Translations

Arvind was a firm believer of the fact that translation bridges cultures and facilitates dialogue between the two.

01 English-Hindi Julius Caesar

Since his MA English days, Arvind had been admired the literary genius of Shakespeare, Marlowe, and Milton.
Arvind translated his beloved Shakespeare’s play Julius Caesar into Hindi, remarkably retaining Shakespeare’s trademark iambic pentameter and blank verse in the Hindi translation which reads in rhythm, in flow with the original.
This translation was staged by renowned theatre director Ebrahim Alkazi for National School of Drama in January 1992 was received with great acclaim, bringing successfully, as Arvind had hoped, Shakespeare’s genius to the Hindi audience.

02 Vikram Saindhav

Arvind’s Hindi adaptation of Julius Caesar, Vikram Saindhav, based the play in the Indus Valley civilization. The context, the characters and the story have been adapted in the Indian context without taking away from the original play and its iambic pentameter verse.

03 Faust

Arvind translated German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s magnum opus play Faust (Part One). Again, experimenting with verse translation to keep them as rhythmic and fluent as in the original, adding footnotes wherever to explain the cultural context of Ancient Europe.

04 Sahaj Geeta

Arvind’s Sahaj Geeta is a translation of The Bhagavad Gita from Sanskrit to colloquial Hindi for the common man. Unlike most other existing works, Arvind’s translation is literal, simple, and precise without any interpretations or religious/philosophical sermonizing.

At the same time, Sahaj Geeta enables easy reading and reciting of the Sanskrit shlokas (verses) by the Hindi-speaking reader. Arvind introduced spaces between sounds of the long Sanskrit verses without changing the Sanskrit vocabulary and grammar, without breaking word compounds or conjunctions, without interfering with the flow of the verses.