The question, asked on Instagram:
I was inspired and excited by the passage you shared. Since I also speak Tamil at home, I tried my hand at writing a hyper-literal poem for my poetry class.
…
I am referencing your video and you as a source of information and inspiration. I hope you're okay with this, and thank you so much for sparking this idea! It's brilliant.
I also was considering posting the poem and/or the essay to Substack, so please let me know if you're okay with that, or how you'd like me to acknowledge you!
And I wrote in response:
Thank you so much honestly. It means a lot to inspire others. If you can tell, I did think a lot about how to go about publicizing the method before going public with it. Authors have the rights to their words, but they do not have a right to methods they create, legally and I think morally as well. Regarding methods, if there is an innovation, and I hope I’ve made one, it’s giving due credit that matters.
In short, my wish is just if someone uses the method, they attribute it to me and call the method, ‘Senthil-Kumarian Hyper-Literal Verse! I think linguists will get mad at me calling it ‘hyper-literal,’ because that could be interpreted a lot of ways, but it gets the meaning across to laypeople. A name someone gave it in the comments that I also like is ‘Grammatical Transliteration.’ But in the context of literature, please use the name
I also cited this note from my piece on Tamally Ma’ak:
If people choose to take this verse form to places I haven’t yet dreamed of and wish to give me naming rights, I’d ask that the specific name for this kind of verse to be called “Senthil-Kumarian Hyper-Literal Verse/Translation.”
Tamil last names are patronymic, so that’s actually my father’s first name, but coming to America, I’ve accepted that it’ll forever be understood as a surname. If at times it gets attributed to my father, so be it. He is an unceasingly kind man. What little I have to offer the world, I have inherited its seed from him. I’d be happy to name it in his honor.
I also included, as another note on my Instagram story:
I will be closer to my chest about my specific translation system: how l currently am choosing to render the different parts of Tamil grammar into ‘English’ with consistent rules. That will be revealed if/when I choose to share more of the writing publicly.
To re-apply the method you need to be able to understand two languages very well and understand the morphology of each separately. And then be able to think about each in relation to each other very abstractly. It will be beautiful, but it will take time if you’re not already proficient.
But all good things come with labor. If you notice, we don’t really value them if they don’t.
Good luck, credit me for nothing less and nothing more than what you have learned from me, and make something beautiful!