Poetry is What Gets Lost in Translation (Robert Frost)
ELSA
'Where Minds Ignite for Mutual Illumination'
Celebrating 10th Anniversary of ELSA MEET
None of us at ELSA could imagine that the Meet marking the completion of a decade would be so enriching an experience in terms of actively involved participation of members from U.P., Bihar, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and distant Chicago. The vibrant deliberation and discussion on “Poetry is what gets lost in translation” saw everyone glued to their computer screens.
ELSA ONLINE MEET
"Poetry is what is lost in translation" — Robert Frost
29 March 2026
Report
Saurabh
Agarwal
Members were invited to deliberate on the challenges and
enjoyment of poetry in translation, and to present a translation of a few lines
of their choice into any language of their choosing.
Dr. Nibir K. Ghosh opened the session with wide-ranging
reflections on the art and significance of translation. He began with the
celebrated case of Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat, originally written in Persian and
famously rendered into English by Edward FitzGerald — a translation that itself
became a literary landmark, raising questions about the line between
translation and creative reinvention. He went on to highlight why translation
matters in the contemporary literary world, drawing attention to the growing recognition
accorded to translators in the Booker International Prize, where the prize
money is now shared equally between the author and the translator — an
acknowledgement of the translator's creative labour. Dr. Ghosh also shared his
personal experience of reading Ashvaghosa's Buddhacarita and reflected on the
deep religious and philosophical sensibility that such a text demands of its
translator. He observed that translating a work of such spiritual depth
requires far more than linguistic competence — it calls for a profound
connection with the faith and cultural world the text inhabits.
Dr. Manju offered a thought-provoking perspective centred
on the primacy of emotion in language. Her central argument was that the
language of emotion does not need words — a sentiment that speaks to the
limitations translation inevitably faces. She noted that oral stories have been
rendered into multiple languages across ages without formal translation
processes, suggesting that meaning can travel beyond the strict boundaries of
linguistic structure. She supported her theoretical points by translating her own
poem, originally written in English, and reflected on the philosophical
challenge that in translation the relationship between the signifier and the
signified often breaks down or ceases to exist.
Dr. Shalini Nandkeolyar took up the translation of a poem
by the well-known poet Shanta Sinha who is also her mother bringing a uniquely personal dimension to the
exercise. She proposed that translation, like the literary theory of the 'death
of the author,' gives birth to the reader: just as meaning shifts from author
to reader in interpretation, so too does each translation become a new and
distinct creation shaped by the individual translator. Translation, in her
view, is myriad perspectives rather than a single fixed rendering. Despite
knowing her mother's mind intimately, Dr. Nandkeolyar described how she would
still pause and deliberate at length over individual words, searching for
alternatives that could carry the precise weight of the original. She also
referenced Gulzar's celebrated translations of Rabindranath Tagore as an
illustration of how a great translator brings their own poetic voice to the
work.
Dr. Pallavi Goyal focused on the Hindi poem Satpura ke
Ghane Jungle by the eminent poet Bhavani Prasad Mishra. She drew a pointed
parallel between translation and Plato's philosophical critique of poetry — the
idea that poetry is a copy of a copy, and therefore increasingly removed from
the original truth. Translation, she suggested, risks a similar distancing.
She outlined the specific losses that occur in translation:
•
The cadence
and metre of the original poem are rarely preserved.
•
Metaphors
that are culturally embedded are seldom fully captured.
•
The
musicality and tonal character of the language are frequently lost.
Dr. Tamali Neogi presented a translation of her own Bangla poem, ‘Sandhyatara’
(The Evening Star), into English. Her contribution centered on the
discipline of deep reading as a prerequisite for good translation. She emphasized the need for multiple close readings of a text
before attempting translation, arguing that without this depth of
understanding, the meaning in translation could end up twice removed from the
original. She expressed the belief that with sufficiently high poetic
sensitivity, it is possible to overcome the inherent barriers of translation
and arrive at something true to the spirit of the original.
Dr. Anjali Chauhan presented a translation of the famous opening lines
of Milton's Paradise Lost into Rajasthani. She spoke candidly about the
difficulty of rendering the thunderous, epic tone of Milton's verse into a
language primarily celebrated for its lyrical softness. In an interesting
methodological addition, Dr. Chauhan described her experiment with AI and
ChatGPT to explore various possible translations of the same lines. She noted
how the outcome varied meaningfully with changes in the prompts given to the AI
a finding that generated considerable
interest and discussion among the members about the role of technology in
literary translation.
Saurabh Agarwal approached the theme from the perspective of the reader
rather than the translator, raising the often-overlooked challenge of choosing
the right translation in the first place. Using Fyodor Dostoevsky's Crime and
Punishment as his example, he spoke about the perplexity a reader faces when
confronted with multiple translations of the same classic each rendering the same text with a different
voice, tone, and shade of meaning, leaving the reader uncertain which version
is closest to the spirit of the original. He went on to reflect on the even
greater difficulties posed by translating works deeply rooted in a specific
civilisational and philosophical tradition. Taking Ramdhari Singh Dinkar's epic
poem Rashmirathi as his example, he described how such a work carries within it
the weight of a five-thousand-year-old civilisation its mythology, its philosophy, its layered
cultural memory. The epic is dense with mythological references that are
inseparable from their meaning, and he argued that no series of lengthy
footnotes can adequately substitute for the lived cultural understanding that a
native reader brings to the text. In such cases, translation does not merely
risk losing nuance it risks losing the very
soul of the work.
Dr. Seema Sinha shared her views on the complexity and richness of the
translation field. She drew on the example of Mulk Raj Anand's use of Punjabi
words in his English novels to illustrate how certain words carry cultural and
emotional weight that resists easy translation, the flavour and texture of the
original language simply cannot be replicated. She also expressed her
appreciation for the large and growing body of work being accomplished in the
field of translation today, recognising it as a vital contribution to
cross-cultural literary understanding.
Jessica Joel offered a sharp and evocative analysis of what translation
does to meaning. She argued that meaning gets reshaped or erased in translation
— that rhyme, emotion, and cultural significance are frequently the casualties
of the process. Her most striking observation was that translators function as
gatekeepers: they are the ones who decide, consciously or otherwise, who gets
to be fully understood across languages and who risks being lost. This framing
raised important questions about the power and responsibility that come with
the translator's role.
Rajeev Khandelwal drew the group's attention to Ezra Pound's
translations of classical Chinese poetry as a compelling historical example. He
noted that Pound's translations, though sometimes loose by strict standards,
served as an important vehicle for ushering in modernism in English poetry —
demonstrating how translation can be a generative and even transformative
literary act, capable of reshaping an entire literary tradition.
Dr. Nibir K. Ghosh brought the session to a close with reflections on
the enduring importance of translation in cultural and national life. He
offered the moving example of Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's ‘Bande Mataram’ —
a poem that gained its full national significance and wide reach only after it
was translated into English by Sri Aurobindo, underscoring how translation can
elevate a work beyond its original linguistic community to become a shared
cultural inheritance.
Dr. Ghosh warmly thanked all the participants for their thoughtful and
enriching contributions and declared the meeting concluded.
***
Negotiating Linguistic Boundaries
Shalini Nandkeolyar
It was a privilege and an honour to be a part of the online Literary Meet - an insightful discussion on Robert Frost’s evocative observation, ‘‘Poetry is What Gets Lost in Translation” by ELSA, guided by its founder, Dr. Nibir Ghosh, Professor & Senior Fulbright Scholar, University of Washington, Seattle, Chief Editor of Re Markings, the International Journal of English Literature. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Ghosh for this enriching opportunity and thanks to my cousin, Seema Sinha, for suggesting my name for this riveting discussion.
It was an evening, deeply absorbing, thought-provoking, and truly scintillating. It was immensely enriching to be among such erudite scholars, listening to their diverse perspectives, experiences, and interpretations. I am no academician; I merely shared some of the challenges I encountered while translating my mother, Shanta Sinha’s poetry collection, Samanantar Sunne, published around 1957, into English.
Translating between languages presents subtle challenges. Language isn't just words, it carries culture, emotion, and context. Even arriving at an English equivalent of the title, Samanantar Sunne, was a dilemma -- whether to preserve the original through literal translation, or to capture the deeper essence of her thought? In either case, something seemed to elude expression -- the full resonance, the intrinsic spirit of the original.
I often lived with certain phrases for days, yet whatever I came up with seemed to diminish their full import. I was invariably left feeling I hadn't touched even the surface of the depth and beauty embedded in her poetry. To unravel the richness of her stunning imagery and its nuances was a daunting task.
Time allotted was short, so I chose to share a few lines of her lengthy poem along with the translation.
रात और शहर
बेशुमार इमारतों को जकड़े शहर सोता है
अचानक नींद की तीसरी मंजिल पर
चढ़ रहे ख्वाबों के हजार कदम
खा जाते है मोच
जागता है शहर झगझोर इमारतों की बाँहें
बुलाती है कहीं से
एक गंध सोंधी-मीठी
घनी होती जाती है तन की परछाईयाँ
रात-भीगा शहर
Night and the City
The night sleeps
Clutching countless buildings.
Suddenly,
Ascending the third layer of sleep,
The thousand steps of dreams
Suffer a sprain.
The city awakens,
Shaking the arms of the buildings.
From somewhere a sweet,
Earthy fragrance of petrichor beckons,
The thickening silhouettes of bodies
Begin to become denser.
Night steeped city.
Each language possesses its own intrinsic beauty, its subtle nuances, its melody - phrases with no equivalent elsewhere. The original flavour inevitably loses some lustre in translation. Yet the merit lies in opening doors to a wider readership, allowing the essence - however transformed, to travel across linguistic boundaries. It offers glimpses into writings we would remain unaware of, were they not rendered in a language we are conversant with.
Shalini Nandkeolyar, based in Kolkata, is a Reiki Master, a widely published bilingual writer, translator, painter, singer. She holds degrees in philosophy, English literature, MBA, a Diploma in Acting.
***
Soul of Poetry: Lost or Enriched in Translation
Tamali Neogi
Translating books requires a translator to navigate a host of obstacles while staying true to the author’s voice and intent. It is required for making works accessible in translations that resonate with new readers while preserving the essence of the original work. book translation ensures that literature continues to serve as a bridge between cultures, fostering understanding and communication on a global scale. On a modest scale I have translated two books so far - two books of English verse into Bengali. In 2025 I have translated an eminent Romanian philosopher and renowned poet Liviu Pendefunda's Unseen Light in Times into Bengali. I have invested almost a year in the project and will like to share experiences of the difficulties/challenges encountered.
The English translation of the text originally written in Romanian, looked like either the machine translation or the literal translation. This kind of translation of a deeply philosophical text creates the first level of difficulty for me as the translator. It needs at least seven close readings of the book for me to grasp the meaning of the text at all levels-literal, philosophical, metaphorical and so on. So, the first challenge of the translator is understanding the text at deeper levels even if one is doing the translation of the original text and not translated version of the text. If one is doing the translation of a translated version, there's high chance that one is translating a text meaning of which is already twice removed from the meaning originally intended by the poet/ author. This is why the translator is to find so many gaps in the translated version of the original text and the discussion of these gaps leads me to the second point of this talk as it is equally applicable to first translation and not only to relay translation or indirect translation.
I am giving here just one example. Suppose, a word 'bell' occurs in the source language many a time. But when the subsequent version of the word in target language is very unpoetic, phonetically extremely unappealing, then it is best for the translator to avoid it. Moreover, when the translator understands that the poet/ author intended the word to carry religious, metaphorical or philosophical meanings, the translator's role becomes very crucial. Here he/ she will prudently go for free translation, thus avoiding the literal translation. Besides, the meaning property, the translator is to retain the poetic quality of the text (if any), the cultural ethos (if conveyed).
Therefore, the translator needs to be very cautious about his/her choice of words in target language. My final point is if a book is culturally hugely different from the cultural and socio-economic background of the poet, then the translator's role again becomes extremely challenging. So far as translating poetry books is concerned, it could be said that the translator must have high poetic sensitivity/sensibility to do justice to the source text. But this is double edged. The poet-translator is to practice the art of tight rope walking. If he fails to limit his creative imagination within the boundary of the source text, there's a chance that the target text becomes largely different from the source text. Well, it depends on the wisdom and efficiency of the translator to see if the soul of Poetry is lost or reborn in the process of translation.
সন্ধ্যাতারা
তমালি নিয়োগী
তুলতুলি ফুল ঘুমিয়ে যায়,
সবুজ ঘাসের বুকে মাথা রেখে,
সম্পূর্ণ আত্মনিবেদনে কি যে শান্তি;
শান্তিতে নিদ্রা দীর্ঘতর হয়।
দীর্ঘ ঘুম ভাঙলো একদিন,
কিন্তু এ কি!
তার প্রেমিক, সবুজ প্ৰাণ,
আর অচেনা নয় বৃক্ষের পৃথিবীতে।
সুখ আর গরিমার দিনে কে
মনে রাখে পুরানোকে?
এক, বড় বেশি রকমের একা,
যন্ত্রণাই জীবনের সার।
তারপর একদিন
জানা নেই তাকে পেল কি ভালোমানুষি,
সন্ধ্যার আকাশ ঝুঁকে পড়ে তাকে বুকে তুলে নিল।
কেউ জানে না, কখন ওপর থেকে আশীর্বাদ এসে পৌঁছায়।
"তুমি হলে আমার সবথেকে উজ্জ্বল গহনা", বললো আকাশ,
ফুলের মন তখন অন্য জগতে।
বছর ঘুরে এল সেই দিন,
গাছটি মাথা তুলে আকাশের দিকে চেয়ে প্রশ্ন করলো
" কে তুমি?...
তোমার মুখ আমাকে ঘুমোতে দেয় না,
সন্ধ্যাতারার মতো সুন্দর,
তুমি কি আমার ফুল?
ফিরো এসো তোমার অতীতে,
তোমার গাছে।"
সেটি ছিল বসন্তের প্রথম রাত্রি।
সব আলো নিভে গেলে,
পৃথিবীর সব মেয়েরা চোখের পাতা নামিয়ে নিল
এক মুহূর্তের জন্য,
পাপড়ির মতো চোখের পাতা!
হৃদয় দিয়ে মেয়েরা বুঝে নিল নীরবে,
অতীতকে ক্ষমা করা, গঠনেরই প্রথম ধাপ।
সেই রাত্রে সে প্রথম তার মাথা ঘোরালো আকাশের দিকে,
তখন থেকে প্রতিজ্ঞার উজ্জ্বলতা চোখে নিয়ে
তাকিয়ে আছে সে আজও।
The Evening Star
Tamali Neogi
The softest grass flower sleeps,
its head on the chest of verdant grass,
in complete surrender there's peace,
when one sleeps for longer than usual.
Awakening unfolds the spectacular scene,
her old lover, the green stalk, is no longer the unfamiliar face in the world of trees.
In joyous days of glory who remembers the old consort?
A lonely soul,
she cries herself nearly to death.
Then one day
Know not what benevolence occupies him,
the evening sky
bends down and lifts her up.
Nobody knows when blessings arrive from above.
'You are my brightest ornament,” says he,
and she preoccupied with some different thoughts.
Years pass,
then comes the day,
the tree looks upward and asks her
"Who are you?..
Thy face doesn't let me sleep,
beautiful as the evening star,
are you my flower?
Come back to your tree of past.”
That was the first night of Spring.
When all the candles are off,
all the girls lower their eyelids for a minute,
eyelids soft as petals!
In the deepest recesses of hearts, they know,
forgiving the past is a step to becoming.
That night she first turns her head towards the Sky,
till then she is awake with a promise in her eyes.
Dr. Tamali Neogi, an Associate Professor in English, is an acclaimed bilingual poet based in Kolkata
***
Literature
in Translation
Dr.
Seema Sinha
Translation is a
literary technique which aims at a wide readership and targets a larger
audience. It is not a recent phenomenon, as translation as a concept has existed
since the first millennium in English literary history. The original Anglo
Saxon pagan literature like ‘Beowulf ‘
was translated into Northumbrian and West Sussex dialects and Middle English; it had borrowed
its alphabet from the Romans in the first millennia. In the second millennia,
after the Norman Conquest [1066], the growing French influences led ‘Mort’d’
Arthur’ [1485], originally in French to
be reworked by Malory in Middle English that turned the poetic feeling from
religion to romance, culminating in the Renascence in the sixteenth century .
Pivotal moments in
the growth of English literature can be directly related to the translation of
the Bible from Latin and Hebrew, promoted by Wycliff [- 1384] and Tyndale [1522/1535], which not
only strengthened the English language and literature, but also made it
intellectually accessible to the common people, stimulating the Christian
ideals. King James I [1566-1625], authorized the English translation of the
Bible [1604/1611], which enormously enriched the English vocabulary and prose.
At the beginning
of the eighteenth century, ‘The Arabian Nights or Alf Layla’ was translated from French into English [1706-1721], followed
by other English translations in the nineteenth century. This new and exotic
world of fantasy and romance fired the English imagination and the Restoration
Age or the Age of Reason [1660 -1780] and gave way to the Gothic genre in the English novel, and the
Romantic movement in English poetry.
Down the centuries,
translated works in literature have created a new ethos. Coming to Indian
English writing, with the widespread introduction
of the English language to the Indian mind, and vice versa in the nineteenth
century, there was a mutual give and take when the English read the ancient
Sanskrit classics in translation and the Indians had their first introduction
to English literature and Western classical epics, creating Indian English Writing.
A famous example
is of Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s [1825-1873] translations of Bengali
plays like ‘Neel Darpan’ into English.
The Indian English
Novel is a direct result of this exposure to the form of the English novel, when
the Indian mind became familiar with the genre of the Novel, which was unknown to
the tradition of ancient Indian
classical literature, the great Sanskrit epics, treatises, lyrics, shlokas and poetic dramas.
In the modern and
post-modern world, the rules of literary purity have been relaxed; so there is
a direct incorporation of words from other languages in conversation. Earlier
it was Mulk Raj Anand who used Punjabi swear words in his work to give it a
masculine flavour. The linguistic oddities and eccentricities are more
acceptable now. Amitav Ghosh has used the peculiarities of speech in his ‘Ibis’
trilogy to capture the atmosphere and personalities of his characters.
Inter-textuality
is also a literary device which is one of the characteristics of modern and
post-modern literature.
A complete translation of any work of literature in any other language loses its impact, unless the cultural, historical and religious background is not alien. Let us take the example of ‘Paradise Lost ‘ by John Milton. The entire deeply Christian concept of the great epic has to be understood perfectly to feel the impact. Translated into any other language, it loses its power if the intensity of the religious idea of the conflict between God and Satan is unfamiliar. The essence, the subtle ideas, the nuances, which can be understood perfectly in a particular cultural context are lost most of the time in literature which is translated from its original language.
***
Rashmirathi,
Translation Challenge of Epic Proportion
Saurabh Agarwal
There
is a Sanskrit concept, rasa, the felt essence of a literary work. It
cannot be paraphrased. It can only be experienced in the language it was born
in. Rashmirathi by Ramdhari Singh Dinkar embodies this idea completely.
It may be the finest example of what is lost, permanently, irretrievably lost,
in translation.
In Vyasa's original Mahabharata, Karna is a complex figure, formidable, tragic but not the central protagonist. He is a rival, a foil. His greatness is acknowledged but not celebrated. Then came the modern retellings. Shivaji Sawant wrote Mrityunjaya, giving Karna an interior life, a voice, a grief. And Dinkar, in Rashmirathi, went further still, he gave Karna an epic. He elevated him to a hero, a figure of cosmic stature. Karna, in Dinkar's hands, is not merely a warrior. He is a principle of dignity in the face of injustice, of loyalty against all reason. This transformation, from supporting character to supreme hero, is itself an act of cultural imagination, one that translation can only partially convey.
Rashmirathi. The word is a compound. Rashmi means ray of light, specifically the rays of the sun. Rathi means charioteer. So the title means the charioteer of the sun's rays, a double identity pointing simultaneously to Karna's divine parentage as the son of Surya and to his earthly role as a warrior driving a chariot into battle. How do you translate that into English? The title alone tells you what lies ahead.
Consider,
for instance, the Virat Swaroop scene:
'उदयाचल मेरा दीप्त भाल,
भूमंडल वक्षस्थल विशाल,
भुज परिधि-बन्ध को घेरे हैं,
मैनाक-मेरु पग मेरे हैं।
In
the Virat Swaroop passage, even two words, Menak and Meru,
show how translation can flatten meaning. Both can be rendered simply as
“mountain,” yet that single word erases an entire world of associations. Menak is
not just a peak; in the Hindu imagination he is the brother of Parvati, the
goddess herself, kin to divinity, part of the sacred landscape of myth. Meru,
meanwhile, is not merely a mountain but the axis of the cosmos. When Dinkar
writes that these are “his feet,” he is evoking a being whose form contains
both divine kinship and the architecture of creation. To translate Menak and
Meru merely as “mountains” is to turn the cosmic into the geographic and
to lose the epic dimension that makes Rashmirathi more than poetry,
a vision.
Now,
compare this to Paradise Lost. Milton’s great epic is untranslatable in
its own right. The weight of “Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven”,
its defiance, its Latinate grandeur, collapses when paraphrased. Critics have
noted for centuries that Paradise Lost must be read in English to
be truly understood.
Rashmirathi is India’s version of that problem, only deeper, because it is not just a literary language that is at stake. It is a civilizational language. The poem draws from the Gita, from Vedic cosmology, from the lived tradition of yog and bhakti. The poem is not just spiritual in content; it is spiritual in form. The language itself is a ritual act.
Translation can give you the story. But it cannot give you the rasa, the emotional flavour, the aesthetic experience. It cannot give you the sound of Dinkar’s verse, which rises and falls like a hymn. It cannot give you the cultural memory that every image activates in its original reader. To read Rashmirathi in translation is to read the libretto of an opera without the music.
Saurabh Agarwal, a passionate literature enthusiast, is an entrepreneur based in Agra
