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Talking Translation with Jerry Pinto

Kanika Katyal in conversation with the writer and translator

 

“What are we thinking when we think of languages as brackets? They are Venn diagrams; they are anarchic and branching and interconnected.”

– Jerry Pinto

 

How does a translator see languages, and the relationship between them? Why is translation critical to culture, especially in India? Award-winning writer Jerry Pinto talks about his project of translating a rich body of texts by those that were historically oppressed, including Daya Pawar’s Baluta (2015), the first Dalit autobiography which was published in Marathi in 1978.

 

Video © Guftugu.

Jerry Pinto is a writer of prose, poetry and children’s fiction, as well as a translator, journalist and teacher. His works include the highly acclaimed novel Em and the Big Hoom, several edited anthologies, and translations such as Baluta, Cobalt Blue and I Want to Destroy Myself. He also teaches journalism at the Sophia Institute of Social Communications Media in Mumbai.