Alice in Malayalam: Reflections on Translating Carroll’s Linguistic Masterpiece

As a child growing up in rural Kerala, I didn’t have the skill or inclination to read English children’s books. I had access to plenty of Malayalam books, and I was happy reading them. My school library had a few Malayalam translations of English classics, but they were either too simple or too stiff for my liking. The illustrated, abridged translations often flattened the narrative by omitting subplots and minor characters. The unabridged versions often used obscure, old Malayalam, which was difficult for a child to understand, let alone enjoy. Looking back as an adult, I realise what I missed, and wish I had access to translations that engaged me as a child.

Decades later, the tables turned when a publisher approached me to translate Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland to Malayalam. The requirement was to make an unabridged translation for the Gen Alpha target audience. More than a professional assignment, I considered it an opportunity to create a translation that I would’ve enjoyed as a kid. 

I began reading the original version of Alice in Wonderland for the very first time. Soon, I realised that I had set myself up for a tremendous challenge. Carroll’s masterpiece is much more than a fantasy story. It’s a veiled satire of Victorian society conveyed through quirky minor characters, clever wordplay, twisted idioms, and nonsensical poems. In addition to telling the story, I needed to translate the wordplay and cultural nuances into Malayalam.

Linguistically, Alice in Wonderland is a Jenga tower made of homophones, idioms, and collocations. My challenge was to rebuild this language Jenga in Malayalam, where fitting pieces weren’t readily available. During the six months of translation, I found some right pieces and had to invent the missing ones.

The Homophone Challenge

One of the trademarks of Alice in Wonderland is the use of homophones to create humour. These jokes are hard to translate as the target language may not have a similar pair of homophones. I stumbled upon such a homophone pair early in the translation process. 

The Rat’s Tail/Tale

 In chapter three, Alice encounters a disgruntled rat who wants to tell her its sad tale. Rat says, “Mine is a long and sad tale.” Alice mistakes tale for tail. She looks at the rat’s tail and says, “It is a long tail, certainly, but why do you call it sad?” The rat is annoyed at Alice’s question, and poor Alice has no idea what she did wrong. All the while, the readers privy to the source of the confusion have a good chuckle. 

In Malayalam, tail is vaalu, and tale is katha, clearly not homophones. Even after racking my brain for days, I couldn’t find the right pair of words to recreate this joke. I evaluated how dropping the ‘tale/tail’ joke would affect the translation. The joke was a minor part of a larger, funny exchange between Alice and the rat. Yes, I would certainly lose a joke, but the omission wouldn’t affect the plot or the reader’s experience much, so I decided to move forward without getting stuck on this particular homophone pair. However, there were others I couldn’t afford to lose.

The Lessons that Lessen 

In chapter nine, “The Mock Turtle’s Story,” Carroll uses wordplay to mock the inefficient, memorisation-based British education system. In this chapter, two hybrid animals, the Mock Turtle and the Gryphon, talk to Alice about their education. Alice, who is keen on studies, asks them, “How many hours a day did you do lessons?” The Mock Turtle replies that they did lessons for ten hours the first day, nine hours the second day and so on. Alice finds it curious. As an explanation, the Gryphon says, “That’s the reason they’re called lessons… because they lessen from day to day.” 

The lessening lessons made perfect sense in English. But, in Malayalam, the noun lesson is paadam, and the verb lessen is kurayuka. Again, it was difficult to recreate this joke. However, it was crucial for the conversation, and I couldn’t omit it. I started with the noun paadam, which means lesson and found a homophone, paadam, which means paddy field. One word has a soft ‘d’ sound, whereas the other has a hard ‘d’. In Kerala, paddy fields are shrinking every day due to encroachments and illegal constructions. So, I decided to connect the shrinking paddy fields with ‘lessening lessons.’ 

In the Malayalam translation, the Gryphon says that their paadams (lessons) are shrinking every day, just like paadams (paddy fields). Even though it isn’t a direct translation of the original joke, I believe this provided a way for the conversation to flow. I am sure Carroll will forgive me for sneaking in a bit of climate activism into the translation.

The Tortoise that Taught Us 

One of the cleverest homophones in the book is tortoise and ‘taught us.’ It relies on the British pronunciation of tortoise in which the ‘r’ is silent. The Mock Turtle tells Alice that even though their teacher was a turtle, they called him a tortoise. Alice wonders why. “We called him tortoise because he taught us,” says the Mock Turtle.

There is no direct Malayalam translation for this one. So, I blended two Malayalam words, padippikkuka (teaching) and kadalaama (turtle). The resulting portmanteau was padiyaama, which is not an actual Malayalam word. When the Mock Turtle says they called their turtle teacher padiyaama, Alice is rightly confused. This allowed the conversation to progress as in the original version. 

English Collocations and Their Malayalam Adaptations 

Alice in Wonderland has plenty of collocations and idioms used in twisted ways. Thankfully, the literal translations of many of these idioms are already part of the Malayalam vocabulary. Some of them might have been introduced to Malayalam by early translators. This came really handy during translation.

A Dry Story

In chapter three, Alice and the other animals fall into the tear lake, and they swim to the shore. However, they are all soaked through and wonder how to dry themselves. The rat suggests something. It says, “All of you, listen to me! I’ll soon make you dry enough. This is the driest thing I know.” Then it tells a boring story. The idea is that a dry story will make the animals dry. Malayalam also uses the word unakka (dry) to describe boring things. So, in the translation, the phrase ‘dry story’ was literally rendered as unakka katha. 

Killing Time

Another example is about killing time. In the famous ‘Mad Tea Party’ chapter, Alice asks why it is always six o’clock for the Mad Hatter. The March Hare tells her the story of how the Mad Hatter sang a horrible song at the queen’s court, and the queen accused him of ‘killing time.’ The time was terrified, and it froze. So, it was always six o’clock for Mad Hatter and always tea time. The Malayalam idiom samayam kolluka is the literal translation of killing time. I believe this usage is not native to Malayalam, but was borrowed from English by early translators and became part of the Malayalam lingo. 

Translating Cultural Nuances and Their Satirical Effect

Even though Alice in Wonderland is set in a fantasy world, it contains many cultural references from Victorian England. Carroll repeatedly mocks the memorisation-based, rigid education system through Alice’s constant chanting of her lessons. Then, in chapter nine, ‘The Mock Turtle’s Story,’ Carroll makes a more direct, sharp criticism of the 19th-century British education system.

Mock Turtle Soup

Chapter nine is structured as a long conversation between Alice and two hybrid animals: Mock Turtle and Gryphon. I couldn’t understand what these animals represent and how they look. The only previous reference to Mock Turtle is the queen’s words. When Alice asks what Mock Turtle meant, the queen says, “It’s the thing Mock Turtle Soup is made from.” I searched for Mock Turtle soup and realised it was a popular delicacy in Britain during the 18th and 19th centuries. Traditionally, it was made from green turtles. As time passed, the availability of green turtles reduced and the soup became incredibly costly. So, people started making soup from the calf’s head and called it Mock Turtle soup.

At first, I wondered whether I should explain what ‘Mock Turtle soup’ meant. But then, I asked myself, “Will a Gen Alpha Malayali kid be interested in the details of an 18th-century British delicacy, especially in a fantasy story?” They might find it boring and skip the definition. Also, Carroll doesn’t bother to explain Mock Turtle soup in the original text, so I decided not to go into the soup’s history or cultural relevance.

Translating the name ‘Mock Turtle’ into Malayalam was also challenging. The original text has no physical description of the Mock Turtle. So, I turned to the illustrations that accompanied the original version of Alice in Wonderland. Mock Turtle is depicted as an animal with the head and hooves of a calf and the shell and flippers of a turtle. Looking at the illustration, I thought, “Now, that looks like a pashuvama.” In Malayalam, pashu means cow, and aama means a turtle. Pashuvama, the translation derived from the original illustration, had a nice ring to it.

The Mock Turtle’s chapter is full of wordplay, so I had to invent new words to translate them. Instead of reading and writing, Mock Turtle says, reeling and writhing. The use of these near-homophones isn’t just for comic effect but also conveys the pain of 19th-century British students who reeled and writhed under the education system. In the translation, I wanted to convey the essence that the Mock Turtle had a very messed-up education. But there were no direct words that could replicate this effect. So, I took the creative freedom to translate reeling and writhing as kuthikkurikkuka and perukkivayikkuka, which mean reading and writing with difficulty. I believe these words not just evoke a chuckle but also convey that the poor Mock Turtle’s education hasn’t been great.

This chapter is replete with such usages, but I didn’t try to translate every word play. Then it would become too much for the children and seem too forced. So, I chose to translate some of them to generate a sense of absurdity in the conversation. 

Queen’s Tarts

The 11^th chapter of Alice in Wonderland is a court scene where the Knave of Hearts is tried for stealing the Queen’s tarts. Tart is mentioned multiple times during the trial because it’s the stolen property. Tart isn’t a popular dessert in Kerala, so I felt it wouldn’t be right to use the word as is in Malayalam. I thought about translating tart into a dessert native to Kerala, like ada or kozhukkatta. But I wasn’t sure about my idea. So, I discussed it with Jayasree Kalathil, an award-winning translator. She pointed out that desserts like ada and kozhukkatta are very specific to Kerala. She asked me to consider this:  Will a queen in an English story cook Kerala-specific sweets like ada or kozhukkatta? The idea seemed completely out of place. 

So, I decided to use “cake,” which is universal and the standard term in Malayalam. I could safely do this because it didn’t matter what the Knave stole; his destiny would be the same. 

Translating for Gen Alpha: Challenges and Advantages

Translating a 19th-century English classic like Alice in Wonderland for 21st-century Gen Alpha Malayali kids comes with many challenges. They’re culturally and temporally far removed from the original text. Many cultural references, such as food, sports, and songs, have been lost to time. However, as a generation that appreciates and enjoys absurdism, I am sure Alice in Wonderland will appeal to Gen Alpha kids. They will relate to the Mock Turtle and the Cheshire Cat as much as they relate to Tralalero Tralala and Ballerina Cappuccina. I hope my Malayalam translation bridges the language gap and allows many more children to enjoy this classic.