PAPER 15: MODULE 01: E-TEXT

UGC MHRD e Pathshala

Subject: English

Principal Investigator: Prof. Tutun Mukherjee, University of Hyderabad

Paper: 15: “Literary Translation in India”

Paper Coordinator: Prof. T. S. Satyanath, University of Delhi

Module No 01: Concept of Translation in Western and Indian Traditions

Content Writer: Dr. MrinmoyPramanick, University of Calcutta

Content Reviewer: Prof. T. S. Satyanath, University of Delhi

Language Editor: Prof. T. S. Satyanath, University of Delhi

INTRODUCTION

Translation in broader sense is as old and as common as the human expression in the human

civilization. At the age of silence when human being was not able to communicate with words

but they used to communicate with different gestures, acting, dancing, human being used to

translate their mind into different kind of performances. Later on when the man found words and

sound in as their skill they also started to communicate with the greater community with the

process of translation. The story of babel of the Bible shows how the god brings divisions in the

community of the man and because of that the translation appeared as unavoidable medium for

communicating.

Each civilization holds its own method, practice and culture of translation. Translation is an ever

continuing force in any civilization. Each civilization shows its own pattern of translation,

reception of translation and objective of translation. Translation in a community is emerged not

only to communicate with the outsiders of the community but also to communicate with the

insiders. Translation as a medium holds records of knowledge of a particular community. Oral

tradition is quite often recorded into manuscript, when a community discovered themselves to be

written. If a community is solely dependent on the oral tradition, that community also tries to

keep their knowledge alive through different mode of translations through different artistic

mediums. In this process of carrying knowledge of a particular community translation is

observed in the method of changing signs and mediums.

Translation’s role as communication is one of the oldest practices in the domain of translation.

Ancient travelers used to communicate through different mode of translation. Ancient and

medieval civilization of India and Arab found translation as a mode of transferring knowledge

from one civilization to another. Indian ancient text Panchatantra was received by Persians and

it was translated into Persian and from that Europe came to know about this ancient Indian text.

The cultural connection between Arab world and India also has a friendly exchange of literature

through translation. Not only the unavoidable or natural mode of communicative translation but

also the literary translation has its age old history among the civilizations.

India and the west both has very old tradition of literary translation. And these two civilization

came to encounter with each other since the very beginning of European colonialism in India.

Both the civilization came to know about each other’s patterns of translating during the time of

colonization. It is needless to mention that these two civilization observes very distinct culture of

receiving translation, very distinct method of doing translation and very distinct way of

commenting on translation.

The basic difference between the notions of translation into these two civilization is in India

translation is received in its multiplicity whereas in West or in Europe translation is received in

very particular mode of literary communication which will be explored later in this module. But

it is also has to be observed that the scientific study of translation is not begun in India but in

west. Scientific study of Indian translation is something which is yet to get adequate attention.

Colonial experiences and post-colonial studies insisted for a scientific study of Indian translation
as translation carries history of culture and civilization. And translation also used as a tool of

colonial domination in India. Translation as an area of study is very much significant in India

because of colonial rule and colonizer’s use of translation for different purposes. But still Indian

scholarship is much ignorant towards defining translation, though the definitions of translation

already are there in different Indian ancient and medieval texts.

To find the notion of translation, a community already is having, is to find the history of

translation itself and history of the community, where different thoughts, ideas, and cultural

communication or cross connection happens in language. As, this module does not deal with

history of translation or not deals with translation in history, we briefly will discuss different

definitions and notions of translation found in Western and Indian culture in different texts, times

and on the notes of the thinkers. Here we also will discuss on the definition which is introduced

by different translation theorists.

INTRODUCTION TO TRANSLATION STUDIES

Translation Studies as a discipline deals with translation as a method, as a production and as a

phenomena. To understand the definition or notion of translation, I believe, it is important to

understand first the discipline. Because the discipline offers scientific study of translation and

scholars and theorists engaged with the discipline shape the definition of translation which is

found in particular culture and history of language and community. It is not the case that the

proper definition of translation is found only when the discipline is emerged but the discipline

helps to assimilate, organize and historically placed the definitions of the translation. It is only
the discipline which popularize few definition of translation according to the requirement. I

would specifically consider the discipline’s interference in the discourse of translation, as it finds

the definitions and notions on translation from the dark alleys of the history and culture.

Emergence of discipline of translation studies in the West is also historically significant in India,

because this information insists Indian academics to introduce it and since the time Indian

scholars started to practice translation studies as a paper in literature departments or introduced it

as an independent discipline, gradually the study of translation increased and Indian scholars

started to look into history to find the notions of translation already is there in Indian culture.

Translation Studies as a discipline deals with varieties of issues related with translation. Jeremy

Mundy, in his book Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications, defines the

nature of the discipline as, “Translation Studies is the new academic discipline related to the

study of the theory and phenomena of translation. By its nature it is multilingual and also

interdisciplinary, encompassing languages, linguistics, communication studies, philosophy and a

range of types of cultural studies” (1). The key term Translation Studies is popularized by the

Dutch based US scholar James S. Holmes in his paper published in 1972. Holmes wrote

translation studies is concerned with, “the complex of problems clustered round the phenomena

of translating and translations” (Mundy 5). Translation Studies as a discipline since 1990s has

been expanding its scope, it includes the study of not only literary translation but also offers

training to the translators, deals with adaptation, filmic translation, legal translation, translation

of non-literary documents, studying history and translation, sociology and translation,

anthropology and translation, gender and translation, globalization and translation, comparative

literature, world literature and translation etc.

DEFINITION OF TRANSLATION: WESTERN PERSPECTIVE

“Definitions of proper translating are almost as numerous and varied as the persons who
have undertaken to discuss the subject. This diversity is in a sense quite understandable;
for there are vast differences in the materials translated, in the purpose of the publication,
and in the needs of the prospective audience (161)” (Safi: 1). -E. Nida
There are quite good number of anthologies which trace the history of growth and development

of Western translation theories and also traces the history of translation practices. Few among

those collections are worth to know for the beginners for further study. T. R. Steiner’s anthology

of English translation theory readings from 1650 to 1800 (1975), Andrew Chesterman’s

Readings in Translation Theory (1989), Rainer Schulte and John Biguenet brought out, Theories

of Translation:An Anthology of Essays from Dryden to Derrida (1992),André Lefevere brought

out an anthology of Western Translation theory in 1992, Douglas Robinson published his book

from Routledge Western Translation Theory: from Herodotus to Nietzsche (1997).

Now let us begin with Herodotus’s idea of translation. Herodotus never theorized

translation in the sense we understand the concept. He also never addressed any methodology of

such kind. The beginning of the translation theory in the West is traced from Cicero who came

almost four hundred years after Herodotus. “But one of Herodotus’ central concerns is with

cross-cultural communication – how people speaking different languages manage to pass ideas

on to each other – and he places that process in an insistently geopolitical context” (Robinson:1).

Among the ancient western translators there is Aristeas who came after Herodotus. A book
called Letter of Aristeasinformed us about Alexandrian translation which was practiced as sacred

work and they used to wash their hands ritually every day before start with translating.

Rhetorician and famous orator Cicero comes in 106 BCE who is often considered as the founder

of Western translation theory. He is the first scholar who talks about method of translation and

also offers how to achieve the best translation. “His remarks on the pedagogical use of

translationfrom Greek to Latin in the training of an orator were expanded by Horace, Pliny the

Younger, Quintilian, and AulusGellius in Rome, adapted for medieval Christian theology by

Jerome, and cited repeatedly by Catholics and Reformers and Humanists in support of their

translatorial and pedagogical principles from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries”

(Robinson: 7).

Dryden proposes three types of translation which can be useful to understand all kinds of

translation. He says, first about metaphrase, or turning an author word by word, from lie by line

from one language into another. Ben Jonson’s translation of Horace’s Art of Poetry falls into this

category. The second, according to him is paraphrase or translation with latitude, where the

author is kept in view by the translator, so as never can be lost, but his words are not strictly

followed in his own sense, and that too is admitted to be amplified. Waller’s translation of

Virgin’s fourthAeneid falls into this category. The third way is that of imitation, where the

translator (if now he has not lost that name) assumes the liberty not only to vary from the words

and sense, but to forsake them both as he sees occasion, and taking only some general hints, from

the original, to run division on the groundwork as he pleases. Such is Mr. Cowley’s practice in

turning two Odes of Pindar, and one of Horace, into English.

 Goethe, eminent author, scholar and philosopher talks about translation and world

literature in his different notes on literature and other writings. In his concept of ‘third epoch’ of

translation, in which translation is not received ‘instead of’ the other text (the original) but rather

‘in the other’s stead’. Goethe said later, “When translating, one should go as far as the

untranslatable; only then does one becomes aware of the foreign nation and the foreign

language”.

Roman Jakobson, a renowned formalist divides translation in three ways, one is intra-

lingual, when translation took (Bassnett, Susan;)place in a same language, the second is inter-

lingual when translation happens between two languages and the third one is inter-semiotic,

when translation took place from one sign system to another sign system. E. Nida a famous

linguist and one of the most significant figure of modern translation theory of the West define

translation as, “Translation consists in reproducing in the receptor language the closest natural

equivalent of the source language message, first in terms of meaning and secondly in terms of

style” (Safi: 1). His most profound idea was on “equivalence” which is paid great attention by

the later theorists also. Equivalence is considered as most crucial and complex strategy to adapt

while translating a text of distant culture. He talks about two kinds of equivalences, one is formal

and the other is dynamic.

Language is paid central attraction of translation theory until 1980s in the West. It is not

only addressed by the linguistic turn of translation but historically Western theorists took

language very sincerely to understand the method of translation and they theorise how language

works while translating a text. And thus semiotics also becomes very significant to understand
the role of language, especially when formalist like Roman Jacobson gives his three tier

definition of translation. Susan Bassnett in her book, Translation Studies begins with the

“Central Issues” concerning the discipline of Translation Studies as the first chapter of the book

and she focuses on language and semiotics at first. She begins discussion with a quotation from

Hawkes’s 1977 book Structuralism and Semiotics, “The first step towards an examination of

the processes of translation must be to accept that although translation has a central core of

linguistic activity, it belongs most properly to semiotics, the science that studies sign systems or

structures, sign processes and sign functions” (22).

Later in the twentieth century we observe a theoretical and methodological flow of

intellectual inputs in the sphere of translation. Walter Benjamin’s ‘Task of the Translator’, Ezra

Pound’s ‘Guido’s Relation’, Borges’s ‘The Translators of the Thousands and one Nights’,

Nabokov’s ‘Problems of Translation’, Vinay and Darbelnet’s ‘A methodology for Translation’,

Jackobson’s ‘On Linguistic Aspects of Translation’, Nida’s ‘Principles of Correspondence’,

Catfords’ ‘Translation Shifts’, Levy’s ‘Translation as a Decision process’, Holmes’s ‘the name

and nature of translation studies’, George Steiner’s ‘the hermeneutic motion’, and Lawrence

Venuti’s ‘Translation, Community, Utopia’ are few among seminal texts which reconceptualise

translation in different cultural, historical, literary, linguistic and economic contexts.

DEFINITION OF TRANSLATION: INDIAN PERSPECTIVE

As I told earlier that translation in India has received in quite broader way. While in West early

theorists were quite serious about the issue of faithfulness in India, translation was received in

broader spectrum with its all possible verities. But unlike Europe, Indian translation is theorized
or any anthology has been published tracing the growth, development and nature of Indian

translation. When translation scholars or theorists talk about Indian concept of translation, they

took reference of different texts and notes of the translators to understand the nature of Indian

translation.

If we trace the history of idea of translation in pre-colonial India, we can find translation

was popularly practiced as ‘retelling’ in different Indian languages. Mainly the texts like the

Ramayana, the Mahabharata, the Purana and many more Sanskrit texts were used to be translated

into different Indian languages. And the stories of those source texts were re-told, recreated

again in the specific Indian language to make it more acceptable to the target audience. Such pre-

colonial translation has immense importance in the formation of bhashaor modern Indian

languages. Through these translations Loka, Desha and Bhashawere imagined. So translation

involved not only the local language but it helps people to imagine deshthrough telling of their

local stories or making the characters of deshi from Sanskrit which is known as Debabhasha.

According to K.Satchidanandan, “original has never been specially privileged” and “the

translator’s position has never been secondary” (Phukan 27(Phukan, Shibani;)) in India.

Such kind of retelling of classics or epics is also known as recreation or creative

departure which was very common practice or prevalent norm of translating. Pre-colonial

translation in India was also very much Intertextual, with reference of Sujit Mukherjee’s analysis

of Indian translation ShibaniPhukan says, “While I use 'transcreation' to describe the translation

practice of pre-colonial India, Sujit Mukherjee notes in 'Transcreating Translation' that a variety
of terms such as 'anuvad' or 'vivartanam' from Sanskrit and 'tarjuma' from Arabic were prevalent

in that period.3 Drawing on Mukherjee, I would like to argue that it is the very lack of a single

equivalent Indian word for the modern term 'translation' that demonstrates the plurality of

practices informing translation activities in pre-colonial India” (27).

Indranath Choudhury mentions that Indian is a ‘translation area’. Choudhury refers

Suniti Kumar Chatterjee and says that the Polyglottism in ancient Indian was responsible for

developing translation consciousness among Indians. “Vatsyayan's phrase lokopichanuvada

which means 'translatability' explains the historical length of existence of India's translating

consciousness” (113). “While piecing together what has been said about translation in different

texts one can realize that in Indian context the term for translation is anuvada i.e. repetition of

what is enjoined by a vedic text with a different wording. But repetition is not understood as a

literal word-by-word rendering of the original from source to target. In the Indian context the

reader is never a passive receiver of a text in which its truth is enshrined” (115). Choudhury also

mentions that “besides the notion of repetition (vidhivihitatasyanuvachanuvadah) Gopatha

Brahmana reflects on the doctrine of purposefulness of translation (saprayojanamanuvadah)”

(116). This is how Choudhury points out that the problem of translation is not cultural or

linguistic problem purely but aesthetic problem too. And the word ‘prayojanam’ is to mention

the aesthetic necessity of translation. Ancient Indian translation theorists were very much

concern about the aesthetic of translated text. Jaiminiya Nyaya says‘that the revelation of

meaning is translation’ (jatasyakathanamanuvadah, 1/4/6) (Choudhury 117). Kayyat and

Tolkapier talks about ‘Pramanaantar, the contextual meaning which means, when transferred,

translation becomes a reality’.

Indranath Choudhury refers, “AyyappaPanikar has pieced together some very useful

concepts in the context of medieval Indian translation of Sanskrit classics which, in fact, reveal

all that is said about translation by the Sanskrit theoreticians, but in a new dimension. These

concepts are: i) anukriti, ii) arthakriya, iii) vyaktivivekam and iv) ullurai. i) Anukriti is imitation

of the original. One can imitate only what one is not. The product of imitation is not the same

text, but a similar text; ii) Arthakriya is putting emphasis on the manifold ways in which

meanings are enacted in different texts. It emphasizes the creation of meaning or addition,

omission, displacement and expansion; iii) Vyaktivivekam is rendering of the meaning inferred

by the reader or invoking interpretation based on anumana or inference potential of a given

passage; iv) Ullurai is a Dravidian term primarily means the inner speech, not the heard melody

but the one unheard or the speech within. In a literary text this is the vital layer”(118).

During colonial era, we find translation is being used for very political purpose. One side

it helps to build contacts between the East and the West through the translations of the

orientalists and the other side it shows how cultural hierarchy and imperial rule was paced with

the hegemony of translation done by the British institution in India. Ganesh Devy says,

“translation as a political weapon is not always and necessarily employed towards reducing the

gap between the divine and the profane, the high and the low” (Phukan: 27).
 In recent years translation theorists like Sujit Mukherjee, Ganesh Devy, Harish Trivedi,

Uday Narayan Singh, Tejaswini Niranjana produced masterpieces on Indian translation of

colonial and post-colonial era.

CONCLUSION

This discussion on Eastern and Western ideas of translation introduces very brief and basic

understanding about translation. But translation studies as a discipline has been enriched very

much and it involves so many unexplored areas for mapping. So every day we are experiencing

new definitions, new methodologies, new ideas and new practices of translation. This new

explorations are introducing more complex issues involved in the work of translation. The

cultural turn and post-colonial approaches in Translation Studies is not only opening new

concepts and ideas of Western translation but Indian theoretical practice has also been adapted

all these theories to explore verity of Indian translations. (Hopkins, David;)

References
Bassnett, Susan;. Translation Studies. London New York: Routledge, 2002. Print.

Choudhury, Indranath;. "Towards an Indian Theory of Translation." Indian Literature (September-

October 2010): 113-123. eJournal.

Hopkins, David;. "John Dryden: Translator and Theorist of Translation." 7 March 2013. Lecture: UCL.

Mundy, Jeremy;. Introducing Translation Studies: Theories and Applications. London and New York:
Routledge, 2001. 1-5. ebook.

Phukan, Shibani;. "Towards and Indian Theory of Translation." n.d. 20 August 2016.
<http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/02690050308589864?needAccess=true>.

Robinson, Douglas;. Western Translation Theory: from Herodotus to Nietzsche. London, New York:
Routledge, 2002. ebook.