Writing in ... Nepal

       In Himal Weena Pun speaks to 'noted Nepali literary critic Khagendra Sangroula', in Changing literature, changing country.
       Among the interesting observations Sangroula makes: things are apparently looking up, at least locally:

These days, publishing houses queue up for unpublished books. Also, back in Panchayat era, my books sold 500 to 1000 copies, if the police did not confiscate them before they went on sale. Today, books might sell 6000 copies. If each of those copies gets read by at least two people, that's 12,000 readers. That's a big readership, and a big opportunity, that did not exist before the 1990s. Of course, critical evaluation is still lacking, but new voices are coming to the fore.

       Unfortunately, as far as seeing these works in English ...:

Going back to Nepali-to-English translations, we have a dearth of good translators. The few known ones are Manjushree Thapa, Michael Hutt, Abhi Subedi and RD Yuyutsu. The problem with translating Nepali literary writing into English is that the translators have to know the nuances of Nepali culture. Descriptive translations are easy, but translating dialogues is difficult, and when the aesthetics of a novel are compromised, the end product feels very mechanical. Except for the title, the name of the author, and the [names of the] characters, everything else gets lost in translation.

       Ouch.