Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Rabindranath's writings translated into other languages


A remarkable incident occurred on 16 September 1901, (last day of the month Bhadra, 31st Bhadra). Bipin Chandra Paul (1858-1912), a leader of  the Brahmmo Samaj, obtained a  Manchestor scholarship from  the British and Foreign Unitarian Association started for London on 21 September 1898 to study Comparerative Religion in New Manchestor College of Oxford. But after one year he returned home having gone to London and America on a propaganda tour to preach the theory of an unitarian  god and temperence. He had an wide range of experience in journalism and he sarted publishing a weekly English magazine in the title New India.   Under the banner of  'A Weekly Record and Review of Modern Thought & amp; Life' the first issue of the magazine was published on 12 August 1901.The magazine intended mainly to publish articles on Political and Social thoughts but cultural and literary articles were  also welcome. On 16 September 1901, an English translation of 'Subha' ( firts published in Magh 1299 in Sadhana), the short story written by Rabindranath was published. Nivedita, with the help of Jagadish Chandra, had already translated into English the three short stories:  Kabuliwallah, Chuti, and Danpratidan in November 1900. But those translations were not published due to the non-cooperation of the editor of a magazine in England. The credit of the first appearence thus went to 'Subha' translated into English by Jatindra Mohan Bagchi. 
This news was brought to readers notice by an essay, titled 'First English Translation of Rabindranath's short story' written by Samir Roychoudhury and published in New India on 4 November. He mentioned in his article the translation of the story Bicharak titled 'The Judge' as the first English translation, which was not correct.