LYSEE FRANCAISE PROFESSOR OF TAMIL MADANAKALYANI SHANMUGANANDAN

CHEVALIER MADANAKALYANI   

 Nandhivarman

The French Government  had conferred the prestigious title Chevalier dans L’Ordre des Palmes Acade’miques on Madanakalyani Shanmuganandan who recently retired after 41 years of service as Professor of Tamil in the French College called Lysee Francaise. She has a lengthy list of publications to her credit on a variety of subjects, but she is hailed particularly for her translations.

Translating without losing the essence of what said in the original language is a risky adventure. Our first President of India, Dr Rajendira Prasad, was to lay the foundation stone for the office of the Comptroller and Auditor General. For that function the confusion created by translation is written in the book The Constitution and Language Politics of India by Wing Commander BVR Rao. The book narrates the incident thus;

“The authorities got a Hindi translation from All India Radio Hindi expert. Since President Prasad was to lay the foundation stone, they wanted to be sure of the correctness of the translation. They asked the Government of India Hindi expert to give a translation and they found it to be different from what was given by the AIR Hindi expert. The officials concerned were worried since they did not want the President, himself a Hindi expert, to criticize them for a wrong translation and therefore decided to request the President himself to give the translation. When the officials received it, it was different from what was given by the other two Hindi experts.”

If translation could cause so much confusion, one must understand the difficulties encountered by translating poetry from Tamil to French and classics from French to Tamil. In that difficult task Madanakalyani had scored, winning the prestigious Chevalier award, which speaks about her efficiency.

For instance the French college had brought out a beautiful book translated from French to Tamil by Madanakalyani. Puthucheri: Oruvanigathala oorin varalaaru (History of Pondicherry a Mercantile city]

It is a remarkable book and its value is not being understood in the Library circles of Pondicherry. “Only 27 copies of this monumental treatise have been bought.” Madana kalyani says with anguish. If a noteworthy publication on Pondicherry has no takers, it means, while the whole world is moving to watch History channels, among Pondicherrians the interest in history is on the wane. She had translated the Tamil folk songs of Pondicherry into French, a few of which had been chosen and included among the meritorious poems in French in the year 1998.

The book Britannicus by French dramatist Racine was translated into Tamil in 1974, titled as Veezhchi. At the same time, Madana kalyani is to translate Tamil works into French, out of abundant love for her mother tongue. The folk stories in circulation in and around Pondicherry were translated into French and printed in France titled Contes de Pondiche’ry. That book carried the Tamil version of the folk songs too. Her remarkable popularity, we can mention with certainly is due to her translation of La Peste written by the Nobel Laureate Albert Camus.

She had translated Bharathiar’s poems in 1982 under the patronage of the Government of Pondicherry. In 1988 she contributed to the translation of Siruthondar Puranam. Continuing her efforts, by 1999 she had also been involved in translating Sakkier Puranam. The stories of Vikramadithiya, Indian folk stories and Bharathidasan’ poems were also rendered into French.

She had brought into Tamil the Stories of Statues in Pondicherry, the poems of Poet Baudelaire, Victor Hugo, La Fontaine, Apollinaire and Rimbaud. She also wrote a series in a local Tamil daily for 80 days about simplified ways to learn French.

Prema Nandakumar, in her commentary on the Tamil translation of Nobel Laurette Albert Camus, says, “Let not Tamil lament over their failure to get the Nobel Prize. Even if few books are written how it should be deeply written without deviating from pragmatism, and how effectively it could illuminate the inner streams of human thought must be learnt by reading the work of Albert Camus. Madanakalyani with responsibility had done a great service.”

Such tribute to her translation places Madanakalyani one among the top literary scholars of Pondicherry. She is also the joint Secretary of Puthuvai Tamil Sangam, having assisted its activities for too long a period. The title Chevalier conferred on Shivaji Ganesan made it as popular as Padma Bhushan.”

In Pondicherry there lives humble woman Chavalier who had not caught the due attention of feminist writers and media. It is high time that the women litterateurs of Tamil Nadu give due recognition for Madanakalyani,” says Tamil research scholar in charge of Bharathiar Museum Dr N Sengamala Thayer. Let us hail the free flow of French. Tamil literary exchanges made possible by Madanakalyani.              

 Courtesy: New Indian Express: 6^th November 2004