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| Dr Nazry Bahrawi, Singapore University of Technology & Design |
What aroused your
interest in translation, and what was the first piece you ever translated?
My journey to
literary translation began as an academic interest. As a doctoral student
reading comparative literature at the University of Warwick, I was supervised
by Susan Bassnett, a household name in translation theory. So, while my thesis
wasn’t directly about translation, I began to explore this field of study first
through conversations with her. Today, I continue to research into translation
to unveil its multifaceted role at shaping what scholars call ‘world
literature’. As an indication of just how complicated translation can get, I’ve
published a comparative analysis of the Bahasa Melayu and Bahasa Indonesia
versions of Syed Hussein Alatas’ seminal book The Myth of the Lazy Native and
found that the former sharpens the ethnic divide between Malays and Chinese in
line with the Malaysian ruling party’s (UMNO) ideology of ketuanan Melayu
(Malay supremacy). This affirms the proposal that translation is mired in
practices of patronage and power as the translation theorist André Lefevere had
pointed out in his book Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary
Fame. This was one of my earliest academic essays. It’d convinced me to dive
deeper into translation research.
After my studies
in 2013, I returned to Singapore. This was when my first foray into literary
translation as practice began. Then, literary translation was starting to gain
traction in my multilingual city-island, though there'd been attempts in the
past. I was invited to deliver a public lecture about translation, and I was
excited to share what I’ve learnt with others. After the lecture, I was
approached by the playwright Nadiputra, a Cultural Medallion winner in
Singapore, to translate a musical that he was writing from Bahasa to English. I
said yes, and the result was a bilingual publication titled Muzika Lorong Buang
Kok (Lorong Buang Kok: The Musical), a play about the last kampong (village) in
urban Singapore. I’ve found the process to be nothing short of cathartic.
Embodying first-hand some of the challenges I’ve read about made the practice
of translation even more complex than I've imagined, and this made it alluring
– an enigma that’s inviting me to explore its depths. Today, I’ve translated
short stories and poems, surtitles for a theatrical adaptation of Anthony
Burgess' A Clockwork Orange, subtitles for a 1960 black-and-white Malay movie
as well as judged a translation contest. Most recently, I partook in a
performance-lecture about my process as a literary translator.
