The translation of a family tradition into a communal heritage and the recognition of a need to preserve and promote art are underscored here. It is the same impetus seen in the staging of Ashokavanikangam and Jatayuvadham after a very long time. The impetus goes back to the school started in 1982.

      There is at once here a translation of performance and translation of training in the arts. This can be illustrated with the most recent body of translation to have appeared on the stage. It is surprising that until 2001 Kalidasa's Sakuntalam was never staged in Kutiyattam. There were two different stage manuals for two different acts in the play. But no complete play was staged spread over twelve hours for four days from January 5 - 8, 2002. If the popularity of Sakuntalam Kutiyattam is gauged, it is suggestive of the cultural consciousness that augments the training and performance giving direction to the translation that charts the course of this theatre. With the performance of Kalidasa's play, a border was crossed.

      In a sense, translation is a form of border crossing. A quick look at the World Theatre Project that also involves the Gurukulam, and Natanakairali in this theatre experiment might help. It must be said that though the cultural continuation of Kutiyattam was maintained in the translation of family tradition and temple ritual, theatre experience is certainly translated into the dynamics of globalization. In 1998-99, the World Theatre Workshop was held at Natanakairali, Irinjalakuda.

        Interestingly Guru Ammannur was very active in training the participants in the workshop. The idea that came of it was to "facilitate an opportunity for theatre artistes from different backgrounds to work together aiming at a production as an experiment and as part of the experience to understand each other”(ibid :102). They had an improvised production in Sweden in 1999 called "East of the Sun, West of the Moon” which was based on a classic Chinese text “Journey to the West”. The World Theatre Project may not be the old story of the East meeting the West, it is the continuation of the ongoing translation of the experience of theatre that had come near extinction without anyone to continue the tradition of the training available in the Abhinaya Kalari (training laboratory) at the Kodungallor Palace inherited by the Ammannur Chakyars. As part of this ongoing translation, was set up an Abhinaya Kalari funded by the Japanese Foundation Asia Centre. The fact that this continual cultural translation had made a mark in the preservation and promotion of Kutiyattam is well borne out in the recognition that the UNESCO gave it in May 2001.

       Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity

III

     I now propose to look at a third dimension in translation. Since I do not confine the term translation to the printed book, I shall be looking at an area that concerns the urban geographer. The city is a cultural text. My attempt here is to look at the ways in which city spaces are translated to serve different purposes. With this, of course, are changed life styles of people. Once familiar landmarks, names, leisure, hobbies, everything a city has, speak in a different tongue. Here translation pushes cultural limits of experience in the transcreation of the city as a different experience.

   Calicut City: Mananchira is a large pond in the heart of Calicut City. It was the bathing tank of the members of the Zamorin's household.

      As the city grew, there were changes in the cityscape and Mananchira became the heart of the city. Today, the heart of the city is trans-created into a beautiful park called Mananchira Square. It was thrown open to the public in November 1994. The Tagore and Ansari Park separated from the pond by a road on one side, and on the south of it, the maidan (ground) separated by a road defined the site as an identifiable landmark. Now all these are fused, walled in, renamed as Mananchira Square.

     The description of this text will be incomplete without some additional details: The square has two statues, one of V.K. Krishna Menon and another one called Padayali. New trees have been planted all around, and two entrances one across the Pattala palli (military mosque) and the other across from the common wealth factory, both designed to reminisce the Huzur Kacheri building (which was the head quarters of the East India Company and later the Malabar Presidency) which was demolished to be replaced by the new mammoth LIC building. The exit is across from the model school/old law college junction built in a similar style (tile roof, white / peach colonial walls a typical Keraliya touch). ("Mananchira Square”). There is a musical fountain in the north end of the Square, and an open-air theatre Kalakrithi, a music stage and concealed speakers.

      This was called Mananchira Junction. There were annual fairs during Onam, and arts competitions. Indira Gandhi, C.H. Mohammed Koya, Muhammad Ali, Swami Chinmayananda and K.P. Kesava Menon to name some addressed people here. Memories linger in the mind of Sunday cricket matches, football practice, P.T.Usha running her 100 meters apart from her training in the beach, and Gundappa Viswanath hitting a huge six into the sub collectorate building. Even more was the first steps into the world of football, the ground nurturing many a football dreams, not just for the city but also for the whole district. The busy centre with buses competing with one another also had in their midst the wood barrel water cart carrying water to restaurants.

       It is always possible to be nostalgic about familiar landmarks, but the point I want to make is the way in which the cartography of the city changed with this 700-lakh rupees project. The translation, as trans-creation, redefined leisure for the city dweller. The ground and the musical fountain compete with the beach in attracting people. In this sense, translation alters social behaviour; here is clearly the postmodern expression of the city.

      A closer look at the square reveals some other interesting details. "The maidanam has now a green carpet lawn and the whole complex is circled by a laterite (a kind of stone) sculpted wall. The entire complex is circled by 250 lamp posts that are designed in the colonial style and each post will have a pair of lamps” ("Mananchira Square"). The lamps were specially cast in North India and are mounted on the laterite wall encircling the pond. One feature of this sort of trans-creation is the expression of postmodernism in the design of the city. For one important feature of postmodern architecture is the focus on appearance over substance and purpose. Added to that is a deliberate mixing of diverse features.

      This sort of trans-creation manifests in the new building of the public library. What used to be in my student days a tile-roofed building open for the 'intellectuals' of the city, now attracts the middle class and is said to have a larger and wider readership. It is now a multi-purpose building with shops let out in the ground floor, translating space into money as much as leisure and knowledge share the upper rooms. The library building has a structure that is aesthetically pleasing that yet another dimension of translation manifest itself. Translation of cityscapes brings together styles and references from different periods to create a discourse that draws attention to the way aesthetic refinement is structured. The building has drawn heavily from Laurie Baker and on traditional Kerala architecture. Added to that is the exposed laterite that seems to aggressively draw attention to itself.

     I would like to draw attention to one more important structure that has altered the city in a significant way, but before that, it would do well to recall the structure of the temples in Kerala, especially the Vadakkumnathan Temple in Trichur. One should notice the roof that slopes down. Now if we turn attention to the Planetarium in Calicut, located to the East Mananchira, one notices that it is modeled very much on the architecture of the temple.

      Here, I would argue, the design of the temple is translated to construct a temple for science. There is a lot of semantic transfer in this translation. This is probably the only planetarium of its kind in the country, which seems to thematically draw attention to science enshrined in a temple.

     This dimension of translation in the public sphere possibly manifests best the change in a people and culture. Only a fuller study of the translations in the public sphere will enable an understanding of the cultural discourses that condition the trans-creation of space. A salient point to emerge here is the relation between the consequence of translation and the location of leisure. These trans-creations in the cityscape, however, are neither isolated discourses nor are they closed off to further trans-creations. Similar translations continue to function in the major festivals in the State, in the domestic sphere altering the shape of living. For instance, there are oblique references to the Mananchira Square and the beautification project in a very politically charged Malayalam movie. In a sense, leisure and with that the public is made to confront the politics of translation here.

Conclusion

      Every slide show must end. But the translation goes on. In the recreation of texts in different languages, spaces, situations, are also created memories, newer paradigms, ideologies, politics, always subject to further translations. It is almost Ovidian, as texts pull off magnificent changes. And yet, these changes are contextualised, framed well within the cultural space that made possible the impetus to translate. The effect that a translation has is as important in any theorizing on translation as the problems the translator faces.

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