Translation in India

Name: Joshi Toral

Paper: 5 Translation Studies

Topic: Translation in India

M.A.:-II

SEM: 3

Year: 2012

Submitted to,

Dr. Dilip Barad,

M.K. Bhavnagar University,

Bhavnagar

·       Translation:

             Translation is the interpretation of the meaning of a text in one language and the production, in another language, of an equivalent text that communicates the some message.

TRANSLATION IN INDIA: S.K.Verma

India is a multi-lingual and multi-cultural country. Should like to have ere are twenty-two major Indian languages and ten thousand dialects spoken in India. In this network, English has an important role to play. In such a society, for people to move from one language to another, from one culture to another, it is always useful to acquire the skill of translating from one language to another.

            Every language and every piece of creative writing provides a window on the expanding universe around the people using that language. It is exciting and enriching to see the same universe viewed and represented in different ways in different languages. A multi-lingual person man therefore be said to have a multi-focal view of the universe. This leads me on to state that multi-lingual’s is a resource, a boon. In a multi-lingual setting, we would like to have firsthand knowledge of the culture underlying the languages in contact and one of the best ways of doing it is by looking at the translations of the literary texts because it may not be possible for an individual to learn a variety of languages. Translation, looked at from this point of view, not only make us familiar with culture and languages but also enable us to enrich and reinforce our languages as the result of its intense translation-based interaction with other languages.

                             One of the marked properties of the major Indian languages is that they have systems of “address” or a network “politeness strategies” which reflect Indian culture, behavior and pattern thinking and interpersonal relationship that are typically Indian 

 If a translator knows that there are different syntactic mechanisms for bringing as item into focus in English such as: “I like fish/” “It is fish that I like/” “They think that what I like is fish”- he can then consider the possible choices in the target language and select that particular syntactic mechanism which brings out the thematic pressure that he finds in the original text.

·       Role of Translation in India Literature:                 

                                             -K M GEORGE

Do we realize the great significance of translation in a world which has at least 3000 developed languages? I Doubt. Translation is an activity that goes on without any break in every part of the world from and into every important.

Progress in society is measures with reference to the speed of movement of goods, plants, animals and human beings-but above all ideas.  But languages are still barriers in communication and the solution is still translations. Thus, if something important happens in any corner of the globe, within a few seconds the whole worlds comes to know of it.

                                      Varieties of Translation:

 “Art of Translation”

1.    All purely informative statements like announcements at railway platforms.

2.    Ordinary readable prose that has no outstanding characteristics.

3.    Poetry and prose having an enjoyable content, in other words literature.

4.     Learned, scientific, technical and practical writings.

First category is possible, and adds that adequate translation of the second and fourth categories is possible in any cultivated language. However in the case of the third category, translation is an extremely difficult occupation. In place of literature, generally speaking, manner is more important than matter.

         

          In literature itself, a similar categorization is not only possible but natural.

1 The literature of power, where the emotional aspect is dominant and

 2 The literature of knowledge where the content is more important than the manner of exposition is well known. Poetry, drama and fiction belong to the former category and the dominance of the creative element in these makes then more difficult for translation. In genres like biography and autobiography, the creative element is there in some measures. But there are also various kinds of prose writings where the intellectual element dominates, and they can be grouped under discursive prose.

          “Poetry cannot be translated”

—Dr. Johnson

“All translation seems to be simply an attempt to solve an insolvable problem”

—Humboldt

       

“Translation can offer us but a vague equivalent”

—Virginia Woolf

“Poetry is that which is lost in translation”

- Robert Frost.

Indian Literature in English Translation

          There are advantages and disadvantages in translation an Indian literary work into English.

 Even though English and Hindi are link languages in India, an English translation of a literary work has a better all India reach, not to speak of its reach in other parts of the world. And English is a language which has assimilated a good deal of the cultural experiences of a large part of the world and developed its range and aesthetic refinement, such being the case. Translation of the same work into Bengali or Hindi is more difficult. This is despite the great capacity and development of English in the last 150 years, and it is particularly so when the translation is done by a writer who has learnt English only as a second language.

“All translation is a compromise between the effort to be literal and the effort to be idiomatic”

 -Benjamin Jowett’s