Translator's Note

A few years back, in some context, I was looking for translations into Tamil (my mother tongue) of a few selected Rabindra Sangeet songs. I assumed that I would be able to find them somewhere on the Internet, but surprisingly, it turned out that I could not find any, using any of the search engines I was aware of at the time. 

This gave me the idea initially to try my hand to do my own translations of these Tagore songs into Tamil. Although I claim no special qualifications in Tamil, Bengali, Rabindra Sangeet, or doing translations in general, I figured that having some translation, based on my knowledge level of Tamil and Bengali, is better than having none, to mimic the Bengali proverb “nei maamar cheye kaanaa maamaa bhaalo” meaning “it is better to have an uncle who is blind in one eye than having no uncle.”

When I shared these translations with some of my Tamil friends and relatives, they liked them, which encouraged me to start translating more poems in my spare time. Over the years, I have translated about 800 poems so far from Gitabitan, the volume of collected poems of Tagore.  I plan to download these and other future translations on  this site, as my humble contribution to Tamil literature, following the Tamil poet Subramanya Bharati’s exhortation “shenRiDuveer eTTu dikkum-kalaich chelvangaL yaavung koNarndingu shErppeer” meaning “go forth in all directions and bring in all the art treasures (into Tamil).” 

A few words about these Tamil translations: I have tried to provide a translation that, line by line, is as close to the original in terms of meaning as I could arrange, without introducing any new ideas or interpertations of my own. This line-by-line translation may sometimes introduce some awkwardness to the translation. Also, it is important to remember that Tagore’s poems were meant to be sung and he himself composed most of the music. In many of his poems, the shift of thoughts from one stanza to the next is often achieved by a change of tune in the song or by other devices. Clearly, this can not be indicated in the translation. Thus, the lines of a poem in translation may feel a bit disjointed, in such situations.

A few words about the English transliteration of Bengali: I have tried to provide English transliteration of Bengali poems that is close to the way the words of the poems are ordinarily pronounced in the songs. For this purpose, I have used certain conventions that should be easy to follow. The following list gives the rough outlines of the scheme:

অ a/o, আ aa, ই i, ঈ ee, উ u, ঊ oo, এ e, ঐ oi,  ও o,  ঔ ou,

ক ka/ko,  খ kha/kho,  গ ga/go,  ঘ gha/gho, ঙ nga/ngo,

চ cha/cho, ছ chha/chho, জ ja/jo, ঝ jha/jho,  ঞ ncha/ncho,

ট Ta/To, ঠ THa/To, ড Da/Do, ড় DHa/Dho, ণ Na/No,

ত ta/to, থ tha/tho, দ da/do, ধ dha/dho, ন na/no,

প pa/po, ফ fa/fo, ব ba/bo, ভ bha/bho, ম ma/mo,

য ja/jo, য় ya/yo, র ra/ro, ল la/lo, শ sha/sho,

ষ SHa/SHo, স sa/so/sha/sho, হ ha/ho,

জ্ঞ g(n)a/g(n)o, ত্র tra/tro, ক্ষ k(s)ha/k(s)ho, শ্র shra/shro, ঋ hma/hmo,

কঁ ka(n)/ko(n), কঃ kah/koh

Similarly, the English transliteration of Tamil uses the way the words are ordinarily pronounced in Tamil, using the conventions given in the following list:

அ a, ஆ aa, இ i, ஈ ee, உ u, ஊ oo, எ e, ஏ E, ஐ I/ai, ஒ o, ஓ O, ஒள ou,

க ka/ga, ச cha/sha, ட Ta/Da, த ta/da, ப pa/ba, ற Ra,

ங nga, ஞ gna, ண Na, ந na, ம ma, ன na,

ய ya, ர ra, ல la, வ va, ழ zha, ள La,

ஜ ja, ஷ sha, ஸ sa, ஹ ha, க்ஷ ksha, ஸ்ரீ shri.

 I had initially not intended to provide any English translations of the poems, mainly because many of Tagore poems have been translated into English.  However, recently I have decided to include English translations for at least some of the poems, in addition to the Tamil translations. These translations mirror my Tamil translations in style and content, i.e., they are line-by-line translations, which try to be as close to the original in meaning as I could arrange.

There are two main reasons for my decision to include English translations. Firstly, clearly there are lot more people who can benefit from English translations. Therefore, at least for those poems which have not already been translated into English, these translations will fill a gap. Secondly, it is my hope and request, that the set of users who know both Bengali and Tamil, and the much larger set of users who know both Bengali and English, would help me with their comments to correct any existing errors in my interpretations. Since most of these comments would apply to both the Tamil and English translations, I figured that by including an English translation, the chances of catching my errors in both translations will increase.

For people who are curious or interested in the songs associated with the poems, I have included a list of at least two external sites which contain renderings of the song (Rabindra sangeet) of the poem for almost all poems. These sites are active at this time, and by providing more than one site, I hope that at least one of the listed sites will be active when the user tries to access them. 

Each post in this site that deals with a poem from Gitabitan contains six or seven items in the following order:

1. A listing of external sites where a rendering of the song can be accessed; one or more of these sites may not be active.

2. The original poem in Bengali.

3. An English transliteration of the Bengali poem.

4. A translation of the Bengali poem into Tamil.

5. An English transliteration of the Tamil translation.

6. An English translation of the Bengali poem; this item may or may not exist.

7. A pdf file for download containing the above items, for those interested.  

Acknowledgements:

I would like like to thank the following persons: Ms. Vijaya Raman-Chandra who kindly reviewed quite a few of my translations and made useful, detailed suggestions; Dr. Tejaswini Narayanan who helped in setting up the intial design of this website; Dr. Amitabha Bagchi who offered to find contacts at Shantiniketan for reviewing my Tamil translations; Dr. Sajal Lahiri and Sarit Roy for helping me find renditions of specific Rabindra Sangeet; Dr. R.Shantaram, Chandrika Shantaram, Rajeshwari Shivakumar, Nalini Radhakrishnan, Amarnath Natarajan, Megala Narayanan, Ramana Venkatakrishnan, Srinivas Venkatakrishnan,

Dr. R. Subramanian, Dr. T.S. Arthanari, Dr.T.K.Raghunathan, Karur Madhavan, S.V.Subramanian, T.R.Chandrashekaran Sharma, Karur Badrinarayanan, S.Paarameshwaran, and V.Nagarajan, for reading through several of my Tamil translations and encouraging me to continue. Last, but not least, I want to thank my wife Chitra for allowing me the time to work on this, and for quietly encouraging my efforts.

Finally, it is my hope that better translations from more competent human or AI translators

(e.g., improved chatGPT like software) will be available and that these translations will spur the readers' interests in learning Bengali well enough to read and enjoy the original poems and other works of Tagore in Bengali, without the need of intermediaries.

Translator: N.D.Prabhakar

ndprabhakar@gmail.com