"What I'm trying to achieve is take Tagore or his songs to a generation that would otherwise not read him, that stands at risk of getting very intimidated by the Bangla that we do not speak, anymore," says Jashodhara while talking about Translating and Contemporising Tagore.

Stck.me Academy MasterClass on Getting started with Translating and Contemporising Tagore was held on September 4, 2022. Jashodhara Chakraborti is an author, translator, executive, and teacher. She has published two books for Young Adults and cut her teeth in translation with another adventure for Young Adults by acclaimed twentieth-century Bengali author, Hemendra Kumar Roy.

On stck.me, she translates Rabindranath Tagore’s first opera, “The Illusion Game.” She is also a TEDx speaker and a visiting lecturer at IIM Kozhikode where she teaches Storytelling for Business. Jashodhara is from IIM Calcutta, Lady Shri Ram College for Women, and Delhi Public School, R.K. Puram. She lives in Kolkata and adores music and most animals.

Jashodhara Chakraborti

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Here are the key lessons from our session on how to build an audience through Translation:

1. Owning a Dictionary of the original language- this is of great help because as a translator who is starting out, finding the perfect idiom or English words that would not only translate the phrase written in a different language but also bring out a similar feel can often get difficult. That's when a dictionary of the language comes in handy.

   For example, if you're someone who is looking to translate Bengali to English, you can refer to the famous book Chalantika: Adhunik Bangabhasha Abhidhan,

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2. It's okay to not translate EVERY word- there are words in every language that sound beautiful and fitting even with the rest of the sentence that is translated to a different language. It's always advisable to leave it as that instead of translating which might ruin the essence of the same.

3. Be honest with what you think the writer means- how you, as a translator, can perceive what the writer is saying might not necessarily be similar to how another translator perceives the same; and that's okay. Be honest about your thought process because that will bring out your best work.

You can watch the entire session with Jashodhara Chakraborti here,