Two things can be held against me in connection with this translation: one concerns the selection of the work, the other the way in which I have translated it. One group of people will say that I should not have translated this particular author, another group that I should not have translated him in this way.
---Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt (A French translator of the Greek and Latin classics)
On personal note, in last month I was searching for original translation of the “War and Peace” by Leo Tolostoy. After going through different variety of versions, editions and translations of the novel which is originally spread across six volumes, I narrowed down on the version of Constance Garnett. And after analysing my decision, I came to know that I chose it because Garnett in his life has spent considerable amount of time with the Leo Tolostoy. Another day, I was reading the interview of Orhan Pamuk, the celebrated author of Turkey, now have been translated in more than sixty languages across the world. Pamuk was conveying how painful and rigorous the process is when he works tirelessly for months with the co-translator Maureen Freely. He was basically narrating the need to work together by being with each other. After reading that I got the impression that writer and author cannot live in different environments at all.
Renaissance and Modernisation (?): Historical location of Translation as Cultural Capital (?)
Now going back in history, the colonial period saw a spurt in translations between European languages and Indian languages, especially Sanskrit. While there were exchanges between German, French, Italian, Spanish and Indian languages, English was considered privileged by its hegemonic status as it was used by the colonial masters. The British phase of translation into English culminated in William Jones’s translation of Kalidasa’s Abhijnanasakuntalam. Sakuntalam as a text has now became a marker of India’s cultural prestige and one of the primary texts in Indian consciousness. This explains how it came to be translated into more than ten Indian languages in the 19th century. The (colonial?)/British attempts in translation were determined by the Orientalist ideology and the need for the new rulers to grasp, define, categorise and control India.
They created their own version of India while the Indian translators of texts into English sought to extend, correct, revise and sometimes challenge the British understanding though the whole battle was fought around ancient texts rather than the contemporary ones. Raja Rammohan Roy’s translations of Sankara’s Vedanta and the Kena and Isavasya Upanishads were the first Indian interventions in English translations of Indian texts by Indian scholars. It was followed by R.C. Dutt’s translations of Rigveda, the Upanishads, Ramayana, Mahabharata, and a few classical Sanskrit plays. These translations were meant to challenge the Romantic and Utilitarian notions of Indians as submissive and lethargic. Then came a flood of translations by others like Dinabandhu Mitra, Aurobindo and Rabindra Nath Tagore to name only a few. Translations between Indian languages also began around this time, though in a limited way.
Translation activities should be regarded as having cultural significance. Consequently, 'translatorship' amounts first and foremost to being able to play a social role, i.e. to fulfil a function allotted by a community — to the activity, its practitioners, and /or their products — in a way which is deemed appropriate in its own terms of reference. The acquisition of a set of norms for determining the suitability of that kind of behaviour and for manoeuvring between all the factors which may constrain it, is therefore a prerequisite for becoming a translator within a cultural environment.
Cultural capital can be loosely defined as that which is necessary for an individual to be seen to belong to the 'right circles' in society. When Kemal Ataturk, father of modern Tukry proposed a state-inspired process of Westernisation that would bring Turkey closer to Europe, a programme of translation of major European literary works ensured that Turkish readers would have access to the cultural capital of the west. Postcolonial translation theory is yet another example of how research in the field of translation has developed in parallel with research in literary and historical studies more generally. In India, Canada and Brazil, to name but three centres of postcolonial translation activity, questions have been asked about the unequal power relationships that pertain when a text is translated from, say, Tamil or Kannada into English, the language of the colonising power. Translation, as some scholars argue, is a collusive activity that participates in the fixing of colonised cultures into a mould fashioned by the superior power and was a crucial component of European colonisation on the American continent and other colonies across the world.
There are still occasional dissenting voices who argue that translation, surely, is primarily about language, not culture, and that the proper business of translation studies is to focus on the linguistic aspects of the translation process. In response to such voices, Bassnett answers that of course translation scholars must focus on language, for translation is, after all,
about transferring a text from one language to another. But separating language from culture is like the old debate about which came first – the chicken or the egg. Language is embedded in culture, linguistic acts take place in a context and texts are created in a continuum not in a vacuum. A writer is a product of a particular time and a particular context, just as a translator is a product of another time and another context. Translation is about language, but translation is also about culture, for the two are inseparable. This argument believes translation being an implicit in processes of cultural transformation and change.
Translating can be seen as a problem-solving activity in which a source element may be rendered by one or more elements in the target language. If translators have only one available option, there is no more to be said; no philosophy is needed. When, however, they have two or three options, translation is worth talking about, ideally between translators, who thus start theorising. And when, as occasionally occurs, there are numerous options available and no clear theory about how to reduce that complexity, the cause for discussion reaches levels where philosophical discourse may be turned to, for ideas about the options, although rarely for the translational solutions. This can be seen in most of the theories and approaches already dealt with by many scholars: philosophical discourses tend to be appealed to, or intervene, with respect to problems where more than three or four alternatives are available. To develop words appropriate to those alternatives might be the role of philosophy to adapt and propose them might be one of the roles of Translation Studies.
Contemporary Indian scenario and government initiatives:
The National Translation Mission was launched in India few years ago envisioning these objectives: Ø To act as a store-house of information on translation involving Indian languages and to make information regarding all aspects of translation available – by creating, maintaining and constantly updating information on translations published, training programmes scheduled, translation tools and instruments available and new initiatives, and facilities such as a ‘National Register for Translators’.
Ø To work as a clearing house for all translation activities, both theoretical and practical, in as many Indian languages as possible;
Ø To provide links between users of translated material at different levels and in different activities to the public and private agencies and organisations and individuals involved in translation and translation-related activities involving Indian languages;
Ø To prioritise the translation of pedagogic materials at all levels (including primary onwards to tertiary education) specifically in natural and social sciences;
Ø To project Indian languages and literatures in this region and abroad through high-quality translation;
Ø To create and maintain various tools for translation, and to especially encourage the preparation of bilingual and multilingual bi-directional general as well as special-purpose translational dictionaries, word-finders, and thesauri; and
Ø To promote printed as well as virtual publication of works on Translation Studies jointly or independently for the benefit of all institutions and individuals interested in the field.
Ø To provide a forum for dialogue by creating a bulletin board for people to post questions and answers.
Ø To provide guidance in the methodology of translation and undertake activities to enrich teaching and training activities in translation studies.
For the promotion and dissemination of good quality translation material, National Knowledge Commission (NKC) recognised importance of avoiding translation as a one-way street from English to Indian languages. On the contrary it was emphasised that there is a wealth of material available in Indian languages which also requires greater dissemination both in English and in other Indian languages. Interestingly one of the objectives of the NKC recommendations is very interesting. It reads: “To project Indian languages and literatures in this region and abroad through high-quality translation.” In particular, the tradition of viewing translation as a parallel avenue of creativity should be encouraged.
NKC has kept in view the long nourished hierarchy and power relations in different languages. They throw light on need for a horizontal paradigm which does not create a vertical distinction between donor and receiving languages, and promotes the multilinguality and cultural diversity of India. There is already a proliferation of some translation in certain areas which reflects a wider social churning as well as the requirements and aspirations of newly literate groups. Renowned author Salman Rushdie decodifies this process happening in contemporary post-colonial India. He argues that:
The prose writing - both fiction and non-fiction - created in this period by Indian writers working in English, is proving to be a stronger and more important body of work than most of what has been produced in the 16 "official languages" of India(in 1997, now 22), the so-called "vernacular languages", during the same time; and, indeed, this new, and still burgeoning, "Indo-Anglian" literature represents perhaps the most valuable contribution India has yet made to the world of books. There has long been a genuine problem of translation in India - not only into English but between the vernacular languages - and it is possible that good writers have been excluded by reason of their translators' inadequacies rather than their own.
Even the most cursory reading of publishers’ catalogues confirms that the foreign-language texts we call ‘classics’ do not merely attract translation, but eventually, when their copyright expires, become subject to multiple retranslations, as publishers scramble to transform the cultural capital those texts have acquired into economic capital. Nonetheless, it can be argued that translation functions as one cultural practice through which a foreign text attains the status of a classic: the very fact of translation not only implies that the text has been judged valuable enough to bring into another culture, but also increases this value by generating such promotional devices as jacket copy, endorsements, and advertisements and by enabling such diverse modes of reception as reviews, course adoptions, and scholarly research which famously claim that ‘Classical masterpieces live only in translation.’
Author-Translator Relation
One of the early pioneers of the translations, Alexander Tytler explains: “If it is necessary that a translator should give a complete transcript of the ideas of the original work, it becomes a question, whether it is allowable in any case to add to the ideas of the original what may appear to give greater force or illustration ; or to take from them what may seem to weaken them from redundancy. This liberty may be used, but with the greatest caution. The superadded idea shall have the most necessary connection with the original thought, and actually increase its force. And, on the other hand, that whenever an idea is cut off by the translator, it must be only such as is an accessory, and not a principal in the clause or sentence. It must likewise be confessedly redundant, so that its retrenchment shall not impair or weaken the original thought. Under these limitations, a translator may exercise his judgement, and assume to himself, in so far, the character of an original writer.”
John Dryden believed that “We are bound to our author’s sense, though with the latitudes already mentioned; for I think it not so sacred, as that one iota must not be added or diminished, on pain of an Anathema. But slaves we are, and labor in another man’s plantation. . He, who invents, is master of his thoughts and words: he can turn and vary them as he pleases, till he renders them harmonious; but the wretched translator has no such privilege: for, being tied to the thoughts, he must make what music he can in the expression; and, for this reason, it cannot always be so sweet as that of the original.
Translation and Questions about Universe of Discourse
There are more assertive questions asked in this context from few scholars.
“Why is it necessary to represent a foreign text in one’s own culture? Does the very fact of doing that not amount to an admission of the inadequacy of that culture? Secondly, who makes the text in one’s own culture “represent” the text in the foreign culture? In other words: who translates, why, and with what aim in mind? Who selects texts as candidates to “be represented?” Do translators? And are those translators alone? Are there other factors involved? Thirdly, how do members of the receptor culture know that the imported text is well represented? Can they trust the translator(s)? If not, who can they trust, and what can they do about the whole situation, short of not translating at all?
If a translation is, indeed, a text that represents another, the translation will to all intents and purposes function as that text in the receptor culture, certainly for those members of that culture who do not know the language in which the text was originally written. Let us not forget that translations are made by people who do not need them for people who cannot read the originals. Fourthly, not all languages seem to have been created equal. Some languages enjoy a more prestigious status than others, just as some texts occupy a more central position in a given culture than others—the Bible, for instance, or the qur’an. Fifthly, why produce texts that “refer to the other texts? Why not simply produce originals in the first place?”
Scholars interested in the study of translation and cross-cultural communication are beginning to realize that the study of translation is much more than mere normative rule-giving designed to ensure the production of the “best” possible translations. Translation needs to be studied in connection with power and patronage, ideology and poetics, with emphasis on the various attempts to shore up or undermine an existing ideology or an existing poetics. It also needs to be studied in connection with text-type and register, and in connection with attempts to integrate different Universes of Discourse. Translation Studies has begun to focus on attempts to make texts accessible and to manipulate them in the service of a certain poetics and/or ideology. Seen in this way translation can be studied as one of the strategies cultures develop to deal with what lies outside their boundaries and to maintain their own character while doing so—the kind of strategy that ultimately belongs in the realm of change and survival, not in dictionaries and grammars.
Translations are not merely advantageous to all the arts and sciences but absolutely vital to them, both for a whole life and for specific moments in it, as long as they are faithful to the original. Translations tend to become unfaithful because translators do not know the language or the topic they are dealing with. Words are finite in number but things are infinite and therefore many people are taken in by the similarities between words, what is called synonymy, and they do not know what the text is about. Consequently, ignorant translators are deceived and deceive those who trust them, sometimes on the level of style and diction and sometimes on the level of content or that of the characteristic features an author uses. Ideas are common to the understanding of all men but words and manners of speechs are particular to different nations.
Translation in Modern Professional World
National Knowledge Commission also engages the problems of science and technical translation. Unlike for literary translation, there is need for greater standardisation of terms and concepts so as to ensure both better comprehension and ease of moving across languages. However, not all terms should necessarily be translated, as there is growing acceptance of some scientific terms to be used in all languages. Further, translation today is an under-rewarded activity both in terms of social recognition and monetary remuneration, and these needs to be changed. It is also important to note that translation is an individual activity but also a social enterprise, in which success which may require the involvement of a range of different people at different stages and team work.
Jaques Delille said that like all human institutions, language, that marvellous charter of our higher destiny, also strives for the better, and the individual who becomes an organ of this general desire by engaging in certain endeavours, deserves well of language. There is only one indispensable condition: that he should not demolish while engaged in the act of construction. The innovation proposed should not be allowed to contradict what is already firmly established. If a language were merely something pieced together, made up of similar or dissimilar components, a formless mass, one would be allowed to change it or add to it at will, and every enrichment would be a gain, without exception. But language is an ordered whole, or at least it is meant to be gradually growing into one. All its elements attract or reject each other according to the laws of kinship and similarity. General forms pervade it, bring matter to life and bind it together with their power.
All translators are united in that they face the same challenges, i.e. the general lack of consideration for their work, the complexity and technicality of the tasks involved, the impact of the ICT revolution on their working practices, the upheaval caused by the Internet, the industrialisation of the translation process and translating practices, market globalisation and job de-localisation, the increasing encroachment of language engineering applications, the rivalry between ‘linguists’ and ‘technicians’, the stringent requirements of quality certification, the fight for official recognition of a professional status (where this is not already effective), or even the fight for survival of the more traditional ‘cottage industry’ translators. Not to mention the fact that cost-effectiveness, both direct and indirect, both in the short-term and in the long-term, tends to be the be-all and end-all of professional practice, since most people who need or request translations want ever more for ever less.
Translators may be called upon to translate just about anything. Any text, message, fragment of a message or code element may need to be translated. A comprehensive list of materials that are commonly translated would include software programs, video games, software on-line help systems, insurance contracts, extradition proceedings, film sub-titles, songs, film dialogues, all kinds of soundtracks, drug dosage instructions, obituaries, mail catalogues, mobile phone instructions, marketing certificate applications, sales contracts, health certificates, user manuals (millions of them), parts lists, commercial statistics, registry office certificates, educational qualifications and certificates, confidential diplomatic memos, advertising leaflets, adverts, magazine and newspaper articles, alarm system documentation,
customer complaints, the faxed minutes of a meeting before the next session starts, poems, novels, short stories, biographies, bills of lading and customs forms, post card titles, medical files, extradition requests, technical memos, annual reports, letters to the shareholders, DNA analysis reports, machine user instructions, patents and many more.
Is translation really about language or culture or technical knowledge?
Gaudec argues that languages are essential but insufficient. What is needed beyond absolute linguistic proficiency is a perfect knowledge of the relevant cultural, technical, legal, commercial backgrounds, and a full understanding of the subject matter involved. Translation may also be viewed as a strategic, economic, ideological and cultural weapon. But it must be emphasized that such a weapon can sometimes backfire. Thus, while good translations help improve market penetration and product acceptance by adding value to the product or process concerned (whether it be a book, a film, a tractor, an extradition request, a catalogue, a computer, flowers, a sales offer, a veneering machine, etc.) inadequate, poor, or disastrous translation can do no end of damage to an export product or process.
Transfer is therefore cultural in nature first – which means appropriate adaptations of contents, organisation, and mode of thinking may have to be made by the translator. The latter must therefore understand exactly what message has to be carried over to whom before organising the content of his own message and expressing it in the appropriate code (that code being most generally, but not exclusively, a language-based code). The visible substitution of linguistic or non-linguistic signs and codes comes second to the deeper and less visible substitution of thought processes, discourse structure, presentation techniques and rationales, modes of analysis of objects or concepts or interpretation and subliminal suggestion – which means the translator must have a perfect knowledge of the thought processes, mental habits or mores of the target group or community.
Thus, the translator is a key actor in the process of importing or exporting ideas, concepts, rationales, thought processes, discourse structures, pre-conceived ideas, machines, services, myths and so on. He is also a vital go-between in operations and actions involving international co-operation (customer information, extradition procedures, sales, purchases, exchanges, travel, etc.). He is in fact an extremely powerful and critical agent facilitating and even at times enabling economic, strategic, cultural, technical, literary, legal, scientific and ideological exchanges throughout the world. (ibid)
Being a combination of both, technical translators are constantly confronted with the need to dispel deep-rooted doubts about the ability of linguists to understand and translate technical material, or conversely, about the ability of engineers to acquire translation skills which are normally the result of long and complex learning processes. The two positions are usually expressed as (a) ‘None but a technician really understands such things and can actually translate them’ or (b) ‘Actually training someone to be a translator takes no end of time and technical knowledge without writing skills and linguistic-stylistic finesse is simply not enough.
Translating can now be understood as an intricate implication of three orders of signification. The first order consists of the foreign text, although the very decision to translate it continues a process of interpretation and evaluation that has preceded that decision in both the foreign and receiving cultures. The second or meta-linguistic order consists of the translation that inscribes meaning in the foreign text by recontextualizing it. Divergent readers bring divergent cultural tastes and abilities to their reading, leading them to process the text in divergent ways. Bourdieu has suggested that ‘elite’ taste rests on the use of specialized knowledge in the detached formal appreciation of a cultural object, drawing the boundary between art and life, whereas popular taste seeks to erase that boundary through a vicarious participation in the object, a sympathetic identification with characters as real people, for instance, which often leads to the inference of moralistic lessons for conduct. An elite reading experience, then, is more likely to interrogate the illusionism that results from fluent translating and mystifies the interpretative and evaluative inscription, while a popular reading is more likely to accept the illusionistic transparency as the truth of foreign text, taking the inscription as inherent feature.
Translation and Communication: Globalising the convergence and challenges
McBride Report launched by UNESCO three decades ago predicted the massive current of changes inherent in modern societies. It said: “There is virtually no limit to the variety and ingenuity of the modes of communication employed by human beings. Different languages arose because of lack of contact among people of different regions, but especially because societies with distinct economic, moral and cultural traditions required specific vocabularies and linguistic structures. But at the same time, even within communities, distinction between social groups – especially between dominant elites and mass of population –came to be reflected in differences in idiom and vocabulary, in the meaning given to certain words. Millions of people today speak languages which are not understood, even though close social and economic links have been established.
Words being symbol of human experience, the perceptions underlying them have undergone change over time and in response to new situations. Moreover, all languages are in shape of incessant change—sometimes gradual, sometimes gradual and rapid. They respond to new needs arising from developments in thoughts and knowledge, in productive techniques and in social relationships, in political and economic structures. Words therefore change their meanings and acquire fresh, new applications, specialised technical terms pass into general usage; and new words are invented. There is at any given time, a difference between formal language and everyday colloquial speech, and between the speech of the older and younger generation. The process reminds us that language is not corpus of learning, but an instrument adapted to human purposes.”
A very fresh article of 9th March 2011 published in Times Literary Supplement asks a provocative question. It asks: The futures of the English language - Will English survive as a lingua franca, or will translation technology make it unnecessary? Should we call it as a justice of history which repeats itself or it is another human intervention induced by technological innovation to determine the fate of another historical project of translation to influence or to be get influenced by the literature of other cultures and languages? I am confused because of the invasion of many translations coming from across the seven oceans and equally puzzled about my own native sister languages in the Indian subcontinent where I live, they seem like alien one.
The lifestyle and way of free, rational way of modernism is understood by me through the translations of western classics rather than our own. Of course, the values and the principles of civilisation of the distant culture are equally traceable in the every corner of the world. Credible works of Upendra Bakshi, noted scholar of Jurisprudence and Law narrated in detail how concept of Human Right is not only western but equally eastern. Nobel Laureate Amrtya Sen through his work of Argumentative Indian showed that India also possessed for centuries long tradition of liberal, tolerant and civilised debate and arguments.
Even though they communicated these ideas in English, it was a crucial effort to make us feel that inspirations for which one may discover or initiate the process of translations may well be present in your own tradition of thinking, intellectual history. We need to respect to that vast potential of intellectual history rooted in the contemporary/classic Indian regional language literature which is living memory of my parent society and ancestor`s culture. Unfortunately due to lack of appropriate institutional or rewarding translation culture we are immune from any elemental improvement in capabilities of communication of the intellectual history which is very much embodiment of our linguistic diversity of India through which entire freedom struggle of 150 years is based upon and continues to drive the project of Indian democracy in last sixty years disregarding many unfortunate hurdles and sustaining the historic achievements marked by constant-rigorous debate which is never dominated by one language but hundreds of dialects and now 22 official languages.
This timely article in Times Literary Supplement envisages the multilingual society in which there is just, orderly information society. Innovations in translation technology will in turn remove the necessity for a global lingua franca. The increasing availability of linguistic corpora in electronic form will generate the language-processing resources needed for machine translation, facilitating interlingual communication, where each party uses its own language. Interlingual communication will reach beyond the languages of the global technological powers: Automatic tools are going to become capable of bridging the gap between any languages”, with the ticket for admission into the new information society being “a dictionary, grammar, parser, and a multi-million-word corpus of texts – and they’d better all be computer tractable.
Finally before I conclude, I once again attract your attention towards the lack of discussion about original voice in Indian literature; rather void of genuine originality being reflected in English language literature compared to intense need of it to be published in Indian regional language. He says, “However, Indian critical assaults on this new literature continue. Its practitioners are denigrated for being too upper-middle-class; for lacking diversity in their choice of themes and techniques; for being less popular in India than outside India; for possessing inflated reputations on account of the international power of the English language, and of the ability of Western critics and publishers to impose their cultural standards on the East; for living, in many cases, outside India; for being deracinated to the point that their work lacks the spiritual dimension essential for a "true" understanding of the soul of India; for being insufficiently grounded in the ancient literary traditions of India; for being the literary equivalent of MTV culture, of globalising Coca-Colonisation.” (Rushdie, 1997)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
National Translation Mission; A Detailed Project Report, Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore, Feb 2008
Proposal for National Translation Mission by National Knowledge Commission Proposal; 1st Sept 2006
Lawrence Venuti, “Translation, Interpretation, Canon Formation”, Translation and the Classic Identity as Change in the History of Culture Edited by ALEXANDRA LIANERI and VANDA ZAJKO, Oxford University Press 2008
Tytler, Alexander F, and Jeffrey F. Huntsman. Essay on the Principles of Translation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1978. Print.
John Dryden, 1631–1700. English poet, dramatist, critic and translator. Extract from the “Dedication” to his translation of the Aeneid.
Poetics refers generally to the theory of literary discourse and specifically to the theory of poetry, although some speakers use the term so broadly as to denote the concept of "theory" itself.
Jacques Delille, 1738–1813. French cleric, poet, and translator. Extract from the preface to his translation of Virgil’s Georgics, published in 1769.
Kerstin Hoge, The Times Literary Supplement, March 9, 2011; Book review of THE LAST LINGUA FRANCA English until the return of Babel by Nicholas Ostler, 313pp. Allen Lane
