Booker-winning translator Deepa Bhasthi on why she has ‘nothing kind to say about AI’
Summary
International Booker Prize-winning translator Deepa Bhasthi is in Kathmandu for a literary translation workshop and speaks about preserving the soul of a text, reading more South Asian literature, and her strong criticism of AI in literary translation.
Key Points
- Deepa Bhasthi is in Kathmandu as a mentor at a three-day literary translation workshop at Kathmandu University’s Dhulikhel campus.
- She says translation should retain the musicality and rhythm of the original language, even if that means sounding less fully natural in English.
- Bhasthi dismisses AI as unsuitable for literary fiction and says creative fields should not rely on machine translation.
- She urges young translators to read more, think critically, and engage more with South Asian literature.
