ISLAMABAD, Aug 24: English translations of Zia Jallandhari’s latest collection of poems, Dam-i-Subh (into The Breath of Dawn) by Dr Ikram Azam were discussed at the meeting of Halqa-i-Arbab-i-Zauq on Saturday evening.

Zia Jallandhari, as speakers pointed out, is a significant poet (indeed, a difficult poet) to translate. He is a senior poet, too, who has been writing for more than half a century, and has enthralled the “poetry public” (if one may coin that phrase). By translating such a poet into another language, are we restricting the limitless possibilities of great poetry?

While the participants discussed the pros and cons of this argument, Zia Jallandhari himself came out with the answer that (in spite of all that is said against translating poetry) there was no better way to understand poetry in another language (if you don’t know the other language, that is) than to read it in translation. “Translation opens the only window to poetry to a language we are not familiar with.

After all, how we were able to read poets in German, French and other languages if not through the translations,” he asked. He felt extremely satisfied with the translation by Dr Ikram Azam, and praised him for his genuine and ceaseless effort. Dr Azam explained how the translator had to leave his ego, keep his own frames of reference away, to, what he called, “synergize soulfully” to reach the “quintessential understanding” to arrive at the same length as of that of the author. (In his preface to the translation, he writes that he asked the poet to paraphrase his poems. He also had many had sittings with him where they kept reviewing, revising and editing the translations.)

Dr Fateh Mohammad Malik, who presided over the meeting, while appreciating the effort of the translator, also replied to those who had said critics had not paid attention to the great poetry Zia Jallandhari was writing. He asked those who said it, to take up the pen in their hands, and start writing on him (Zia Jallandhari told the audience that Prof Fateh Mohammad Malik had written two critical essays on his poetry).

Poet Akbar Hameedi was of the view that Ikram Azam had achieved a remarkable feat by translating a great poet. He said one could see translations of “Nazams” quite often but Azam had shown his mastery of translating the Ghazal also.

Short story writer Mansha Yad thought that Ikram Azam had done a good translation. He had also kept to the English idiom. There was a kind of similarity of advantage in understanding the poet, he pointed out, between the translation done by him and one by Aseer Abid in Punjabi of Diwan-i-Ghalib. He, however, criticized giving topics to the Ghazals by Dr Azam (which, he said, were culled from the first lines).

Writer Hameed Shahid thought that the translator seemed to have swam across his own creative current. That is why he has not been able to do full justice to the poet. One does not know if the poetry in English is the same as originally that came to Zia Jallandhari, he argued.

Akhtar Usman thought that a translator, while decoding a particular sensibility, lives in two cultures at the same time. He felt that most of these translations, for what he knew of prosody, were mainly in the form of a prose poem, (contrary to the claim that they were in free verse).

He spoke of the many corners of an artist. He also took particular notice of the translator getting his poems paraphrased for him by the poet. (He, however, praised the scholarship Dr Azam brought to his work, and to some poems that were beautifully translated.) At this point, some one pointed to the set of literary theories like structuralism, which keep the author in the background and emphasize other conventions and texts rather than claims of a given reality.

Ali Ahmad Farshi spoke of Rashid, Meeraji Faiz and Zia Jallandhari, and said Zia sparkled in this list. There is a cultural code behind his poetry, which Dr Azam has very beautifully deciphered. — Mufti Jamiluddin Ahmad