Urdu Conference session attempts to cover 100 years of Urdu prose

The session on the past hundred years of Urdu prose conducted on the last day of the 13th International Urdu Conference was, like many other sessions, too short of time to do justice to its intended purpose, as the total prose works of any language cannot be summed in around an hour and a half.

A total of five speakers participated in the session and spoke on various genres of prose. However, many genres of Urdu prose, such as humour, autobiographies, travelogues and essays, were not included.

Fictional works such as novels and short stories, and literary criticism also come under prose if the term is used in a wider context. However, the hundred years of these genres were covered in dedicated sessions at the conference, the theme of which for this year’s edition was ‘100 years of literature’.

Translations

Poet Afzal Ahmed Syed and translator Farhat Parveen spoke on the history of translations of foreign literary works into Urdu as well as various aspects of translation.

Syed began his talk with the mention of Munshi Tirath Ram Ferozepuri, who translated many foreign fictional works into Urdu. He said that in the initial decades of the last 100 years, translators mostly focused on works of European languages and ignored Eastern literature.

Among other names, the speaker mentioned Saadat Hasan Manto, who translated many foreign short stories into Urdu such as those of Maupassant. Syed said that in those years, poet Meeraji was one of the exceptions who also translated poetry of Asian languages under the title ‘Mashriq-o-Maghrib ke Naghme’.

He said that as the Progressive Writers’ Movement gained momentum from the 1940s onwards, many translators started to translate works from the Russian language and works of writers like Gorki became available in Urdu.

Syed also highlighted the role of Urdu literary magazines in popularising foreign literature among Pakistani readers, saying that many magazines have a regular section for translated works.

Another interesting point made by him was that it was translated poetry that helped Nasri Nazm (prose poem, which is without metre and rhyming scheme) gain acceptance in Urdu. Syed said that many readers started to read Nasri Nazm in Urdu after they had read translated works of foreign poets.

Regarding the current state of translations into Urdu, he said the situation was positive but yet far from ideal. There are no translations of Shakespeare into Urdu that do justice to him, said Syed. He also stressed the need to translate works of other languages of Pakistan into Urdu.

At the end, the speaker touched upon some ethical and legal aspects of translation. He said that most of the works of foreign languages besides English are not directly translated into Urdu, as translators convert them into Urdu through their English translations. According to Syed, in such cases, the Urdu translation should also mention the name of the English translator along with the original author.

He also stressed the need for including the art of translation in the curriculum of universities, saying that as per his knowledge, the University of Gujrat was the only educational institution in Pakistan where translation was taught as an academic discipline.

Later, Farhat, who had come from abroad, shed light on the general history of translation from ancient times to the present. When asked if foreigners were as interested in Pakistani literature as Pakistanis were in theirs, she replied in the negative.

Tazkiras

The subject of Aqeel Abbas Jafari’s speech was the traditions of Tazkira (account of lives of literary personalities) and histories of literature in Urdu. He started his talk with the old Tazkiras of the 18th and 19th centuries, much before the past century. He said that even though those Tazkiras were about the lives of Urdu poets, most of them were written in Persian.

He said Muhammad Hussain Azad’s ‘Aab-e-Hayat’ was a work of transition between the old Tazkiras and the new histories of Urdu literature that were to come.

However, he quoted severe criticism by critic Shamsur Rehman Faruqi for Aab-e-Hayat. Faruqi had pointed out severe biases in Aab-e-Hayat, in which the author had altogether ignored Hindu and female poets. The translation of Ram Babu Saksena’s history of Urdu literature was, according to Jafari, the first proper history of Urdu literature, and many who came later wrote their literature histories in the style of Saksena.

Some of the writers of histories of Urdu literature that the speaker mentioned were Dr Abul Lais Siddiqui, Dr Amjad Hussain, Saleem Akhtar, Anwar Sadeed and Gyan Chand, before he talked about Dr Jamil Jalibi’s history of Urdu literature, generally considered to be the greatest. Jafari said that the last complete history of Urdu literature was written by Wahab Ashrafi in India in 2007.

Lexicography

Linguist Rauf Parekh spoke about lexicography in Urdu during the last 100 years. He started his talk with Noorul Lughat that was compiled by Noorul Hasan Nayyar Kakorvi. He said that a major issue with that dictionary was that it was heavily based on the Lakhnawi register of Urdu.

He then mentioned Baba-e-Urdu Maulvi Abdul Haq’s dream of compiling a grand dictionary in Urdu on the lines of the Oxford English Dictionary that was in multiple volumes.

The speaker added that due to Partition and health issues, Baba-e-Urdu could not complete ‘Lughat-e-Kabeer’. However, his dream was later actualised by the Urdu Lughat Board that published its Urdu dictionary in 22 volumes.

Parekh called for updating the grand dictionary and include text examples under all its entries. He stressed that the meanings of a word could only be obtained after analysing its usage in sentences. A solitary word does not generate meaning, he pointed out.

Responding to a question, the linguist remarked that gone are the days when Urdu used to have only two standard registers of Delhi and Lucknow. He said Urdu was equally owned by everyone who spoke the language regardless of the area they belonged to.

According to Parekh, it is not right to expect from any speaker of Urdu to change their accent. He said that wrong pronunciation of any speaker could be corrected, but insisting on changing anyone’s accent was not appropriate.

Sketch-writing

Writer Irfan Javed spoke on sketch-writing in Urdu. He mostly focused on its principles, rather than its history. He said Azad’s description of poets in ‘Aab-e-Hayat’ could be considered a precursor of modern sketch-writing.

The first proper sketch in Urdu was written by Farhatullah Baig on his teacher Deputy Nazeer Ahmed, he added.

The speaker said that initially, when personality sketches were written, writers would describe the physical appearance and external personality, including gestures, style of walking, etc., in great detail; however, as photographs became common, this aspect of sketch-writing declined.