writing and translating

infinite wisdom is outside of the norm...just as infinite patience...or infinite anything.

You can’t write about Pakistan and get to Pakistanis – it has to be the other way around. Pakistan must be approached as Pakistanis, through Pakistanis, through singular experiences, through the stories we tell ourselves. We need these stories, even if they are never written down and exist only in words over coffee or just in our heads. Hasan Altaf

in this day harking back to dastaangoi? ...perhaps he meant as a last resort...the enduring test would be in the medium...the medium has to convey the message with all its blemishes

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translating from another language is an arduous and hit and miss affair at best as those who have attempted it know well...

Pritchett says in her outstanding paper, “The Sky, the Road, the Glass of Wine: On Translating Faiz” (available at http://www.urdustudies.com/pdf/15/07pritchett.pdf): “(the translator should not be) interested in making technically accurate translations that sound awful in English and/or do no real justice to the original. Nor (should they) produce free “transcreations” that use the Urdu originals merely as jumping-off points for new English poems”. Dr Ali Madeeh Hashmi

aaa jo dil se nikalti hay...has to rebound....otherwise it would melt into the other countless sighs over the centuries resulting in nought