Avante nizhal chumaril patinjappol avalkku manassilayi aa muriyil vere aaro undennu. Udane aval tala uyarthi nokki. Aa kannukal vidarnnu. Raktam uranj poyi. Bheekaramaya aa mukham kandu aval nilavilikyan vaa pilarnnu. Pakshe athinu mumbe oru flashhinde thilakkam undavukayum aval marichu veezhukayum chaitu… (His shadow fell on the wall. She understood that somebody, other than herself, is there in the room. She immediately looked up and was left shocked. She felt her blood is congealing. She saw a cruel face. She wanted to cry aloud but before that there was a flash and she died on the spot..)
Confused! You have all the reasons to be. This piece is an excerpt taken from a novel titled, The Paw in the Bottle, written by the famous James Headley Chase and translated into Malayali. These excerpts are a part of the work done by KK Bhaskaran Payyanur, who has so far translated 51 books by the author in Malayali.
Payyanur, head of the language department at Gujarat Vidyapith (GV), has the copyright for translating Chase’s novels in Malayalam and is currently working on two novels. For the past 20 years, he has been translating all the novels one by one even after he left his job at the National School of Design. He, in fact, joined hands with the language department of GV after retirement.
“My first translation was ‘Just Another Sucker’ in 1980. I had sent it to a publishing house in Kerala, but they rejected my write up. However, after six months they called me back and agreed to publish it. I have been into translating books since then,” said Payyanur.
However, it was only in 1982 that Payyanur got the copyright for translating novels legally. “In 1982, I contacted David Hingham, the agent of novelist Chase. I got the rights and the writer paid me 60 dollars per novel; there were 129 novels,” he said.
“I started translating Chase’s novels just because his characters, storyline and locations of the stories are similar to what one sees in Kerala. People may have a different argument to this, but I felt it this way. The student community in Kerala is still my biggest fan,” he said.
What is more fascinating about Payyanur is that he is publishing weekly tabloid named ‘Kerala Samchar’ for the past 10 years. Although the paper’s circulation doesn’t amount to much yet, it is being read everywhere by the Malayalam community in Gujarat to those in Kerala and other states.
Comments
