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Showing posts from May, 2012

Pudhumaipithan and Gunnar Myrdal

I have never tried my hand at translations, save as part of my job in a factory where the workers P.F. loan applications required the accompanying documentation rendered in English.  The documents translated were mostly ‘Agreement to sell’ (mostly false) entered into by the workers for some property for which they sought the P.F. loan.  It used to be fun; translating hackneyed legal jargon written in Tamil and rendering them in similarly hackneyed and chaste legal jargon in English. I acquired some kind of reputation as the workers believed that the documents translated by Ramanan sir were more likely to be cleared by the P.F. Trust. This post is about my maiden attempt at translating one of the best short stories in Tamil. The story ‘Chellammal’ was written by Pudhimaipithan.  Pudhumaipithan, pseudonym for “‘Virudhachalam”, was no ordinary writer. He was the first to bring modernism into Tamil story writing. He was greatly influenced by all the great names of English short stor