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Archana Venkatesan Wins Prize for Making Tamil Opus Sing in Translation

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Archana Venkatesan amid ruins, with book cover
Professor Archana Venkatesan and her prize-winning translation, 鈥淓ndless Song.鈥 (Courtesy)

  • Endless Song (罢颈谤耻惫腻测尘辞岣籭)
  • Opus by the ninth-century Tamil poet 狈补尘尘腻岣籿腻谤, translated into English by Archana Venkatesan, professor, departments of Religious Studies and Comparative Literature
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With [this volume] Venkatesan has clearly become the leading English interpreter of early Tamil Vaishnava lyric, and certainly one of the very few truly gifted translators of the language鈥檚 premodern riches. 鈥 Whitney Cox, associate professor of South Asian languages and civilizations, University of Chicago, writing in The New York Review of Books:


In one of India's most revered ancient bhakti poems, 罢颈谤耻惫腻测尘辞岣籭, an epic Tamil work from the ninth century, Namm膩岣籿膩r sings of his ecstatic devotion to God. Twelve centuries later, this important text sings in English, too, thanks to 嘿嘿视频 Professor Archana Venkatesan鈥檚 translation.

So said the judges who earlier this month named her 鈥渕onumental鈥 work, Endless Song, as the winner of the 2021 Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize. The $6,000 award is from the American Literary Translators Association.

Archana Venkatesan displays prize-winning book, against backdrop of bookcase.
Professor Venkatesan displays her prize-winning book.

Venkatesan has a dual appointment in the departments of Religious Studies and Comparative Literature, and writes about her work on her website and blog,

In a post after her win, she wrote: 鈥淚 am shocked, elated, humbled and honored by this recognition. It took a very long time to birth this book, to find an English to match the soaring heights of Namm膩岣籿膩r鈥檚 Tamil.鈥

鈥淎 very long time鈥 started in 2007 for a project encompassing 1,102 interlinked verses described by the publisher as 鈥渁 garland of words where each beginning is also an ending.鈥 A challenge, yes, but a true labor of love for someone like Venkatesan who translates almost every day.

鈥淭his is a discipline I maintain,鈥 she said in an interview with Dateline 嘿嘿视频 for this books blog post. 鈥淚t鈥檚 what keeps me grounded as it infuses beauty and magic into my every day. Usually, I translate a single verse or one short poem. I tinker with it until I feel that click, this intangible sense when the words make sense in English.

鈥淔辞谤 Endless Song, translating a verse would require reading not just the verse but the commentaries from over the centuries, so it was very slow, painstaking, but joyous work.鈥

A work of art

Venkatesan described the 罢颈谤耻惫腻测尘辞岣籭 as 鈥wonderful, intoxicating poetry鈥 and added: 鈥淢y hope is always that more people will discover the wonders of Tamil literature.鈥

Endless Song, published in February 2020, can certainly help. Whitney Cox, associate professor of South Asian languages and civilizations at the University of Chicago, , said Venkatesan鈥檚 translation allows readers to take in Namm膩lv膩r鈥檚 work in its entirety, as she goes beyond the theology to present his poetry as art.

VERSE I.1.5

Each knows what they know,
each finds a different path
Each has their god
each reaches his feet
Each of these gods lacks nothing,
everyone is fated
to find their way to the great lord
who鈥檚 always there.

The judges of the American Literary Translators Association said she had 鈥渃rafted a translation that one can experience not only as a well-annotated, definitive work of scholarship, but also as a living, breathing work of contemporary poetry.鈥 

The Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize, named after the American poet who translated Buddhist literature and Zen poetry, and first given in 2009, recognizes the importance of Asian translation for international literature and promotes the translation of Asian works into English.

Endless Song is the first South Asian literary work to win the prize and Venkatesan is the first person of South Asian descent to win it.

The award ceremony took place virtually, Oct. 16. Venkatesan chatted with Anne O. Fisher, vice president of the American Literary Translators Association, then gave a reading.

Poetry is her anchor

Venkatesan officially joined the 嘿嘿视频 faculty in 2007, the year she started her 罢颈谤耻惫腻测尘辞岣籭 translation, but she did not arrive on campus until 2008, after a research leave on fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Institute of Indian Studies.

VERSE IV.3.8

You鈥檝e entered my breath,
radiant light of wisdom
filling the seven beautiful worlds.
My breath is yours
Your breath is mine
I can鈥檛 describe how this is
I can鈥檛 describe the way you are.

鈥⑩赌⑩赌

She served as the religious studies chair from 2015 to 2018, took a one-year sabbatical, then served as chair again from 2019 to 2021. She is also affiliated with the Art History Program and the Graduate Group in Performance Studies. She was a Chancellor鈥檚 Fellow from 2014 to 2019.

She came to California from Madras, India, at age 18, studied two years at De Anza community college in Cupertino, then transferred to UC Berkeley where she earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree in English literature, and a master鈥檚 degree and doctorate in South Asian studies.

鈥淢y graduate work took me back to India, a place I knew, but yet had to relearn,鈥 she says on her . 鈥淧oetry remained my anchor through it all. I learned to translate and realized that it was the instrument to understand, perhaps even reconcile, my twin souls 鈥 one nurtured in India and another nourished in the U.S.鈥

She works primarily in early-medieval Tamil, translating from Tamil to English. 鈥淚 also work with a commentarial language that is a mixture of Tamil and Sanskrit called Manipravala (literally, gems and coral),鈥 she said.

Other works

Besides Endless Song, she has published A Hundred Measures of Time, her translation of Namm膩岣籿膩r鈥檚 100-verse Tiruviruttam; and The Secret Garland, her translation of 膧峁囜弓膩岣封檚 罢颈谤耻辫辫腻惫补颈 and N膩cciy膩r Tirumo岣籭, two of the most significant compositions by the ninth-century female poet and mystic K艒tai.

Venkatesan is working now as the director and co-editor of in which she and six others are translating the 12th-century 搁腻尘腻测补峁嘺 from Tamil to English. She is translating Book 5, 鈥淪undara K膩峁am(Loveliness).

She is a member of the editorial board of the project sponsor, the Murty Classical Library of India, an imprint of Harvard University Press.

Another of her projects is 鈥淧oetry Makes Worlds,鈥 on the annual Festival of Recitation (Adhyayanotsavam), supported by a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation (2018) and a Fulbright Flex Award (2017-19).

Additionally, she and three other scholars are studying the Nava Tirupati, a network of nine Vishnu temples along the Tamiraparani river. and extolled in Namm膩岣籿膩r鈥檚 poetry. 鈥淥ur project,鈥 she says on her website, 鈥渋s a study of how temple networks are constituted, how these temples dialog with their built environment, and the very important business of making heaven on Earth.鈥


The 嘿嘿视频 Books Blog, a project of News and Media Relations, announces newly published books by faculty and staff authors, and awards and events related to books by faculty and staff authors. Contact the books blog by email.

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Dateline Staff: Dave Jones, editor, 530-752-6556, dateline@ucdavis.edu; Cody Kitaura, News and Media Relations specialist, 530-752-1932, kitaura@ucdavis.edu.

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