Compared with fiction and drama, the terse culture-specific use of words in poetry makes it relatively difficult to achieve any adequate or definitive translation. Different rhetorical devices such as symbol, analogy, allusion, simile, or ironic counterpoint produce complexity in poetry. A poem employs a variety of influences, which are literary and cultural, historical and mythical, universal and topical. The use of a foreign language for translating it distorts some of the subtleties of native experience. Since English does not have as strong a cultural basis as a regional poetic tradition has in relation to the use of the resources of folk culture and folk tradition, poetry translation poses a series of problems and difficulties. Despite such problems of poetry translation, various attempts have been made to introduce the gallery of Marathi poets to the English-knowing readers. Besides his most outstanding translation of Tukaram's poems Says Tuka (1991), Dilip Chitre's Anthology of Marathi Poetry 1945-65 (1967) is a comprehensive collection of translated Marathi poems. Some other collections of poetic translations of this earlier period are: Krishna Chaudhari and P. S. Nerurkar's On the Pavements of Life (1973) of Narayan Surve's poems; Poems of Vinda (1975) of G. V. Karandikar; Vrinda Nabar and Nissim Ezekiel's Snake-skin and Other Poems (1975) of Indira Sant's poetry. More Poems of Vinda and Om are two of G. V. Karandikar's recent additions. Philip Enblom has translated P. S. Rege's poems. Ranjit Hoskote and Mangesh Kulkarni have translated Vasant Abhaji Dahake's Yogabhrashta as The Terrorist of Spirit. Dilip Chitre has translated, along with Amritanubhav, Hemant Divate's poems as Virus Alert. N. D. Manohar's translated poems are included in Ajanta. Arjun Dangle has edited Poisoned Bread, an anthology of Dalit writings, which includes several translations of poems written by Namdeo Dhasal, Keshav Meshram and other Dalit poets. Some periodicals have published poems written by women such as Mallika Amar Shaikh, Rajani Parulekar, Prabha Ganorkar and others. The Atlantic Quarterly has given one of its sections to Marathi poetry in English translation. Literary Olympics has published translations of Marathi poems along with Marathi script. The special issue of the Sahitya Akademi's journal Indian Literature included the cross-section of Marathi poetry. The Little Magazine edited by Antara Dev Sen has published translations of Surve, Kolatkar, Chitre, Dhasal, Dahake and others. Nowadays, Sachin Ketkar is busy translating the younger Marathi poets into English. Tehalka dot com, before its closure, had given publicity to an article on Dhasal and to his poems. The website Poetry International India Issue has lately made available some Marathi poetry in English translation. A careful look at this phenomenon reveals that almost all translators are Maharashtrian bilinguals. The dearth of British or American translators has prevented the export of Marathi poetry into other English-knowing countries.

To understand and problematise the types of textual issues that hamper the quality of some of these translations, let us now examine the kind of reception, for example, Chitre's anthology has received from its readers, critics and reviewers. Chitre himself finds it unfortunate to quote two of Mardhekar's lines in translation (Chitre, 1967: 12). Further, after commenting on the subtle effects achieved by P. S. Rege through his rhythmical liberties in Marathi, he finds this discussion irrelevant in the context of the translations of his poems, which, he admits, "cannot achieve the musical excellence of the originals". (Chitre, 1967: 16) Adil Jussawalla, an Indian English poet, who reviewed the anthology in The New Quest, expresses his disappointment with 'the general absence of lyrical work in the anthology'. (Jussawalla, 1968: 109) In Teekasvayamvara, Bhalchandra Nemade, Marathi poet, critic and novelist, has made elaborate comments on the issues that attend Chitre's anthology. He calls Chitre's venture 'a programme of no importance'. He criticizes Chitre for his lopsidedness in selecting poems of a particular group. He further asserts that the tradition of Modernist poetry in Marathi is extremely sickly and will not be able to occupy any significant position in English. He points out the following in Chitre's anthology: mistakes of English grammar, spelling errors, clumsy notes on contributors, repetition of the name of the translator page after page, unattractive cover, etc. Some other irritants found by him in the actual translations of the poems are as follows: inadequate equivalents, hackneyed phrases, irrelevant but attractive expressions, paraphrases, wordiness, improper rhythm, loose and dazzling words. Some of the examples of wrong equivalents used by Chitre and others mentioned by him are: 'retard' instead of 'stunt', 'hypnosis' in place of 'stupor', 'leprous' in place of 'mangy', 'thistles' for 'bristle', 'slopes' in place of 'pods of gram', 'thick soup' in place of 'vinegar', 'in the desert' instead of 'dune', 'itch under its scalp' in place of one of 'swank, swagger, strut', 'lemon tree' in place of 'neem or margosa tree', etc. (Nemade, 1990: 100-109) Commenting on the irritating tendency to substitute vivid image or metaphor with an abstract, generalized idea, Vilas Sarang criticizes Dilip Chitre for his misleading translation of Vinda Karandikar's "You and I Run":

Truth has fled from here
In a Chariot of Gold
Each one's breast
Bears the mark of a rigid fate.

Here, Chitre has wrongly substituted Kararandikar's socialist awareness conveyed through the precise image of "the mark of a wheel" with classical fatalism by rendering it as 'the mark of a rigid fate' (Sarang, 1988: 188). Thus, Chitre, Jussawalla, Nemade and Sarang all make us aware of the difficulties of translation.

IV

To turn to extra textual irritants in exporting Modern Marathi literature into English, firstly, we notice that there is a dearth of properly trained translators. About the Maharashtrian bilinguals, Vilas Sarang says that "their English is of an "official" wooden type; their grasp of contemporary, colloquial English idiom is shaky". (Sarang, 1988: 3) Good translators are few and far between. Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar, Gouri Deshpande have done some excellent pioneering work, but nobody is there to follow in their footsteps. Our institutions such as libraries and colleges and universities fail to play an important role in assisting the growth of Marathi literature in English translation. The Departments of Marathi at various universities in Maharashtra are often ineffective in terms of motivating the students to undertake the work of translating Marathi literature. By and large, our students are not adequately stimulated to write, translate and in general to contribute to intellectual life.

Secondly, there is a dearth of good reviewing and a dearth of critical discussion. Critics and reviewers in the west have for obvious reasons responded more to modern Indian English literature than to modern Marathi literature. This means in other words that there is a need for a better and greater interface between modern Marathi literature and western literary cultures. Translation theoreticians, translation reviewers and translators themselves will have to evolve an engagement with the act of translation in such a way that translated works are seen as part of global literary culture. This is something, which has happened with modern Latin American literature. And what has happened in the case of Latin American literature needs to happen in the case of modern Marathi literature and for that matter, modern literature in any regional Indian language.

Thirdly, there is a dearth of adequate financing for commissioning translators. The publishing houses play a major role in book imports and exports. They dominate such elements as copyright policy, wholesaling and distribution networks. Exporting of literature from one language to another depends to a large extent on their ability to siphon off the best talent in terms of authors and translators, and they are better able to obtain commercial financing. Today, Marathi has to function in a national and international market dominated by English. The English language publishers and multinational firms, however, do not take initiative for translating from Marathi into English. At present, as Sujit Mukherjee has pointed out, an Indian's translation into English is not widely received in England and America.

Very rarely has a British or American publisher found an Indian translation into English acceptable. There have been several cases when a UNESCO-sponsored translation of an Indian work by an Indian could not find a publisher outside India.

(Mukherjee, 1976: 43)

Fourthly, there is a dearth of readership of our translations abroad. The educational market determines the nature and volume of exporting literature from one language to another. The books are bought in an educational context only when the imported material has some sort of relevance to different courses of study. Since many universities and colleges in the West prescribe at the most Indian Writing in English, there is a want of buyers of translations. Therefore, even if the export of Marathi literature receives some state support, there is no guarantee that the translated works would ever figure in the reading lists of the departments of languages abroad.

If not abroad, there is some demand for literary translations among the Indian readers of English. G. N. Devy writes,

There is at least as large, if not larger, an Indian audience for Indian English books and translations as there is for books in some major Indian languages. Besides, there is an increasing urge among regional writers to see their works translated into English which is reflected in the growth in commercial, literary and journalistic publishing devoted to Indian literature in English translation.

(Devy, 1993: 118)

All over the country, English reigns as the medium of instruction. English is the language not only of industry and business but also of all services, military and civil administration both at the centre and in the states. Indian writers in English have extensively used this language for creative purposes. Translation at least into English of any major literary work from Marathi is imperative if the rest of the country is even to be made aware of it. The minimum requirement is that it must conform, as fully as possible, to the usage and manner of Modern English writing.

V

What we have noticed in the context of Marathi literature in English translation is more or less true about translating from Marathi into other 'non-Indian' languages. It is quite obvious that the initiative for import ought to come from the language in which the work is to be rendered rather than be forced upon every other language. After all, the supply of literary translations corresponds to the demand for it. As there is little or no demand from other 'world' languages such as French, German, Spanish, etc. very few translations from Marathi into these languages have been made. Vilas Sarang's editing of the special issue of a French journal devoted to Indian literature (Europe, Jan-Feb 1982) and the publication of his short stories translated in French by Alain Nadaud in April 1988 is one or two exceptions. Unlike English-knowing scholars, men who know French or German or Spanish well enough to undertake the work of exporting Modern Marathi literature into these languages are still quite rare. And our teachers of French, German, or Russian fail to be representatives of cross-cultural fertilization.

VI

To conclude, we can say that the clumsy English grammar, staccato style, the haphazard substitution of English words for Marathi ones are some of the textual irritants that often mar the quality of translations exported from Marathi into English. The relative indifference of 'non-Indian' literary cultures, the want of non-native readership, the monopoly of the international firms in publishing, are some of the extra textual irritants that are preventing the spread of Modern Marathi literature elsewhere. Despite these constraints, Modern Marathi literature needs to be exported, especially into English, so as to exert some sort of impact on the rest of our country, and if made possible by foreign readership, on the rest of the world.

REFERENCES:

Nemade, Bhalchandra Kosla Sudhakar Marathe (Trans.) (1997) Cocoon Chennai: MacMillan.

Chitre, Dilip (Ed) (1967) An Anthology of Marathi Poetry (1945-65). Mumbai:  Nirmala Sadanand Publishers

Devy, G. N (1993) In Another Tongue: Essays on Indian English Literature.  Madras: Macmillan.

Jussawalla, Adil. (1968) Way Ahead: A Review of An Anthology of Marathi Poetry (1945-65) in The New Quest, Vol. 151 April/June 1968.

Mukherjee, Sujeet. (1976) On Publishing Translations in The New Quest, Vol. 101  May/June 1976.

Nemade, Bhalchandra. (1990) Teekasvayamvara. Aurangabad: Saket.

Sarang, Vilas. (1988) The Stylistics of Literary Translation: A Study with  Reference to English and Marathi. Mumbai: The Gurudev Tagore Chair of Comparative Literature.

Sawant, Sunil. (2002) Culture Contact Between Nineteenth Century America and  Maharashtra in Journal of Shivaji University, Vol. 37.

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