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Translating Gujarati Fiction and Poetry: AStudy with Reference to Sundaram’s WorksAbstractHemang DesaiThe present paper discusses the issues and challenges facedwhile translating the short stories and poems of ‘Sundaram’(the pen name of T.P.Luhar) from Gujarati into English. Theseissues have wider relevance in the context of the issues inIndian Literature in English Translation. The issues rangefrom the translation of the specific aspect of source culture likekinship and community, address terms, articles of dress andkitchenware, idioms and proverbs, omens and terms fromnative medicinal and musical systems to syntax, lexis and ahost of stylistic features. Concomitantly the paper also talksabout the generic translation strategies that could be of use tothe translator who sets out to translate a regional languagetext into English. The paper also deals with issues like thechoice of idiom, intended readership and the role of translationin postcolonial India, which are frequently debated, in thecontext of Indian literature in English translation.As a complex act that seeks to translocate lingual andcultural properties of an exclusive and unique literary space to apartially or fully disparate space, translation is identified as one ofthe most unglamorous and enigmatic human endeavours. Howeverat the same time, in a world of inestimable plurality, it makes usaware of the unrealistic prospect of accomplishing unqualifieduniformity and of the advantages of a systematic attempt tounderstand ‘the other’. In a country like India with its long-standingmultilingual literary tradition, it is a matter of regret that mostlanguages are not perfectly comprehensible even to the speakersTranslation Today Vol. 3 Nos. 1 & 2, 2006 © CIIL 2006