The Translation Shelf

(This was carried in Forbes Life's winter 2011 issue--a look at some of the most interesting books of the year in translation.)



“We live more of our lives in translation than you might imagine,” said the writer from Chile. His life was an extreme illustration of this. Born in Chile, Ruben had moved to Denmark as a political refugee, and begun to write in Danish as an adult. His books were available in many European languages, though not in English. He hoped some day to be translated into Spanish, so that he would have readers in his home country.

Perhaps the group of writers I met that day were unusual in the linguistic extremes that they represented, but in all probability, you would find the same diversity among a covey of businessmen. One spoke Gujarati but wrote in Tamil; several of the Danes spoke other European languages fluently but used English “in conversation”; one of the Indians spoke and wrote only in English, and I spoke English as a first, Bengali as a second language. As we learned each other’s stories, we also confirmed an old truth: restlessness gives us more tongues. If you had moved two or more countries, you would have two or more languages at hand, and in the words of a Dutch-Danish speaker, you would commute between them.

The UK, like the US, isn’t very comfortable with translations: literature in translation makes up barely 3 % of the US market and about 5 % of the UK market. There are no accurate figures available for India, but I suspect we’re closer to Europe in our reading tastes; 30 % of the books Europeans read are works in translation. In a country where so many are bilingual, we remain perhaps slightly more open to reading in other tongues than the US does.

Purists should start with UR Ananthamurthy’s Bharathipura (OUP), translated by Susheela Punita. Ananthamurthy’s Samskara is one of the great Kannada classics, where a small, conservative community of Brahmins is plunged into chaos when an iconoclast dies, and no one can agree on what to do with his corpse. On the subject of translation, Ananthamurthy had pointed out in a key essay that this is an everyday Indian activity: “Many of us use at least three languages, one at home, another on the streets, still another at our office. When you narrate to your old mother what happened in your office, you are translating.” Bharatipura is set in the years just after Independence, and might be called an early NRI novel, as it follows the fortunes of the foreign-returned Jagannatha as he attempts to dismantle caste taboos in his village.

NS Madhavan’s Litanies of Dutch Battery (Penguin), translated by Rajesh Rajamohan, won this year’s Crossword award for Fiction in Translation. This is, in some ways, a perfect companion if you’re reading Bharatipura—Litanies is also set in the years just after Independence, and its colourful narrative explores the rise of Communism in Kerala, the lives of the islanders who live off Kochi and the choices before its main protagonist, Edwina Theresa Irene Maria Anne Margarita Jessica.

The third of this loose “Independence” trilogy is a lovely translation of the Hindi writer Yashpal’s Jhoota Sach, one of the most influential modern Indian novels. The thousand-odd pages of This Is Not That Dawn (Penguin, translated by Anand) are an epic elegy for pre-1947 Lahore, probably one of the most startling and moving works of fiction to come out of Partition. This is more than just a chronicle of refugee life; Yashpal captures a world now dead in all its vibrant, complex richness. Readers with little access to Hindi have waited for over four decades for this translation—it was first published in 1958 and in 1960. The title, drawn with some awkwardness from Faiz’s famous poem about Partition, is misleading; the rest of the translation is almost as rich and detailed as the original.

The cult Bengali writer Subimal Misra began penning his uncompromising, bitter stories a decade after Yashpal’s epic, and if the writers of a previous generation had chronicled the betrayal that was Partition, Misra’s function, as he saw it, was to set down the failure of everything else that made up “modern” India. The fifteen stories that are included in The Golden Gandhi Statue From America and Other Stories (HarperCollins, translated by V Ramaswamy) touch upon murder, dismemberment, cholera in Kolkata and unspeakable poverty, all seen through a glass darkly.

But perhaps the best translations of this year, and indeed this decade, come from poetry. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra’s Songs of Kabir (NYRB books) and Ranjit Hoskote’s I, Lalla (Penguin) breathe new life into the sturdy old clay of these two great mystic poets. These books return poetry to where it belongs, and promise to make it part of our everyday lives once again.

“I would like to leave everything wide open to all the possibilities in the world,” Haruki Murakami said in a Paris Review interview. That philosophy has helped the Japanese runner, writer and former nightclub owner to build a literary life, one blockbuster novel at a time. The queues for 1Q84 (Knopf, translated by Jay Rubin) in the UK and the US rivaled Pottermania, and the critics seem to think this novel about writing, Japanese communes and the unreliability of memory is as good as Murakami’s best.

Unlike Murakami, translation has eluded the novelist Kyung-Sook Shin, who has a faithful readership in South Korea. Before her moving, complex novel Please Look After Mom (Knopf, translated by Chi-Young Kim) became a bestseller in its English translation, the author had published several books, but only one or two had been translated and read outside Korea. Please Look After Mom is told in a shifting series of voices, all belonging to members of one family, as they look back at the coming-of-age of four friends in 1980s Korea.

At 93 years, Stephane Hessel is an unlikely bestseller author, but the former French Resistance member’s brief call to arms is sweeping the world. Time For Outrage! (Twelve, translated by Damien Searls) is the English translation from the French Indignez-vous, and demands that we abandon our indifference and look for causes, political and personal, that will fire our indignation.

For some reason, murder and intrigue have always translated well, and this year is no exception. Keigo Higashimo’s The Devotion of Suspect X (Alexander O. Smith, Minotaur) is Japanese noir at its engaging best, where Higashimo offers you the identity of the murderer, the victim and the motive in the first few chapters. But the suspense revolves around the deepening relationship between Yasuko, survivor of a violent marriage, murderer of her loutish ex-husband, and her neighbour Ishigami, who helps her cover up the murder, even as investigator Kusanagi attempts to make sense of what looks like the perfect crime.

Santiago Roncagliolo’s Red April (Atlantic Books, translated by Edith Grossman) is the kind of thriller and political novel that makes one realize how much we miss out on by not reading in translation. Felix Saldivar is an oddly vulnerable prosecutor left in charge of a gruesome investigation into mass graves that force him to confront, in bumbling ways, Peru’s bloody history. “Sometimes,” says a key character, “I have difficulty distinguishing between us and the enemy.” After a year of rebellions and civil wars across the world, this is the book to read, a novel that insists on digging up the bones of history, no matter what the cost.

The BS column: Welcome to the tilism

(Published in the Business Standard, June 16, 2009)
Here is the single best reason ever proffered for attempting a translation of a long-lost, half-forgotten book:

“What if all the storytellers are also still with us ‘in spirit’? And what if one day this battalion of ghosts feels nostalgic, and enters a bookshop to check the latest edition of Hoshruba but doesn’t find it on the shelves? Who will have the heart to tell them that because of our neglect and disregard of Indo-Islamic literature, the rich language of Hoshruba has become inaccessible….? And this is why the army of readers is gathered here; why I beat the kettledrums.”

For Musharraf Farooqui, translator, author and founder of The Urdu Project, the reproachful ghosts of dastangois and storytellers past never cease whispering into his ear. His translation of the 8,000-odd pages and 21 volumes of the 19th century story cycle known as the Hoshruba is part obsession, part clever publishing gamble. The Urdu Project will also translate more conventional works, but the Hoshruba is its first and most magnificent undertaking.

Farooqui might be fifty years old by the time he finishes telling the tale of the last sorcerers, shape-shifters, and egg-of-oblivion wielding tricksters who riddle the pages of the Hoshruba. He also knows how hard it is to sell a 21-volume Indo-Islamic fantasy saga in the age of George R R Martin, Neil Gaiman, Tolkien films and the Star Trek franchise. But he hopes that the abracadabra of print-on-demand technology will help him and the Hoshruba reach its readers.

With the first sprawling 447-page volume out, the Hoshruba makes an interesting addition to fantasy literature. The story cycle was concocted by Mir Ahmed Ali, passed on to Muhammad Amir Khan, revived by Muhammad Husain Jah and continued by Jah’s arch-rival Ahmed Husain Qamar—a quiverful of authors. To read it is to be drawn back into a world of source magic, the original stuff of today’s fantasy sagas, and to be seduced by its never-ending profusion of sorcerers, battles and red-lipped beauties.

The Hoshruba is likely to add the word “tilism”—a realm of magic and enchantment—to the dictionary, and to beguile many. But reading it is also a disconcerting experience. The modern fantasy reader reads not so much for escapism as to be drawn into an utterly different but believable world—there’s a subtle but powerful distinction between the two aims.

The machinations of the warring kingdoms in George R R Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series, for instance, should be required reading for corporate chieftains. (Replace “kings” with “CEOs”, or “dragons” with “highly skilled accountants”, and you have a primer on the art of war that outdoes Sun Tzu.) Neil Gaiman’s Sandman cycle, conversely, delves into the more uncomfortable reaches of psychology.

Reading the Hoshruba is bewildering; sorcerers succeed one another at breakneck pace, eggs of oblivion (which contain powerful drugs that induce unconsciousness) are hurled freely by all comers, and magic citrus fruits take their place beside less homely weapons. It’s hard to follow: which character is real or fake at any given point, which sorcerer has been bumped off and which remains, having merely faked her own death?

The clever Amar Ayyar, a trickster of no mean talents, provides a link; and fans of The Adventures of Amir Hamza (also translated by Farooqui) will be pleased to know that Hamza makes frequent appearances, as does the giant Laqa. But despite the authors’ promise that only those battles that are entertaining will be described, lest the audience be left weary and disinterested, the Hoshruba is a magical, but not easy, read.

Serious gamers will love the Hoshruba—especially those who’ve cut their teeth on longrunning role-playing games (RPG), where the richness of the landscape and the inventiveness of the authors matters more than plot or character. I can see them buying all 21 volumes, but other readers might stop at three, well before the riches of the Hoshruba are exhausted.

Farooqui has one advantage over George R R Martin and co. Being living authors, today’s writers of fantasy attract fans almost faster than they can complete a series. Robert Jordan died before he finished the Wheel of Time series, now being completed by another fantasy writer. Impatient Song of Ice and Fire fans, waiting for volume five from 2005, were recently admonished by Neil Gaiman: “George R R Martin is not your bitch.” Gaiman’s point was that the best any author can do is write to his own internal deadlines—not to the optimistic ones in the heads of his audience.

But Farooqui’s collaborators have finished their story, and his telling of how they wrote it is nothing short of miraculous. “Only an infidel would doubt that it happened in this manner,” he says. I would add that only an infidel would be churlish enough to resist the temptation of entering the tilism, at least once. Think of those poor, disappointed ghosts in the bookshop.

The BS column: The Translator's Tale

How do you get the world to read in Indian? I’m quoting a young Italian editor who said this when she discovered the wealth of Indian literature outside the narrow confines of writing in English recently.

It’s a great question. Ever since Indian writing in English took off in the West with R K Narayan, Raja Rao and Kamala Das, most of the world has read Indian writers chiefly in this language, to the exclusion of others. The equivalent would be a bit like narrowing the great canon of European literature down to works originally written in English—no Goethe, no Calvino, no Mallarme or Maupassant. This is ridiculous: as Pritham K Chakravarthy, translator of Blaft’s anthologies of Tamil pulp fiction and folk tales, says, we all grew up with translation. “How else would we know Marquez or Sartre?”

Part of the problem has to do with the demands of publishing as a market place—Indian writers in regional languages were seen as less glamorous, less marketable. The recent London Book Fair saw a slight but significant shift when writers like U R Ananthamurthy—one of the few Indian writers recognized in the West—and Sankar were given an attentive, and eager, ear. A few literary journalists commented on the frustration of knowing a country only through one of its many languages.

Perhaps we’re seeing a new openness to reading Indian writers in translation. For years, translators such as the venerable and fluent Gita Krishankutty have done their work in relative silence. In an interview after winning the Crossword award for translation, Krishankutty, who has translated writers from K Satchidanandan to V K Madhavan Kutty, spoke with sadness of the invisibility of her work—discovering that the books she’d worked on were not available in bookstores.

One of the biggest complaints against Indian translation used to be that it wasn’t of high quality—Krishankutty’s skills and sensitivity to the rhythm and music of the writing were an exception, not the norm. Translators like Arunava Sinha (Chowringhee, My Kind of Girl) are changing this. “I was attracted to translation because some stories talked to me,” says Sinha. “I wanted to share them with others.”

To illustrate how complex the translator’s task can be, he speaks of three different books. “Chowringhee, by Sankar, is a cascading text, piling on phrases, sentences, metaphors and references in masses of words with high emotional content,” says Sinha. Translating it into English, an “essentially more reserved language”, required a balance between “restraint and exhibitionism”.

My Kind of Girl by Buddhadeva Bose, was very different. “This is prose written by a poet with a very light but sure touch. The cadences and tone of the original prose needed to be captured as much with the ear as with the eye.” With a third novel, set several centuries in the past, Sinha says, “There is the larger issue of preserving the historical distance that the original creates without making the translation completely unreadable to a contemporary audience.”

The isolation that translators in India work in seems incredible, given the number of languages we have, and the great need for good translation. But despite the efforts of Katha, Siyahi and other literary groups to bring translators together, most of them work in a kind of absolute solitude. “I don’t know any translators from other languages, except Tamil,” says Pritham. She stresses the need to work with a good editor, which made a big difference in her view to the quality of both of Blaft’s anthologies.

Sinha agrees, saying, “I’m afraid there’s no real community of or exchanges between translators. And publishers do not work as closely with translators as they do with authors.” But there are signs of change—more cynically, if the US and European markets start to look with greater interest at Indian writing in translation, there will be better opportunities for translators and a demand for higher quality translations.

A possible way forward is shown by Musharraf Ali Farooqi, translator of The Adventures of Amir Hamza, and an acclaimed author (The Story of a Widow) in his own right. Farooqi had once commented with dismay on the average reader’s resistance to works in other languages: “Storytellers always traveled and spread their stories; now you need a visa.” He’s not waiting for his paperwork, so to speak. Instead, he’s kicked off the ambitious Urdu Project, which plans to focus on classical and contemporary Urdu literature.

Its first publication demonstrates the size of its ambitions—a translation of the 24-volume epic Hoshruba. Perhaps this is the way forward for translators—to effectively turn publisher and build their own list of the quirkiest, most unmissable books you and I have never read.

41 Indian Writers in Translation

Amit Chaudhuri on Indian writing, from The Guardian:

"As to the writers from the more troubled regions outside the metropolitan suburbs in which English alone was spoken, you could see, if you scratched the surface of their slightly bureaucratic veneer, that they possessed an eclecticism of taste and literary predilections, a formal curiosity, as well as a true multilingualism, that made them quite akin - paradoxically for brown men wandering about the streets of Frankfurt and Paris - to the breed of writers once called "European". However, no one, I think, asked them about their relationship to Europe, though each of them would have had an answer to the question; this was a reminder of the odd discrepancy between language - and I don't just mean English and French and Hindi - and vantage-point and intention that sometimes characterised interactions between audiences and writers."

The recommendations at the end of the article inspired me to put down a list of 40 books I've enjoyed by Indian writers, 41 Indian writers whose books I've enjoyed in translation. Standard disclaimers:

1) This is not intended to be a definitive or even indicative list--it's just my list of writers whose works I personally enjoyed.
2) Yes, there's a built-in bias towards Bengali writers, since Bengali's my mother tongue.
3) Many writers have been left out. This is because:
i) they're not available in English translation, and this is a list of Indian books translated into English. I know, most unfair.
ii) I've never heard of them and I should've, in which case I'd be happy to add their names to the list
iii) I have heard of them and I hate their work, in which case I'll maintain a discreet silence

41 Indian Writers in Translation

Ambai: In A Forest, A Deer
Short stories drawing on mythology, feminism and the lives of ordinary women

Ashapoorna Devi: The First Promise (Pratham Pratisruti)
One of the few novels by the prolific and highly regarded author available in translation, this follows the evolution of Satyabati, a child bride who grows up to demand much more of her new life in a changing but still hidebound Calcutta.

Bama: Karukku
Bama’s account of growing up untouchable, a dalit in modern India.

Bhisham Sahni: Tamas
The iconic novel about Partition; Sahni drew from his memories of working in the refugee camps to write the story of Nathu, the sweeper who sparks a riot with the inadvertent killing of a pig, Jarnail and many others.

Bibhutibhushan Bandopadhyay: Pather Panchali (The Song of the Road), Aparajito
These classic, much-loved novels formed the basis for Satyajit Ray’s Apu trilogy as Bibhutibhushan followed his protagonist from the little village of Nischindipur to the demands and temptations of the city.

Fakir Mohan Senapati: Six Acres and a Third
Senapati’s wickedly funny tale of colonial India

Girish Karnad: Collected Plays
From one of India’s most intelligent and engaged writers, plays that sweep through history and myth to address today’s audience.

Gopinath Mohanty: Paraja
This 1930s novel explores the slow decline of a tribal stripped of his lands by the state, turning first to the forest that he knows so well and then to alcoholism.

Harivansh Rai Bachchan: In the Afternoon of Time
The great poet’s honest, moving recollections of his life, from the hardships of growing up in the provinces to the success of Madhushala, and the superstardom of his son, the actor Amitabh. The English translation was a very successful abridgement of the four-volume original.

Jibananda Das: Selected Poems and Collected Short Stories
Jibananda’s layered, often revolutionary poems spawned a host of terrifyingly bad imitations, but few had the accuracy of his vision. His short stories are less well-known, but for a generation of Bengalis, he offered an escape from the gentle tyranny of Tagore.



Kamleshwar: Partitions
Searing, anguished and questioning, one of the finest explorations of the scars of Partition in Indian literature

Kiran Nagarkar: Saat Sakkam Trechalis (Seven Sixes Are Forty-Three)(my thanks to Salil Tripathi for the reminder)
Nagarkar's first novel was about Kushank Pundare, an unpublished writer living in a chawl. The Marathi literary world was not amused by Pundare's sublime blend of nihilism and broad humour, but Nagarkar's readers continue to be entertained.

Krishna Sobti: Mitro Marjani, Ei Ladki (translated as To Hell With You, Mitro and Listen, Girl)
Sobti’s richly comic, sometimes dark explorations of sexuality and the need for freedom.

M Mukundan: On the Banks of the Mayyazhi
Father Alphonse, Dasan the freedom fighter, Chitralekha the dancer and the villagers of Mahe come together in this unforgettable classic.

Mahasweta Devi: Titu Mir, Rudali, Breast Stories, Mother of 1084
It’s hard to pick just a few from Mahasweta Devi’s corpus of writing, but try not to miss her wrenching, engaging perspective on history

Mahesh Elkunchwar: Holi, Yuganta, Pratibimb, Party
I haven’t been able to find a “collected plays”, but some of his scripts are available in translation. One of India’s most popular and most questioning playwrights.

M T Vasudevan Nair: Naalukettu
Literally “the house around the courtyard”, Naalukettu draws on MT Vasudevan Nair’s own memories to recreate the atmosphere of a village in South India, and the struggles of a young boy to find his way through a maze of tradition.

Nabaneeta Deb Sen: Defying Winter (in Five Novellas by Women), A Nabaneeta Reader
OUP’s Nabaneeta Reader, if you can find it, is the best introduction to the wide range of this writer’s work, which roams from children’s fiction to travelogue to literary criticism and mainstream fiction. Defying Winter is a wry and warm novella set in an old-age home.

Naiyer Masud: The Essence of Camphor
Translated from Urdu, these stories retain something of the perfume of that language—delicate, precise and melancholy, especially the title story and ‘Sheesha Ghat’.

Namdeo Dhasal: Poet of the Underworld
Many disagree with Dhasal’s politics, while retaining the right to admire his fierce, bitterly angry poetry. Dilip Chitre does a beautiful translation of this Dalit poet’s work.

Nirmal Verma: Selected Stories; The Last Wilderness (translated by Pratik Kanjilal)
The pioneer of the “Nayi Kahani” movement, Verma wrote with depth and passion, and a quiet sensibility matched by few. In 'The Last Wilderness', Pratik Kanjilal's sensitive translation captures Verma's story, set in the hills, narrated by the secretary-companion to Mehra Sahib, a retired civil servant. Verma uses the landscape to convey a sense of menace and possibility; one of his finest novels.



O V Vijayan: Legends of Khasak
Vijayan made Khasak as much of a “real” place as Marquez’s Macondo, and it has something of the same richness.

Premchand: Shatranj ke Khiladi (The Chess Players)
His other novels and short stories may carry more literary weight, but Shatranj remains a personal favourite, for its evocation of a friendship tested in the sunset hours of a dying empire.

Premendra Mitra: Mosquito and other stories
“Ghanada” is one of those great literary characters known only to the Bengalis; this collection brings out some of the wit and bizarre fluidity of Mitra’s imagination.

Qurratulain Hyder: Aag Ki Dariya (River of Fire)
This monumental novel takes on two-and-a-half millennia of Indian history, linked by four characters who wander through the ages, bearing witness to the shifting times. Hyder’s magnum opus.

Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories (try to get the OUP edition, translated by Sukanta Chaudhuri and others), The Home and the World, Chokher Bali
It’s hard to choose only a few from Tagore’s overflowing bookshelf, but his short stories are perhaps the best introduction to his work. Many of his novels, including Ghare-Baire (The Home, the World), and Nashto Neer (The Broken Nest, filmed as Charulata) inspired Ray’s films.

Rahi Masoom Reza: A Village Divided
Reza’s account of the feuds between rival families in Gangauli is pointed, sharp and very, very funny.

Saadat Hasan Manto: the collected short stories
Manto framed Partition and the riots with brutal humour—in his stories, inmates of a lunatic asylum must make sense of the new borders, a man finds he has no taste for cold meat, a child sees jelly in a pool of blood.

Sankar: Chowringhee
In this skilful translation, Sankar’s immensely popular novel about the inside stories of a grand hotel in Calcutta comes alive.

Sharatchandra: Debdas, Srikanta, Pather Dabi
One of Bengal’s most popular novelists, Sharatchandra’s characters remain alive in the public imagination—though many readers have forgotten his reputation for sarcasm and his trenchant criticism of the social norms of his times.

Shivram Karanth: Ten Faces of a Crazy Mind
“I do not desire to be killed by others’ pens. I shall take my own life.” Karanth was one of the greats of Kannada literature, and his autobiography is as unorthodox as was his life.


Shrilal Shukla: Raag Darbari
This classic satire of small-town India takes a close look at the rotting body politic without needing to hold its nose.

Sunil Gangopadhyay: Sei Samay (Those Days), Pratham Alo (First Light)
Historical fiction that treads a fine line between gossip and accurate chronicle of the life and times of Bengal’s finest—two of the prolific Gangopadhyay’s better-known works.

Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai: Chemmeen
One of the late Thakazhi’s most popular works, this set star-crossed lovers down in a fishing community in rural Kerala.

U R Ananthamurthy: Samskara
The funeral of a Brahmin who had turned his back on the community is at the centre of Samskara, U R Anathamurthy’s challenging and, for its times, revolutionary novel.



Vaidehi: Gulabi Talkies
Short stories translated from Kannada; Vaidehi’s trademark style is best captured in the title story, where a town deals with the loss of its midwife, Lillibai, when she decides instead to run the only-for-women cinema, Gulabi Talkies.

Vaikom Muhammad Basheer: My Granddad Had An Elephant, Walls
Basheer—freedom fighter, wanderer, writer—had a knack for capturing the absurd, the comic and the tragic in a few bare paragraphs. My Granddad Had An Elephant is a collection of short stories verging on memoir; Walls follows two prisoners who may not, eventually, want to leave for “the larger jail outside”.

V K Madhavan Kutty: The Village Before Time
One of my favourite books—a brief excerpt: “When water collected in the ditch on the left of the path, we always gathered to watch the little fast-moving insects called ezhuthachan chaathis that looked as if they were writing on the water. They wrote amazing stories in languages that looked sometimes like Malayalam and sometimes like Tamil.”

Vijaydan Detha: A Straw Epic and other stories
The Rajasthani folk tales that Vijaydan Detha used as the foundation for his stories don’t translate well, but this collection offers a hint of the flavour of the original. Especially in ‘Duvidha’, the classic story of a triangle between a bride, her husband and the ghost that assumes the form of the husband for a brief while.

Vilas Sarang: The Women in the Cages (short stories)
Many of the stories here were originally written in Marathi and then rewritten in English by the bilingual Sarang. His Bombay is a surreal city, where Ganesha’s idol might run away from his own procession, where a man might get into trouble for warming his hands on a cold day at a funeral pyre.

Vijay Tendulkar: Ghashiram Kotwal, Sakharam Binders or The Collected Plays if you can get it
Tendulkar’s fearless and ferocious plays are staples of any self-respecting Indian theatre group—few playwrights have used contemporary events and stinging satire quite as well.

Useful resources:


Seagull Books: Seagull has a brilliant catalogue of works in translation
Vedams Books: Online bookstore with some hard-to-find classics
Women Unlimited and Zubaan: The emphasis is on women's writing, but both stock some translations
Katha specialises in translations, but their web page isn't terribly browser-friendly
The Little Magazine: Carries stories and screenplays in translation--browse each issue separately.

Also read: Boyd Tonkin on "India's hidden treasures":

"...the vast bulk of Indian culture, and Indian life, never happens in English.
Not that the UK publishing industry usually wants to know. When the thin, elite crust of native English speakers in India throws up world-beating author after world-beating author, why bother to investigate the literary riches that may lurk among the nation's 22 other official languages, from Assamese to Urdu? Yet those treasures sparkle. An Indian novelist once, only half-jokingly, said to me that he had begun to write in English because the competition in Bengali was just too stiff."