ABSTRACT
Premchand published his Hindi short story ‘Shatranj ke Khiladi’ (The Chess Players) in Madhuri, in September–October, 1924. Sometime before 1928, he brought out an Urdu version of the same story with a slightly different title, ‘Shatranj ki Bazi’ (A Game of Chess), which was published in Khwab-o-Khayal ki Kahaniyan (Stories of Dreams and Visions), published by Lajpatrai and Sons. 1 Thereafter, several cross-cultural translations have been brought out, most of the English ones bearing the title ‘The Chess Players’, David Rubin’s being one of them. In 1977, Satyajit Ray adapted Premchand’s story into his first big-budget Urdu–English film, Shatranj ke Khiladi. Premchand had inherited about a century-old translational traditions and witnessed at first-hand the ‘cultural chauvinism’ 2 which led up to the division of the related linguistic traditions of Urdu and Hindi. This chapter examines how these four versions of Premchand’s texts are layered by various political considerations surrounding language, cultural representation and historicity. The study begins by contextualising Premchand against a tradition of translational endeavours and linguistic politicisation, both of which compelled him to self-translate. A close textual analysis of the Hindi and Urdu versions of the story focuses on the chief differentiating aspects. This is followed by a study of translational techniques in Rubin’s cross-cultural translation. Ray’s cinematic historicisation of Premchand’s text, as a mimetic, creative exercise, depicting the cultural zenith and nadir of erstwhile Awadh concludes the chapter.
