Around the turn of the twenty-first century, Sahitya Akademi published Splendour in the Grass, a collection of twenty-odd Assamese short stories translated into English by various Assamese translators and edited by Dr Hiren Gohain, in 2010. The collection never acknowledged the translators. Sure, their names were mentioned at the end of each story but there was no index detailing their biographies. This oversight was ‘corrected’ in Aleph Book Company’s 2021 The Greatest Assamese Stories Ever Told edited by Mitra Phukan. Phukan’s “Introduction” to the anthology not only credits the translators but also provides insights into the process of translation, reiterating that translation as a practice never exists outside the subjectivity of the translator. The journey from being a literature of conformity to one of liberation has been long and tedious.

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It is indeed noticeable that the case of Assamese literature in translation is also the case for many Indian languages sidelined by the intimidating dominance of a few, numerically overpowering, languages. While recent debates in the region have sparked existential questions of what it means to be an Assamese, it is perhaps a covert agreement that the language is an essential identifier. The upsurge in the politics of language has also seen a renewed interest in the Northeastern part of the country. This has come with globalisation and a semblance that the region, othered by its very rubric, has stories that can promise inclusivity. Publishers have, therefore, begun endorsing translations from the languages- an initiative that is yet to accommodate the region’s diverse and difficult dialects. Despite such efforts, the presence of a mere hundred and twenty-seven vague pieces of translations in what is considered being the largest translation database of the country raises the uncomfortable realisation, that Assamese literature is still looked down on as parochial, its nuances difficult to sustain. The linguistic and cultural problems that make the task of Assamese translation so daunting are furthered by the asymmetrical power relationship it shares with English.

 

One of the linguistic constraints that occurs while translating Assamese into English is the translation of the Assamese sentence structure. The language uses short sentences, which, translated that way, appear as fragments in English. Trying to modify these into the standard format of English runs the risk of losing the essence. Translation then becomes a question of politics, of whether to make the reader of the English text realize that they are reading a work in translation. Moreover, the structure of an Assamese sentence follows the positioning of the subject before the object, followed by the verb. When a sentence like ‘he bhat khale’ is translated literally into English, it becomes ‘he rice ate.’ As English adheres to a subject, verb and object sequence, translating from Assamese would entail reframing the structure, making the sentence grammatically correct in English as ‘he ate rice.’ 

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There is again the question of translating ‘verbs’ from Assamese to English, especially non-finite verbs. A non-finite verb never takes the position of the main verb and has no markers of identification, either of tense, person or number. These verbs are used to add detail or describe actions. Assamese non-finite verbs are sometimes repeated within a sentence for emphasis. For example, a sentence that reads like ‘eketa kotha xuni xuni mur amoni lagi goise’ becomes ‘I am tired of listening to the same story,’ in English translation, the non-finite verb ‘xuni’ (to listen) that occurs twice in Assamese, has to be translated with a consciousness that should preserve the nuance while also making it acceptable in the target language and it would depend on the translator to retain the emotive sense of urgency in their translation. 

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The cons of structure are entwined with the distinct phraseology and phonology that contribute towards difficulties in translation. Similar-sounding words that have no meaning but are appended to certain Assamese words for emphasis, called ‘anurup xobdo’ have no existence in the English lexicon. Thus, if a writer writes ‘sah-tah’ where ‘sah’ means ‘tea,’ there is no translation for ‘tah’ as it has no meaning on its own. While translating Arupa Patangia Kalita’s short stories in the collection, The Owl, the River and the Valley (2025), Mitra Phukan translates several words into English as they are pronounced in Assamese. Thus, she calls the warring brothers, the ‘Pancha Pandav’, as ‘Ponso Pandob’ and a ‘rickshaw’ becomes a ‘riksha.’ Phukan also translates the names of several characters phonetically. Thus, the protagonist of the short story “Rajmao: The Queen Mother” is ‘Komola’ and not ‘Kamala’, of the “The Yellow Flip-flops” is ‘Reboti’ and not ‘Rebati.’

 

The cultural limitations of translation are seen when collocations, phatic expressions, terms of politeness and endearment, ‘cultural filler’, slang, kinship terms, jokes, and proverbs are translated. Like most regional languages, kinship in Assamese is specific. Not everyone is an uncle or an aunt. An uncle can be a ‘mama’ or a ‘khura’ or a ‘peha.’ Likewise, an aunt can be a ‘mami,’ a ‘khuri’ or a ‘pehi.’ Furthermore, the diminutives of ‘you’ which appear as the ‘apuni-tumi-toi’ triad define both strict hierarchical categorisation and intimacy in relationships. In the story, “Daughter of the Dark Memsahib,” (included in The Owl, the River and the Valley) Mitra Phukan explicitly delineates how, distraught by the cruelty of her lover, Helen, the protagonist, addresses her lover ‘apuni.’ She writes, “‘It’s very late, please go,’ Helen said, using the formal ‘apuni’ to address him, rather than the ‘tumi’, which she used all this time.” The explanation does not break the flow of the narrative; however, what it does is introduce the presence of hierarchy in relationships.