Senarathne Weerasinghe has translated more than 100 works of fiction by reputed writers into Sinhala, the main language in Sri Lanka, in a prolific career spanning more than three decades.
He believes that problems existing between nations and communities partly result from the failure to understand each other. And what better way to explore differences and similarities of other people than books exposing cultural and social values intrinsic to a particular set of people!
Weerasinghe believes that literature can heal wounds and rifts. He began his career by introducing Indian literature in Sri Lanka by translating fiction written by reputed writers. That time the relations between Sri Lanka and its giant neighbour hit the doldrums as India figured as an invisible hand in the early days of the 30-year ethnic hostilities in the island.
I reviewed a short story collection of Indian writers translated by him in the early part of his career in the early 80s for Ceylon Daily News. The collection contained stories by acclaimed writers and one particular tale appealed to me was a story by T. T. Padmanabha, considered as the greatest Malayalam language short fiction writer. If I am not mistaken, the story had won the best prize in a competition conducted by The International Herald Tribune.
I would say there was ’not much lost in translation’ in Weerasinghe’s works. He was able to capture the magic and literary nuances of great Indian fiction due to his excellent command of both English and Sinhala, and his discipline and experience as a journalist, critic and writer.
Weerasinghe, an alumni of University of Kelaniya with Masters in Mass Communications, translated the works of Kamala Das, Mothi Nandi, Rabindranath Tagore, Kushan Chandra, Saratchandra Chatterji, films scripts of Adoor Gopalakrishnan’s Elippaththayam, Mira Nair’s Salam Bombay and Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj Ke Khilari.
Weerasinghe published a collection of his essays he forwarded to publishers but never appeared in print due to their controversial nature. The book titled Meda Midula (Centre Court) remains one of his most popular original works
He began at a time when translations were not very popular in Sri Lanka. There were occasional translations of western classics of writers like Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas and Miguel de Cervantes in the 60s before pioneers like Weerasinghe breathed new life into the genre, and today, thanks to him, translations of international fiction has become one of the most popular genres in Sri Lanka.
Perhaps the translations were not popular in the 70s and 80s because that era is seen as the golden age of Sinhala arts as a whole, with such remarkable authors like Martin Wickremasinghe, Gunadasa Amarasekera, W.A. Silva and G.B. Senanayake, playwrights like Henry Jayasena and Sugathapala de Silva and film makers like Lester James Peiris and Dharmasena Pathiraja and musicians like Premasiri Khamadasa and Amaradeva who were caught in the winds of change the world was drawing into, and produced some of the most iconic works in indigenous art forms.
The massive popularity of translations at present can be attributed to the adulterated, monotonous themes and loss of direction of the mainstream Sinhala literature.
Weerasinghe said in the 70s and 80s scriptwriting was not well developed in Sri Lanka and his main objective to translate film scripts was to give the local writers a deep insight into this art form. Many budding Sinhala script writers have thanked him for inspiring them, he said.
Later, he began to concentrate on translating the works of other foreign writers that include acclaimed works of Pearl S. Buck, Graham Greene, Yukio Mishima, Agatha Christie, Amos Tutuola, Eiji Yoshikawa, V.S. Naipaul, and plays of Arthur Miller.
Weerasinghe says he chooses the original books carefully to expose the Sri Lankan readers to the developments in the modern international fiction. “My first translation was a book by Indian writer Kamala Das who was talking about sexual harassment of women, a subject not discussed openly those days. Some of the best novels I have translated into Sinhala is the trilogy written by Pearl S. Buck who won a Nobel award for literature. Her books created an interest in the western world to study fiction in Asia. It is a book that Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru read to his wife while she was dying on a hospital bed,” he said.
Other books he has translated recently into Sinhala include Greek writer Vassilis Vassilikos’ controversial Z which was made into Academy award winning film in 1970 by iconic Greek film maker Costa-Gavras, Robert Bloch’s 1959 novel Psycho which the legendary Alfred Hitchcock adapted for the big screen in 1960 and Kung Fu, the popular TV drama.
His other works include children’s books, non-fiction, critical essays and his own short story collections.
His literary career began as he was working as a writer at Lake House, a premier newspaper publishing house in Sri Lanka, after passing out from the university. Recently, he published a collection of his essays he forwarded to publishers but never appeared in print. Many of these essays were not published due to their controversial nature, according to the writer’s preface to the book. Titled Meda Midula (Centre Court), this book of essays remains one of his most popular original works. – Somasiri Munasinghe
