Talking translation with Samik Bandopadhyay

Samik Bandopadhyay is a renowned critic and cultural commentator who has worked closely on film and theatre in several languages and forms, particularly Bengali and Hindi. He has translated plays and fiction by Badal Sircar and Mahasweta Devi; contributed introductions to plays by Vijay Tendulkar, G P Deshpande, and reconstructed for publication, film scripts for films made by Shyam Benegal and Mrinal Sen. More recently, he was Founder-Editor of Thema, a small publisher based in Kolkata (estab 1988).

In Part One of this two-part series of interviews, Kanika Katyal of the Indian Writers Forum spoke to the writer on his translation practices, how the project of translation could be strengthened and more.

Samik Bandopadhyay is a scholar, editor-publisher, translator, lexicographer, and bibliophile, Samik Bandyopadhyay was the Rabindranath Tagore National Fellow at the School for Arts and Aesthetics, JNU, New Delhi (2015-2017) and Member, Publication Committee, Sangeet Natak Akademi, New Delhi (2016–). He has also worked as was also the Regional Editor, Oxford University Press, Calcutta, 1973-82, and was Founder-Editor, Seagull Books, 1982-88.