Summary Of Rat By Meyaz Ahmed Faiz

Faiz Ahmed Faiz, prominent Urdu poet of 20th century, has been translated into different languages such as English, Russian and German etc. He is widely read through translation of his poetic works. His poems have been well rendered to English by translators, both native English and Indians or poets from subcontinent. Through my much long query to the translators of Faiz Ahmed Faiz, I came across numerous translators of his works. The list goes this like: Victor G. Kiernan, Imdad Hussain, Vikram Seth, Agha Shahid Ali, Daud Kamal, Khalid Hassan, Sarvat Rahman, Kushwant Sing, Noami Lazard and Shiv K. Kumar. Victor G.Kiernan was the first who translated Faiz into English. His translated word titled ‘Poems by Faiz,’ follows a distinct method;
The very title given by translators varies each from other. Rat is the first word in the Urdu original, has been rendered as as ‘Last Night’ by Kiernan, Shiv Kumar , Sarvat Rahman and Vikram Seth, as ‘tonight’ by Imdad Hussain, and as ‘At night’ by Agha Shahid Ali. The word given by Agha Shahid Ali seems to be more accommodative for the source word ‘Rat’, which can consist both ‘last night’ of Kiernan and ‘tonight’ of Imdad Huassain.
Translating the word ‘dil’, which has been intended as spiritual self of the poet or the lover and also ‘dil’ has been given the I’ness. And it can be both spiritual and physical self. Some translators has merged ‘dil’ and ‘yaad’ in same words of recollection and reflection of the
Yad has been given description through different adjectives, which are closely related with psychological aspects of memory and remembrance and each translators has picked up different levels of psychology of memory. Memory has been modified by different adjectives, such as Faded, long-lost, fugitive, lost, the adjectives which have special connotative meaning to be conveyed. Kiernan used ‘faded memory, he may conveys the memory which is faint, and something is there to recollect but cannot retrieve it accurately and still does not have clarity in recollecting. Imdad Hussain modified remembrance (and there is slight difference between memory and difference which I will explain later) with long-lost, which implies, very obviously, the absent, unavailable and lost forever which cannot be retrieved anymore. Shiv Kumar’s highly charged adjective ‘fugitive’ which means something that tends to flee soon from the memory, and stay only for short time and loses suddenly. Agha Shahid Ali’s lost memory without having any fixed point of time for losing memory. Sarvat Rahman and Victor G Kerinan have given same as other translators