Sunil Gangopadhyay's Bengali translation of Romeo and Juliet to be released

A Bengali translation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by late author Sunil Gangopadhyay will be released at the Kolkata Book Fair that begins Jan 29, 2013.

A Bengali translation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet by late author Sunil Gangopadhyay will be released at the Kolkata Book Fair that begins Jan 29, 2013.

Gangopadhyay, a prolific author of over 200 books and a former president of the Sahitya Akademi, died on Oct 23 following cardiac arrest.

"The compiled incomplete translations will be released at the book fair. Besides Romeo and Juliet, the compilation will also include around 25 to 30 of his previously unpublished poems," said Rahul Dasgupta, a scholar of comparative literature from Jadavpur University, who had assisted the stalwart.

According to Dasgupta, Gangopadhyay had started translating Shakespeare in the early 1980s.

"In the early eighties, he had started translating two of Shakespeare's tragedies, Hamlet and Romeo and Juliet. With Hamlet, he progressed only till Act 1, whereas with the latter he had managed till Act 3, Scene 1," said Dasgupta, who was with the writer for eight years.

The Hamlet translation is already available for readers.

"In fact, Gangopadhyay was not entirely happy with the translations of certain scenes of Romeo and Juliet and had written more than one version of those scenes. He was dissatisfied with some of the scenes and therefore they have more than one translated version. All the versions of the specific scenes will be made available in the compilation," added Dasgupta.

According to Dasgupta,the writer loved the Mahabharata from Indian literature and enjoyed Shakespeare when it came to English literature.