An Initiative From Goethe-Institut Results in Mumbai's Poets Translating Poets Festival, With Focus on Diversity

Dalit-feminist poet Pradnya Daya Pawar translated the works of two German poets — Ulrike Draesner and Thomas Kunst — into Marathi. (Andrea Fernandes/Goethe-Institut)

Mumbai is about to have its biggest poetry festival ever, reports Hindustan Times. The festival is the result of a cultural initiative by the Goethe-Institut--also known as the Max Mueller Bhavan (MMB)--and includes a collection of 280 translations in 20 languages, including Malayalam, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, Bengali, Kashmiri, Odia, German and Marathi. More:

The enterprise is culminating in Mumbai at the Poets Translating Poets festival, which will take place in the city from November 25 to November 27. Besides several poetry-reading sessions, the festival will feature discussions on varied subjects such as the difference between feminist poetry and the works of female writers. It will also have a session on how Bengali poetry from Bangladesh and West Bengal, respectively, is different from each other. There is even a talk on the market for poetry and translations in South Asia and Germany.

However, Dr Martin Wälde, the director of MMB, says, the focus of the festival is to enable poets and readers to understand and accept the world’s diversity. “Some of the questions that will arise and those we seek to debate on are: How can we preserve the diversity of cultures and languages when wars and conflicts enforce only one identity, which creates marginalisation and dislocation of refugees?” asks Wälde.

Bridging the gap

The festival, in effect, addresses the issue of identity politics (people’s tendency to form particular religious, racial and social alliances). Pawar says that translation as a practice helps understand people from different religious and ethnic backgrounds and removes these barricades. “Translation, by definition, stands for something [that is] cross-cultural. Otherwise, there is a wall between the people of different countries, because you don’t know anything about their culture. Translation is that bridge,” she says.

Keep reading (the U.S. election of Donald Trump is also addressed) here.