How the Power of Translation Helped the World Discover a Heart Lamp
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From Kannada to the Booker: How Deepa Bhasthi’s Translation Illuminated Banu Mushtaq’s Stories for the World
By Chronicle | The Trending People
“Not everything is lost in translation – sometimes, entire worlds are found.”
That sentiment became reality when the 2025 International Booker Prize was awarded to Kannada writer Banu Mushtaq and her English translator Deepa Bhasthi for their stunning short story collection Heart Lamp. Originally published in Kannada as Haseena Mattu Itara Kathegalu, the book had remained unknown to most Indians, let alone the global literary scene—until Bhasthi’s radical translation lit the way.
As Max Porter, chair of the International Booker committee, aptly put it:
"These beautiful, busy, life-affirming stories rise from Kannada, interspersed with the extraordinary socio-political richness of other languages and dialects."
With this win, India has now claimed its second International Booker Prize in just three years, proving that the country’s literary brilliance is not bound by language—it is expanded by translation.
Translation: The Bridge That Carries Indian Voices Across Borders
The global celebration of Indian literature is increasingly being penned in the language of translation. In 2022, Hindi author Geetanjali Shree won the same prize for her novel Ret Samadhi, translated into English as Tomb of Sand by Daisy Rockwell.
Tomb of Sand became a publishing phenomenon—selling 30,000 copies in Britain and over 50,000 in India, an unheard-of feat for translated literary fiction. Suddenly, a novel rooted in the trauma of Partition and the whimsical resilience of an elderly woman became an international bestseller.
That’s the power of translation—it is the invisible engine behind world literature.
Without it, we would not know Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Marquez, Murakami, or Pamuk. Their stories, languages, and cultures would remain locked within borders. With it, the world listens, connects, and learns.
The Radical Art of Translation: A Conversation with Culture
Translators are not merely scribes—they are interpreters of culture. As literary translator Ralph Manheim once said:
"Translators are like actors who speak the lines as the author would if the author could speak English."
The stories in Heart Lamp were praised for their "new textures in a plurality of Englishes" and for ruffling language itself. Bhasthi’s translation was hailed as radical—it didn’t aim for a mechanical copy, but a living, breathing echo of Mushtaq’s original soul.
Translators must make difficult choices: How do you translate cultural idioms, regional humour, or neologisms? How do you retain the rhythm of a language like Tamil or the poetic weight of Malayalam?
Judge Frank Wynne, who awarded Tomb of Sand in 2022, said:
"Wordplay, puns, neologisms, humour—these are inherently difficult to translate, especially when the cultural context is completely different."
Yet when done right, translation doesn't flatten stories—it amplifies them.
From Tagore to Mushtaq: The Long Tradition of Indian Translation
Over a century ago, Rabindranath Tagore translated his own Gitanjali into English. That act won him the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913, making him the first non-European laureate. It introduced the spiritual depth and lyrical beauty of Indian poetry to a global audience.
That legacy lives on. Recent years have seen a revival in translating Indian regional literature:
- Perumal Murugan's Pyre reached the International Booker longlist in 2023, thanks to Aniruddhan Vasudevan’s translation.
- Murugan’s Fire Bird, translated by Janani Kannan, won the JCB Prize for Literature.
- M Mukundan’s Delhi: A Soliloquy found global acclaim through the translation work of Fathima EV and Nandakumar K.
Each of these works, rooted deeply in their regional languages—Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada—resonated with readers far beyond their home states.
As translator Arunava Sinha put it:
"Without translation, people in a country like India would be locked into their own linguistic islands."
What Remains Untranslatable? The Silence Between the Words
Yet translation is never perfect. Some things are always left behind: the smell of rain-soaked red earth in a Malayalam verse, the lull of a Bengali lullaby, or the spiritual charge of a Hindi prayer.
Even cultural words—like Agmark in Fire Bird, which colloquially signifies authenticity—can lose their immediacy when translated. The weight, the rhythm, the silence between the words—that’s often where the real story lies.
As Aniruddhan Vasudevan reflected:
"You can translate the words, but the silences between them? That's where the story lives."
And Geetanjali Shree aptly said:
"Translation is not about producing a replica. It is making another living being that carries the culture of the earlier one in a new avatar."
Many Marquez Lurk in India's Linguistic Crypts
Translation has gifted the world with Gabriel Garcia Marquez in English, through Gregory Rabassa. It gave us Milan Kundera in English, thanks to Michael Heim. It turned Orhan Pamuk’s Ottoman Istanbul into a global fascination through Erdag Goknar.
Imagine the hundreds of untapped Marquez-like voices lying dormant in India’s regional languages—waiting for a translator to resurrect them.
From Banjara ballads in Telangana to folk epics in Meitei, from Marathi Dalit memoirs to Kumaoni ghost tales, there’s a treasure trove of voices still unheard.
But they need more than translation—they need publishers, platforms, and curiosity.
Translation is the Language of Democracy
Translation is not a luxury. It is essential to the democratic sharing of stories. It helps us listen—to people not like us, to lives not like ours, and to truths we may never experience firsthand.
Author-translator Sinha says it best:
"How will we talk to one another and listen to one another without translation? Translation is the language of democracy."
And that’s why the world now knows Heart Lamp. That’s why it knows Tomb of Sand. And that’s why the next great story—possibly from a remote Indian village—might one day light up the world.
All it needs is someone to listen. And someone to translate.
Published by: Chronicle | TheTrendingPeople.com.
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