Commercial Feasibility

Now we come to the crucial question of whether translations sell in the literary marketplace. We have to distinguish between two markets here – the ILET or Indian Literature in English Translation and the translations between two Indian languages. Publishing houses that sell English translations almost unanimously say that translations are not a commercially viable proposition. In fact, Macmillan's Mini Krishnan says that the whole translation project was funded by an outside body called A. R. Educational Trust. Penguin India 's major success story was Satyajit Ray's Feluda stories, but even that sold only 2000 copies which, according to Zamir Ansari, is a meager figure (qtd in Kothari 107). Translations become commercial successes only if they get to be prescribed as text books in colleges and universities either in India or abroad. Oxford University Press published Gopinath Mohanty's Paraja which became a text book in an American university. So did their translation of U. R. Anantamurthy's Samskara. Even then, its editor Rukun Advani says that “in commercial terms it is a very small number [the sales figure of 2000 copies] and it does not make a very fruitful business—which is why not many people want to invest in this kind of activity” ( qtd in Kothari109). Translations of classics sell among students and academics, according to the editor of Rupa-Harper Collins.

The prospect of translations between Indian languages is even bleaker. As a representative case let us take the case of Bengali. Supriya Sarkar points out that the Bengali translations of sleazy English books have brisk sales, but the same cannot be said of classics. The Bengali translations of classics are often of low quality and distort the original to such an extent that they are almost unrecognizable. Bengali translations from other Indian languages are practically nonexistent ("Making of Indian Literature", 230). Badal Basu concurs on this point; he also says that there are very few readers for the Bengali translations of books from other languages, Indian or non-Indian. He cites the “depressing” sales figures for the Bengali translation of Fakir Mohan Senapati's Sha Mon Aat Guntha to illustrate his point. DC Books which regularly publishes Malayalam translations, also have relatively few translations from other Indian languages. Penguin India which has ventured into regional language publication, has launched a few titles in Hindi, Marathi and Malayalam translations but has not turned to it in a big way.