Putting my foot in the mouth

I am becoming an expert in the art of putting my foot in my mouth! And when I do it at IL, my embarrassment turns limitless.

Well, this is what happened. I had begun to translate classic poems and short stories from Bengali into English, the sole purpose being to acquaint people with the richness of Bengali literature. So far so good.

But then I got this idea of uploading them at IL. I had been doing it for a while now without a worry in my head.

Two days ago, however, I was presented with a deadly fruit of knowledge. Copyright laws prohibit publishing translations of others' published work! This means, if the author whom I had translated or the publisher who published him/her were to chance upon my work, they could immediately charge me with copyright violation. Worse, they will not spare IL too. In particular, they will demand monetary compensation, something in the nature of royalty payments from IL! I knew something of this sort was true for the print world. But now I know better. The law applies with a vengeance to internet too.

I came across people who knew about this problem. More importantly, they know people who have fallen into the trap. Some of them are established, prize winning authors.

My newfound knowledge forced me to approach the IL team with the request that all my translations be deleted. This was a pity, because it led to a removal of your comments too, comments that I valued a lot. I apologise to you for this senseless business. But I couldn't take the risk.

I thank IL for agreeing to remove the posts. I know how difficult this must have been for it to go through. So, I apologise to the team also.

I am putting up this message for all of you so that you do not commit the same mistake.

All the best.

oj

 

@ Kamal

Dear Kamal:

I knew you would understand. However, I feel embarrassed that the posts had to be removed. I think people who wrote comments on these translations had earned points. Removing the posts amounted to debiting their accounts. I wouldn't mind if their accounsts were to be credited by transferring points from my own account. I don't know if IL rules permit this.

In a way, I found translating a somewhat easier job than writing on my own. As you know, I am never too happy with my compositions and keep on revising till they satisfy a minimum standard. I will put up my own posts alone from now on, but it will take me a while to come up with each new post. I cannot help revising for a while before uploading them. I don't know what the frequency will be, but I am almost sure that I can't post more than once a month, or perhaps two months. I hope the wonderful people at IL will tolerate this eccentric streak in me.

Another reason I may be delayed is that there is a good chance that I shall start writing a second edition of my book on Growth Economics beginning January. If that happens, my creative preoccupations will suffer a jolt. It might take around six months to finish the venture. After this is over, the pressure will probably be more bearable.

All the best.

oj

 

@ Radha

Thank you Radha for your appreciation. Yes, learning Bengali would be a better way for non-Bengalis to access Bengali literature.

In fact, I had begun to learn Tamizh and am still familiar with the alphabets. But, here in Kolkata, I couldn't find a willing teacher. That's a pity. I have all my Tamizh books ready at hand, but there's simply no good teacher to be found. Sometimes I wonder if it might be worth my while to take up an assignment in Chennai for around six months or so and pick up the language to some extent.

Regards.

oj