lesbos Island, Greece with photographs by Michael Honegger. Click here to read.

The Magic Staff , a poignant short story about a Rohingya child by Shaheen Akhtar, translated from Bengali by Arifa Ghani Rahman. Click here to read.

Categories
Celebrating Translations

We are the World

Vincent Van Gogh written is different scripts. Courtesy: Creative Commons

The whole world opens up in the realm of ideas that have existed wafting and bridging across time and space. Sometimes they find conduits to come to the fore, even though they find expression in different languages, under varied cultural milieus. One way of connecting these ideas is to translate them into a single language. And that is what many have started to do. Celebrating writers and translators who have connected us with these ideas across boundaries of time and place, we bring to you translated writings in English from twenty eight languages on the International Translation Day, from some of the most iconic thinkers as well as from contemporary voices. 

Prose

Tagore’s short story, Aparichita, has been translated from Bengali as The Stranger by Aruna Chakravarti. Click here to read. 

Travels & Holidays: Humour from Rabindranath, have been translated from Bengali by Somdatta Mandal. Click here to read.

Hena, a short story by Nazrul, has been translated from Bengali by Sohana Manzoor. Click hereto read.

Munshi Premchand’s Balak or the Child has been translated from Hindi by Anurag Sharma Click here to read.

Munshi Premchand’s Pus Ki Raat or A Frigid Winter Night  has been translated from Hindi by C Christine Fair. Click here to read.

Nadir Ali’s The Kabbadi Player has been translated from Punjabi by Amna Ali. Click here to read.

Kamaleswar Barua’s Uehara by  has been translated from Assamese and introduced by Bikash K. Bhattacharya. Click here to read.

S Ramakrishnan’s Muhammad Ali’s Singnature has been S. Ramakrishnan, translated from Tamil by Dr B. Chandramouli. Click here to read. 

PF Mathews’ Mercy,  has been translated from Malayalam by Ram Anantharaman. Click here to read.

Road to Nowhere, an unusual story about a man who heads for suicide, translated from Odiya by the author, Satya Misra. Click here to read.

An excerpt from A Handful of Sesame by Shrinivas Vaidya, translated from Kannada by Maithreyi Karnoor. Click here to read.

Writings from Pandies’ Corner highlight the ongoing struggle against debilitating rigid boundaries drawn by societal norms. Each piece is written in Hindustani and then translated by a volunteer from Pandies’ in English. Click here to read.

Rakhamaninov’s Sonata, a short story by Sherzod Artikov, translated from Uzbeki by Nigora Mukhammad. Click here to read.

Of Days and Seasons, a parable by the eminent Dutch writer, Louis Couperus (1863-1923), translated by Chaitali Sengupta. Click here to read.

The Faithful Wife, a folktale translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Ramy Al-Asheq’s Ever Since I Did Not Die, translated from Arabic by Isis Nusair, edited by Levi Thompson. The author was born in a refugee camp. Click here to read.

Poetry

Two songs by Tagore written originally in Brajabuli, a literary language developed essentially for poetry in the sixteenth century, has been translated by Radha Chakravarty. Click here to read. 

Rebel or ‘Bidrohi’, Nazrul’s signature poem, ‘Bidrohi‘, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read.

Banlata Sen, Jibananada Das’s iconic poem, translated from Bengali by Professor Fakrul Alam. Click here to read. 

Poetry of Michael Madhusudan Dutt has been translated from Bengali by Ratnottama Sengupta. Click here to read.

Our Children, a poem by well-known Iranian poet, Bijan Najdi, has been translated from Persian by Davood Jalili. Click here to read.

Akbar Barakzai’s Be and It All Came into Being has been translated from Balochi by Fazal Baloch. Click here to read.

Biju Kanhangad’s The Girl Who Went Fishing has been translated from Malayalam by Aditya Shankar. Click here to read.

Jitendra Vasava’s Adivasi Poetry,  translated from the Dehwali Bhili via Gujarati by Gopika Jadeja. Click here to read.

Sokhen Tudu’s A Poem for The Ol Chiki, translated from the Santhali by Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar. Click here to read.

Thangjam Ibopishak’s Gandhi & Robot translated from the Manipuri by Robin S Ngangom. Click here to read.

 Rayees Ahmad translates his own poem, Ab tak Toofan or The Storm that Rages, from Urdu to English. Click here to read.

Poetry by Sanket Mhatre has been translated by Rochelle Potkar from Marathi to English. Click here to read.

An excerpt from Evening with a Sufi: Selected Poemsby Afsar Mohammad, translated from Telugu by Afsar Mohammad & Shamala Gallagher. Click hereto read.

Ihlwha Choi’s Universal Language written at Santiniktan, translated from Korean by the poet himself. Click here to read.

Sangita Swechha’s Motherhood: A Tiny Life inside Me has been translated from Nepali by Hem Bishwakarma. Click here to read.

Rosy Gallace’s Two poems from Italy  have been translated from Italian by Irma Kurti. Click here to read.

Poetry in Bosnian written and translated from Bosnian by Maid Corbic. Click here to read.

Lesya Bakun translates three of her own poems from Ukranian and Russian to English. Click here to read.

Poems from Armenia by Eduard Harents translated from Armenian by Harout Vartanian. Click here to read.