‘You Can’t Have a One Size Fits All Strategy in Translation’: An Interview with Fakrul Alam

What is it about?

Fakrul Alam, an academic, editor, essayist, and critic, is one of the leading translators of Bengali literature. With more than four decades of teaching experience at Dhaka University, Bangladesh, where he is currently Director of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Research Institute for Peace and Liberty, he has contributed widely to research and translation. His areas of research include, among others, colonial and postcolonial literatures, South Asian literature, and translation studies. Well known as a translator of Jibanananda Das (1899–1954), a great poet of Bengali literature, and Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941), a Nobel Prize winning poet and writer, Alam has also translated works of various genres, including nonfiction and song-lyrics. His translations of the works of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the Father of the Nation, famously called ‘Bangabandhu,’ Friend of Bengal, are remarkable and internationally acclaimed. In this interview, Alam has given an account of his rich body of translated works as well as his motivations to venture into translation. Moreover, he has addressed various issues of translation and translation studies along with his long journey as a translator from a postcolonial nation like Bangladesh. The interview, above all, focuses on Alam’s career as a translator, his reflections on literary translation, the challenges and prospects of Bengali literature in translation into English, his own individual strategies and techniques of translation, and his current and future translation projects. The interview was conducted online during March and April 2021.

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Why is it important?

It is a comprehensive interview about literary translation of Bengali literature. It may play an important role to draw attention of global readers to Bengali literature in translation.

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