Role of translation in predicting the relishness of rural women's lives , In Vaidehi's short story collection 'Gulabi talkies'

 Janaki Srinivasa Murthy, better known as Vaidehi. She is a poet, fiction writer, essayist and playwright of modern Kannada language. Vaidehi is one of the most successful women writers in the language of Kannada and also a recipient of prestigious national and state-level literary awards.

Gulabi Talkies is a compilation of twenty of her short stories written in Kundapura regional Kannada dialect through the 80s and 90s time line, with pastoral South India as a background.  In her work, Vaidehi depicts the social situation of women in a way they live their personal lives. Vaidehi's stories are unique for their subtle delineation of human feelings and emotions. 

Every stage of womanhood — as a daughter, sister, mother and in addition as a daughter- in- law and a mother-in-law — is celebrated and picturised very neatly. Vaidehi’s women are almost always a product of their situation, hence their negotiations are unstated.

Vaidehi says that - “There is a man in every woman and a woman in every man. Not all men are bad and neither are all women good. We need to have a vision, which is multi-dimensional,” 

An experiential world of women in Kannada literature takes shape in Vaidehi's fiction.  Through Vaidehi's fiction, women's inner desires, sorrows, dreams, and promises speak to us in whispers. She writes with deep compassion and understanding about women who live amidst sorrow and poverty but somehow find the strength to go on living.

Through this book, a varied readership will be introduced to a barely-glimpsed, nearly forgotten, rural life especially of women . The characters’ preoccupations and their pace of life—nothing short of an anachronism from another time. 

 Vaidehi  focuses on the ordinariness of women lives. For example one can witness her writing about the midwife turned to a gatekeeper at the town's new cinema and another a unsatisfied wife with her husband and many more. 

 Some of the essential features of Vaidehi’s work are not easy to capture in English translation. The Kundapura Brahmin idiom that informs her language has no equivalents in English and it has lost its authentic regional flavour.

This Particular work of Vaidehi is edited by Tejaswini Niranjana, and these stories have been translated into English by Mrinalini Sebastian, Bageshree S., Nayana Kashyap—who is Vaidehi’s Madekeri-based daughter—and Tejaswini.

Sometimes translation removes the consistency  of the original text, taking from their social and cultural context ,  the initial impact is lost unless their wider audience knows the background of the country and situation in which they were produced.

Especially in Vaidehi's short stories collection, 'Gulabi talkies' which is recognized as a master piece accomplished the challenging task of translating the author's impressive dramatic  images has been well achieved by the translators  adding a new dimension to understanding her works. 

Tejaswini Niranjana one of the translator of the particular text says that - 

"We have tried to see Vaidehi's elusiveness not as a reflection of interpersonal complexity but as a strategy through which the writer maps". Further she says -"Our translations of Vaidehi's stories are offered as a way of grasping the complexity in the space between languages".

Often, In spite of different stories being translated by different translators, they are held together by strategies of translation worked out in togetherness. In effect, they have in this volume a good model of mediating between Indian languages and English in a creative way in picturising the lives of rural women.