On a hot day last month in

, K V Thangkabalu looked like a schoolboy, a class leader conveying to his mates a message from the principal who didn’t speak their language. There he stood on the podium, his neck craning towards Rahul Gandhi, eager to grasp the young leader’s English words and translate them to Tamil for the audience.

“That’s precisely why we love the people of

,” said Rahul. Without batting an eyelid, Thangkabalu translated: “We will show our strength.”

Clearly, Rahul didn’t catch it. He continued: “That’s why we respect the people of Tamil Nadu.” Thangkabalu turned to the mic and said: “Narendra Modi is the enemy of Tamils.”

In neighbouring

a few years ago, BJP leader K Surendran was equally hilarious while translating Narendra Modi’s speech.

Modi: “I apologise to the people of Kerala that I have come here late.” Surendran: “I have been visiting Kerala for a long time.”

Modi: “I promise you that I won’t be late hereafter.” Surendran: “So many things have changed in Kerala. I am happy about it.”

Two great writers of our times, Umberto Eco and Salman Rushdie, had different things to say about translation. Eco called translation the art of failure. Surendran and Thangkabalu, who later blamed it on poor acoustics, must have made Eco proud.

Rushdie said though it was normally supposed that something always gets lost in translation, “I cling obstinately to the notion that something can also be gained.”

MP Abdussamad Samadani, a two-time

member of IUML from Kerala, proved Rushdie right when he translated Rahul’s speech in Kerala last month. Samadani translated Rahul word by word when he said, “India is like the ocean over here. We want to listen to the ocean. We want to understand the ocean. We want to work with the ocean. On the other side is the BJP and the RSS.”

Then, when Rahul said “they don’t want to listen to the ocean,” Samadani launched his oratory skills thus: “They don’t want to listen to the roar of the waves resonating in the skies… they don’t want to understand the ocean.” Samadani wasn’t exaggerating, neither was he distorting anything that the Congress leader spoke. What Samadani did was infuse a bounty of energy into Rahul’s words and give his metaphors a vivid life that they lacked and longed for. That was class.

Translating political speeches is not everyone’s cuppa. A good translator has more than a good command over the languages of the speaker and the listener. He has knowledge beyond the immediate subject of the speech to understand the historical and contemporary relevance of what’s spoken, though he may not put that knowledge into words. He reads the audience as much as the speaker (sometimes even if the speaker doesn’t) and foresees what the speaker has up his sleeves. An outstanding translator may even steer the speaker.

Leaders like Indira Gandhi and V K Krishna Menon (the Malayalee who spoke in English during his 1971 election campaign in Trivandrum) were particular about their translators. Menon sometimes rewarded good translators with a personal gift, often a pen. Communist leader AKG, once speaking in Chennai, asked his mumbling translator to take a seat and spoke in smatterings of Tamil.

And there is this unverified anecdote of a Kerala trade union leader mistranslating CPM leader B T Ranadive sometime in the 1980s. Ranadive said: “The Left Democratic Front government in Kerala has done so much for the people that they have only this to say: We’re satisfied, satisfied, satisfied!” The trade union leader translated it thus: “The people of Kerala have only this to say about the Left Democratic Front government: We had enough, enough, enough!” He was sacked.