Bulleh Shah is most relevant today since he represented the tolerant, secular face of the land in defiance to the power politics of his time. The Oxford University Press Pakistan has brought out the second edition of Bulleh Shah’s translation by Taufiq Rafat that was first published in 1982 by the Vanguard Publications.

Rafat had taken it upon himself on the insistence of a publisher friend to translate Bulleh Shah into English. Rafat, in the translator’s note, had given the reasons for translating the Punjabi classic, which, besides the lyrical genius and friends’ insistence, was Bulleh Shah’s “refreshingly forthright condemnation of priests and pedants”. Translating the most rebellious and most famous poet of Punjab could not have been a plain sailing, but Rafat was equal to the task, as is evident from the short span of only five weeks he took to render 71 kafis and dohrey into English. He says he could not have completed the task any other way.

He rejected the idea of translating Bulleh Shah in free verse after initial attempts because he himself was dissatisfied with the result, as Shah’s “lyricism was absent” while reverting to the formal verse. Rafat explains in his note that he had “to make his own ground rules” to translate the Punjabi classic because there existed no competent precedents before him.

“I suppose I have broken every accepted canon to translation, including Eliot’s warning that the translator should at least not add material which is his own, or words to that effect. My own feeling is that anything goes to achieve the desired ‘translucency’. Whether that translucency was, in fact, achieved, is not for me to say,” he writes.

Rafat cites the example of Fitzgerald in whose translation of Omar Khayyam, no source of fifth rubai could be found, saying that “if a translator could insert an entire apocryphal rubai, I was certainly justified in including a phrase or two of own making”. He says that he has tried to catch the gusto of Bulleh Shah, adding that “if sacrifices have to be made to retain this vigour, I have not hesitated to make them”.

Taufiq Rafat also mentions the challenges he had to face during the Herculean task including certain conventions in Punjabi poetry that have no parallel in English or European literature. Another such convention is frequent references to the poet’s mentor (Shah Inayat in Bulleh Shah’s case) and tackling the form of Si Harfi, ‘beginning a poem or stanza with a letter of the alphabet, following it up with a word beginning with that letter, for instance A for Allah’. The last convention Rafat dealt with well during his translation of Qadiryar’s Puran Bhagat later on.

Referring to other problems he faced during the translation, Rafat mentions the poetic alphabetical device that caused him problems in translating ‘ain’ and ‘ghain’ and how they were to be written in English as their sound and look also mattered in Punjabi, differentiating between them with just a small dot. And the nearest English equivalents he could find were ‘o’ and ‘q’ but still they could not convey the meanings of ‘ain’ and ‘ghain’.

‘Jaisi Soorat Ain Di, Waisi Soorat Ghain/Ik Nuqtay Da Farq Hay Bhulli Phiray Konain’ (o and q are much alike, except for a squiggle/to think one tiny stroke has made all the difference).

Another issue was with translating the cultural difference and context behind all the symbols in Punjabi tradition like seasons, spinning-wheel (charkha), concepts of love and nature in Punjabi Sufi poetry, Heer and Ranjha.

‘Ranjha Ranjha Kardi Hun Mein Aapay Ranjha Hoee/Sado Meinu Dheedo Ranjha Heer Nah Aakho Koi’ (Ranjha Ranjha I cried till only Ranjha is there?/I’m transformed, now Heer has disappeared).

Rafat has given titles to kafis in his translations like the abovementioned kafi has been called ‘The Transformation’ and the one referred to before it ‘The Difference’. He also explains that he would like to use the word ‘rendering’ instead of translation for his work as there are always “some hide-bound readers who cavil at the least deviation. I have, therefore, called the poems ‘renderings’ to fox them”.

The translation carries a 38-page extensive introduction by Khaled Ahmed who has not only given the necessary biographical details of Bulleh Shah but also of his mentor Shah Enayat, the political situation of Kasur and Punjab of Bulleh Shah’s time, Sufism, origin of Punjabi language, tracing it back to three millennia old languages of the land, preservation and publication of Bulleh Shah’s works, his poetic style as well as critics.

Published in Dawn, January 19th, 2015

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