Gowri Kirubanandan’s son Vivekananda was sitting in the audience when she was given the Sahitya Akademi award for translation in August at Imphal.
Those who were seated beside him asked in Hindi, “ aapki maa kahaan padathi hai (Where does your mother teach)?”
“When he said that I was a housewife, they could not believe him because eight among the nine translators who got the award were college teachers,” recalls Ms. Kirubanandan even as she cherishes the moment.
She won the award for her translation of Telugu novel Vimuktha , by Volka into Tamil titled Meetchi.
From a housewife to an ace translator who spends almost eight hours a day for translating Telugu literary works into Tamil and vice-versa, Ms. Kirubanandan, who had her schooling and college education in Andhra Pradesh, ventured into the field of her passion after learning Tamil for 20 years.
“My father worked in Andhra Pradesh and I came to Chennai only in 1976 after my marriage. Though I could speak Tamil my knowledge of it was not adequate. The five years I spent in Melatur in Thanjavur district, where my husband worked in a bank and the Tamil books I read from the library, prepared me for translation,” she said.
Ms. Kirubanandan is the most sought after literary persona when it comes to translating Telugu works into Tamil and Tamil works into Telugu. Sahitya Akademi has assigned to her work of translating Tamil writer Prabanchan’s award-winning classic Vaanam Vasappadum and Ku. Alagirisamy’s Anbalippu.
It was while reading Telugu writer Yandamuri Veerandranath in Tamil, she decided to try her hand at translation.
“I was not fully satisfied with the existing translations and the translator was not able to bring out the essence and what was expressed in between the lines,” she said.
Subsequently she approached Veerandranath and expressed her desire to tranlsate his works and he immediately agreed.
“I translated a few short stories. It was followed by translation of his novel Antharmukam, published by Alliance Publishers. The journey continues and she had so far translated 70 Telugu novels and 50 short stories into Tamil and 40 Tamil short stories of writers, including Jayakanthan, Ashokamitran, Thoppil Muhamaadu Meeran, Nanjil Naadan and Neela Padamanabhan and all of them are Sahitya Akademi award winners,” she said.
But she takes enormous pride in translating into Tamil, Nirjana Varathi , the autobiography of Kondapalli Kodeswaramma, wife of Naxalite leader Kondapalli Seetharamaiah.
“She is 94 and her life is inseparable from the communist and women’s liberation movement of Andhra Pradesh,” said Ms. Kirubanandan.
