Carrying Worlds Across Languages

Daisy Rockwell is an author, translator, and painter based in the United States, who translates from Hindi and Urdu into English, and has brought some of the most significant voices of South Asian literature to readers across the world. Her translation of Geetanjali Shree’s Tomb of Sand won the International Booker Prize in 2022, the first Hindi-language novel to receive that distinction.

In this episode, I am in conversation with Daisy to talk about her journey into Hindi and Urdu, the craft of literary translation, her first encounter with India, what artificial intelligence means for the future of the craft of translation, and much more. Dive into the episode to find out.

References:

1. Daisy Rockwell: Website, Instagram
2. Alice Sees Ghosts: A Novel by Daisy Rockwell
3. Works translated by Daisy Rockwell: Tomb of Sand by Geetanjali Shree, Falling Walls by Upendranath Ashk, The Women’s Courtyard by Mastur Khadija, Tamas by Bhisham Sahni
4. Yashpal: This Is Not That Dawn: Jhootha Sach, Dada Comrade
5. Speaking of Siva by A.K. Ramanujan
6. Lessons learned: Susanne and Lloyd Rudolph, in memoriam