India, Oct. 30 -- Please talk about your experience of translating Salma's book, The Dark Hours of the Night?

Mine is a second translation. It was first translated by Lakshmi Holmstrom nearly 15 years ago. When Salma and her Tamil publisher, Kannan Sundaram, asked me whether I'd like to translate it, I said, 'But hasn't this one already been translated?' To which they replied that they wanted a new one. Salma said that the book is now forgotten and needed a new translation for this generation.

The question I had, as a translator, was how would I know if my translation ended up being similar to Lakshmi's. She is one of my favourite translators. Some of my methodology comes from what Lakshmi used to say about her own translation process. ...