This task is a response to the task assigned by Megha Ma'am as part of thinking activity.
1.)What is Plagiarism and what are its consequences?
Plagiarism is presenting someone else’s work or ideas as your own, with or without their consent, by incorporating it into your work without full acknowledgement. All published and unpublished material, whether in manuscript, printed or electronic form, is covered under this definition.
Derived from the Latin word plagiarius ("kidnapper"), to plagiarise means "to commit literary theft" and to "present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source". Plagiarism involves two kinderen. Using another person's ideas, information, or expressions without acknowledging that person's work constitutes intellectual theft. Passing off another person's ideas, information, or expres.. sions as your own to get a better grade or gain some other advantage constitutes fraud.
Consequences:-
A complex society that depends on well-informed citizens strives to maintain high standards of quality and reliability for documents that are publicly circulated and used in government, business, industry. the professions, higher education, and the media. Because search has the power to affect opinions and actions, responsible writers com- pose their work with great care. They specify when they refer to an- other author's ideas, facts, and words, whether they want to agree with, object to, or analyse the source. This kind of documentation not only recognizes the work writers do; it also tends to discourage the circulation of error, by inviting readers to determine for themselves whether a reference to another text presents a reasonable account of what that text says. Plagiarists undermine these important public values.
Students exposed as plagiarists may suffer severe penalties. Ranging from failure in the assignment or in the course to expulsion from school. This is because student plagiarism does considerable harm. For one thing, it damages teachers' relationships with students, turn- ing teachers into detectives instead of mentors and fostering suspicion instead of trust. By undermining institutional standards for assigning grades and awarding degrees, student plagiarism also becomes a mat- ter of significance to the public. When graduates' skills and knowl- edge fail to match their grades, an institution's reputation is damaged. For example, no one would choose to be treated by a physician who obtained a medical degree by fraud. Finally, students who plagiarise harm themselves. They lose an important opportunity to learn how to write a research paper. Knowing how to collect and analyse information and reshape it in essay form is essential to academic success." This knowledge is also required in a wide range of careers in law, journalism, engineering, public policy, teaching, business, govern- ment, and not-for-profit organisations.
Plagiarism betrays the personal element in writing as well. Discuss- ing the history of copyright Mark Rob notes the tie between our writing and our sense of self-a tie that, he believes, influenced the idea that a piece of writing could belong to the person who wrote it! Rose says that our sense of ownership of the words we write "is deeply rooted in our conception of ourselves as Individuals with at least a modest grade of singularity, some degree of personality Authors and Owners: The Invention of Copyright Gaining skill as a writer opens the door to learning more about yourself and to developing a personal voice and approach in your writing, It is essential for all student writers to understand how to avoid committing plagiarism.
These are the five most common types of plagiarism:
Global plagiarism means passing off an entire text by someone else as your own work.
Paraphrasing plagiarism means rephrasing someone else’s ideas to present them as your own.
Patchwork plagiarism means stitching together parts of different sources to create your text.
Self-plagiarismmeans recycling your own past work.
2)Write a short note on:-
a.)Forms of Plagiarism
Repeating or Paraphrasing Wording:-
When you use someone else work with minor changes then it's called plagiarism for example,
Original phrase:-
Some of Dickinson's most powerful poems express her firmly held conviction that life cannot be fully comprehended without an under- standing of death.
Plagiarism:-
Emily Dickinson firmly believed that we cannot fully comprehend life unless we also understand death.
Taking a Particularly Apt Phrase:-
When you use someone's lines and don't cite it. For example,
Original phrase:-
Everyone uses the word language and everybody these days talks about culture.... "Languaculture" is a reminder.
Plagiarism:-
At the intersection of language and culture lies a concept that we might call "languaculture."
b.)When Documentation is not needed:-
In addition to documenting direct quotations and paraphrases, you should consider the status of the information and ideas you glean from sources in relation to your audience and to the scholarly consensus on your topic. In general, information and ideas you deem broadly known by your readers and widely accepted by scholars. such as the basic biography of an author or the dates of a historical event, can be used without documentation. But where readers are likely to seek more guidance or where the facts are in significant dispute among scholars, documentation is needed; you could attribute a disputed fact to the source with which you agree or could document the entire controversy. While direct quotations and paraphrases are always documented, scholars seldom document proverbs, sayings.. and clichés! If you have any doubt about whether you are committing plagiarism, cite your source or sources.
c.)Issues related to Plagiarism:-
Reusing a Research Paper:-
If you must complete a research project to earn a grade in a course, handing in a paper you already earned credit for in another course is deceitful. Moreover, you lose the opportunity to improve your knowl- edge and skills. If you want to rework a paper that you prepared for another course, ask your current instructor for permission to do so. If you wish to draw on or reuse portions of your previous writing in a new paper, ask your instructor for guidance.
Collaborative Work:-
An example of collaborative work is a group project you carry out with other students. Join: participation in research and writing is common and, in fact, encouraged in many courses and in many professions It does not constitute plagiarism provided that credit is given for all contributions. One way to give credit, if roles were clearly demarcated or were unequal, is to state exactly who did what. Another way, especially if roles and contributions were merged and shared, is to acknowledge all concerned equally. Ask your instructor for advice if you are not certain how to acknowledge collaboration.
Research on Human Subjects:-
Many academic institutions have policies governing research on hu- man subjects. Examples of research involving human subjects include clinical trials of a drug or personal interviews for a psychological study. Institutions usually require that researchers obtain the informed consent of human subjects for such projects. Although research for a paper in high school or college rarely involves human subjects, ask your instructor about your institution's policy If yours does.
This blog task is in response to the task assigned by the Yesha Bhatt Ma'am as part of thinking activity. This task is about one of the famous African Novel - The joys of Motherhood by Buchi Emecheta.
Introduction of Writer:-
A Nigerian-born author who has resided in England since 1962, Emecheta is best known for her novels that address the difficulties facing modern African women forced into traditional and subservient roles. Emecheta's heroines often challenge the restrictive customs imposed on them and aspire to economic and social independence. Although some critics have categorized Emecheta's works as feminist in nature, Emecheta rejects the label, stating,
"I have not committed myself to the cause of African women only. I write about Africa as a whole."
Introduction of Novel:-
The Joys of Motherhood was written by Buchi Emecheta, a Nigerian-born British author, and published by Allison & Busby in 1979. Emecheta has written and published over twenty works, from novels to plays, each of which delve into the complexities of what it means to be a woman and a mother in societies where the morals and traditions are constantly changing. The protagonist of The Joys of Motherhood, Nnu Ego, is a traditional woman living in a rapidly changing world. The life that she grew up expecting for herself does not come to pass. She expects to become a wife and mother, working hard in her youth for her family, but being taken care of and honored by her children in her old age. However, her children grow up in the city of Lagos with very different values than she was raised with. Several of her children even move away to Western countries, and feel little obligation toward their mother.
1)"The title of Emecheta's novel is patently ironic, for it would seem that there are few joys associated with motherhood after all." Explain
The Joys of Motherhood bears out the fact that this transitional period was particularly disadvantageous for African women. As the plight of the novel's key character reveals, colonialism was a costly reality for those who were forced to walk a fine line between that which was demanded of them by their village communities and that which was demanded of them by the rules of a European political regime.Specifically, they are subjected to new forms of exploitation as they are asked to assume traditional duties and responsibilities under a newly imported economic system that-unlike their native system-fails to validate or reward them for such work.
Set in the British colony of Nigeria in the 1930s and 1940s, The Joys of Motherhood details the life story of an Ibo woman named Nnu Ego who escapes the ignominy of a childless first marriage by fleeing to the distant city of Lagos to start a new with a second husband. Nnu Ego's simple dream of becoming a mother-a dream rooted in the cultural values of Ibo society, where motherhood is the primary source of a woman's self-esteem and public status-is happily realized several times over in this new setting. The pleasures associated with motherhood that the protagonist so eagerly anticipates, however, are ultimately negated by the difficult economic conditions of her new urban environment. In short, there are so few job opportunities for her husband to pursue and so little ambition on his part to pursue them that Nnu Ego spends her entire life alternately birthing children and working day in and day out as a cigarette peddler to stave off the hunger and poverty that invariably haunt her household. The novel focuses on this grueling battle, a battle that ends in a loss for Nnu Ego, as she witnesses her beloved sons grow up and leave Nigeria for good and her daughters marry and move away. Nnu Ego's hopes of living out her final years in the company of her grandchildren disappear before she turns forty, and she dies at country roadside alone and unnoticed.
The title of Emecheta's novel is 'The joys of Motherhood'.
The motherhood gave her happiness from Agbadi's side and sadness from her father's side that her inability to bear a son. The girl was named as Nnu Ego.
Ona lived in her father's place with her daughter. The child Nnu Ego, the daughter of Ona and Agbadi was affected by a lump on her head. Agbadi forced Ona to come and stay with him for the welfare of the child. The joyful life of Ona and her own freedom was affected there because of her role as a mother. She was forced to give importance to the child than to her father. She felt worried about her daughter's state and moved with Agbadi. There the motherhood instead of giving joy brought her the sadness.
Once again Ona became pregnant and very sick, it resulted in premature delivery. She delivered a son and both of them died. Now, the state of mother is more pathetic. The delivery brought the fatal end to the mother. So, the motherhood instead of bringing joy, brought only sorrow to Ona and her family. Especially, to her father who was expecting a son at least through his daughter was more disappointed and worried for the death of his only daughter Ona. Now, the chief Obi Umunna lost his priceless jewel.
The irony of motherhood did not end here. It continued to the daughter of Ona. Agbadi gave enough freedom to Nnu Ego as her mother wished. She had a happy life as a daughter. But, the happiness was interrupted by the marriage. Nnu Ego married Amatokwu. After her marriage, people around her expected a child from Nnu Ego. Here, the trouble began for Nnu Ego. "Nnu Ego was surprised that, as the months passed, she was failing everybody. There was no child. "What am I going to do, Amatokwu?" she cried to her husband, after the disappointment of another month."
The childlessness of Nnu Ego resulted in her husband's next marriage. The second wife became pregnant very soon and delivered a son. It brought less importance for Ego as a senior wife in Amatokwu's family. The longing for motherhood in Nnu Ego had raised high.She assumed herself as a mother to the child born to her husband and his new wife. She became a foster mother to the child. She started to breast feed the child due to her earnestness for motherhood. It was found later, and she was beaten by her husband and sent to her father's home. Thus, the more she longed to be a mother the more she suffered. Nnu Ego married another man called Nnaife, who was working as a washer man to the white Dr. Meers at Lagos. The second marriage was also a part of her suffering. She did not like Nnaife. But, she lived with him. She wanted to satisfy her father and to fulfil her desire to become a mother. So, she accepted the marriage though she did not like Nnaife. She was successful in her married life and delivered a boy.
Nne Ego felt very happy and considered it as her success. The happiness was not remained for a long time. The boy named Ngozi, died after few weeks. The short-lived happiness as a mother disappointed her a lot and led her to commit suicide and rescued by a stranger. The joy of being a mother was denied for her at several times. At last, she had attained it and once again that resulted in bringing suffering rather than joy.
Nnu Ego's longing to gain the joy of being a mother had not calmed. She became pregnant again and performed so many rituals for the protection of the child. "And as her father had predicted. all went well. Even the birth of the boy was painless. She was rejoiced." She had named the child as Oshia. Ego attained the joy of being a mother by undergoing a great trouble.
The second child was named as Adim. The mother wanted to give the best to her children. She dreamt of putting Oshia in a good school. She had decided to give a better future for her children. Mean while, Nnaife's brother died and the family's responsibility befell on Nnaife. He had taken Adaku as his second wife after the death of his brother. The family was facing a difficult financial struggle. She gave birth to twins daughter too.
The life of Nnu Ego as a mother was filled with lot of troubles and responsibilities with less happiness. Nnaife was forced to join in the army. His job location was unknown to her. In that situation, she was carrying the next child and had to look after the other children's education. The money sent by Nnaife was shared by his wives and the sufferings of being a mother for many children continued. Her father also died by that time.
Once a barren woman now became the mother for five children. She had three boys and two girls. The longed motherhood gave her happiness. But, the turmoil to fulfil their needs continued.
Nnaife's absence increased her responsibility. She lost hope in her husband. The lost hope was shifted on the children. She struggled a lot to bring them up with good education. Being a single
parent, she was unable to provide proper education to her children.
Motherhood was the main theme of the novel. The story began with the motherhood of Ona. She wanted to give a male child to her father. It was not fulfilled by her. So, the motherhood did not give her joy. She also died soon. Her role as a mother was less in the novel. Nnu Ego was the protagonist of the novel. She longed for motherhood in the beginning. Later, she became mother for seven children. The joy that she experienced during her first child birth was not found in her later delivery. She felt relieved especially, when a girl child died soon after it's birth. Thus, the joy of motherhood becomes ironic. The happiness was turned a relief after some time.
Conclusion:-
The title of the novel "The Joys of Motherhood" was ironic. The experiences of the mothers in the story Ona and Nnu Ego proved that though motherhood is a blessing and joyful experience, it is not giving the same joy and happiness for the mothers throughout the novel. She considered motherhood as joy. She felt that when she delivered her first son after so much treatment and shame. The joy of being a mother was not long lasting. The joy she earned as a mother was less, while comparing to the turmoil she had faced in her life. The motherhood attainment itself was a great challenge for her. The challenge prevailed in bringing up the children. She was expecting a return in her old age from her children's side. But, that was not offered by her children till her death. After her death, they had given her a grand burial. It showed the more sorrow ridden motherhood of Nnu Ego and not the joys as it found in the title. So, the title of the novel The Joys of Motherhood is considered as ironic.
Shifting Centres and Emerging Margins: Translation and the Shaping of Modernist Poetic Discourse in Indian Poetry:-
E.V.Ramakrishnan
In this article the writer tries to say that how translation became a problematic thing, the article is about 20th century modernism. As we all know that Western have their reasons for modernism but the East didn't have such suffering to be modern. So one should question that then how modernism came in India? So one can say that for India modernism is an imported idea through translations , it is not the natural flow of modernism and that's why it doesn't allow us to see clearly. We can not find a particular reason for modernity in India, there is still something missing.
This chapter examines the role played by translation in shaping a modernist poetic sensibility in some of the major literary traditions of India in the twentieth century, between 1950 and 1970. Translations of major European poets such as Baudelaire, Rilke, Eliot and Yeats contributed towards clearing a space for the modernist discourse in Indian poetry. The chapter will study examples from Bengali, Malayalam and Marathi, to understand how such translations of modern Western poets were used to breach the hegemony of prevailing literary sensibilities and poetic modes. Many of the major Indian poets - such as Buddhadeb Bose, Agyeya, Gopalakrishna Adiga, Dilip Chitre and Ayyappa Paniker - were also translators. Their translations were 'foreignising' translations that disrupted cultural codes that legislated regimes of reading and writing poetry. Also, translations during the early phase of modernism in major Indian languages appeared in little magazines that played a critical role in opening up the poetic discourse. Translations from African and Latin American poetry played a significant role in this phase of modernism. Poets such as Neruda and Parra were widely translated into Indian languages during this phase. In this context, translation enacted a critical act of evaluation, a creative act of intervention, and a performative act of legitimation, in evolving a new poetic style during the modernist phase of Indian poetry.
Part-1
This chapter uses the term 'translation' to suggest a range of cultural practices, from critical commentary to creation of intertextual texts. Following André Lefevere's concept of translation as refraction/ rewriting, the chapter argues that 'rewritings' or 'refractions' found in the 'less obvious form of criticism..., commentary, historiography of the plot summary of famous works cum evaluation type, in which the evaluation is unabashedly based on the current concept of what "good" literature should be, teaching, the collection of works in anthologies, the production of plays' are also instances of translation. In India, modernism, as a practice, fundamentally differed from that in the West, but it fulfilled a function in the socio-cultural contexts of Indian languages by transforming the relations between the text and the reader, and the modes of writing and reading. Modernist writers were responding to the internal dynamics of their own traditions in selectively assimilating an alien poetic that could be regressive or subversive depending on the context and the content. In this sense, a conservative poet such as Gopalakrishna Adiga in Kannada, or a radical dissident like Gajanan Madhav Muktibodh in Hindi, belonged to the larger modernist tradition which accommodated diverse political ideologies and innovative experimental styles.
The project of modernity in India was implicated in colonialism and imperialism. This colonial modernity informed literary and cultural movements, beginning from the reformist movement of the nineteenth century to the modernist movement of the mid-twentieth century. As Dilip Chitre observes, 'what took nearly a century and a half to happen in England, happened within a hurried half century' in Indian literature.
Part-2
The term 'modernism' implies a literary/artistic movement that was characterised by experimentation, conscious rejection of the nationalist/ Romantic as well as the popular, and the cultivation of an individualist, cosmopolitan and insular world view. In the European context, it signified a set of tendencies in artistic expression and writing styles of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries through a new aesthetic that was iconoclastic, insular and elitist.While the modernism that emerged in Indian literatures shared many of these defining features, its political affiliations and ideological orientations were markedly different. Due to its postcolonial location, Indian modernism did not share the imperial or metropolitan aspirations of its European counterpart. It invested heavily in regional cosmopolitan traditions.
The modernist phase in Indian language traditions has not been recognised as part of the global modernist movement. The discourse of modernism is heavily slanted in favour of Western writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Part-3
In the context of Bengali, as Amiya Dev has observed, 'It was not because they imbibed modernism that the adhunik modernist Bengali writers turned away from Rabindranath; on the contrary, Modernism was the means by which they turned away from and they had to turn away, for their history demanded it'
If European modernism was drawn between the euphoric and the reactive, in Kannada the precipitate modernism was drawn between the Brahmanical and the non-Brahminical. Just as the euphoric and the reactive modernisms were part of the internal dynamics of modernism itself, so also the Brahmanical and the non
Brahmanical modernisms in Kannada were part and parcel of a modernism that came as a reaction to the Nehruvian environment.
Part-4
Translation is central to the modernist poetic as it unfolded in these literary traditions. Each of these three authors was bilingual and wrote essays in English as well as their own languages, outlining their new poetry, thus preparing the reader for new poetic modes.
Part-5
One of the recurring themes in Sudhindranath Dutta's critical essays is the primacy of the word. In 'The Necessity of Poetry', he argues that the persistence of poetry through the ages in all societies, particularly among the unsophisticated and the primitive, attest to its necessity.
Part-6
In Mardhekar, both irony and self-reflexivity are ways of constituting a new reader by freeing him or her from his or her habits of viewing the world. These are strategies to re-inscribe a self-critical attitude towards the material content of art and life. In 'Mice in the Wet Barrel Died', which became the iconic modernist poem of Marathi, Mardhekar goes to the very limits of language to capture an acute state of anguish that is closer to the saint-poet's suffering than the existential crisis of the modern man or woman.
Part-7
Kurukshetram is a poem of 294 lines in five sections. The opening lines of the Bhagavad Gita are cited as the epigraph of the poem, thus setting a high moral and critical tone in relation to contemporary life and society. As in Eliot's The Waste Land, Kurukshetram's opening lines communicate a pervasive decline of moral values and a disruption of the organic rhythms of society. The title, 'Kurukshetram', signifies the place where the epic battle that forms the central theme of the Mahabharata took place. The poem progresses through broken images from contemporary life, but there are also redemptive memories of forgotten harmonies that recur through the metaphor of the dream.
Part-8
It is important to understand the indigenous roots/routes of modernity and modernism in all the three writers discussed above. They partake of the logic of a postcolonial society which had already developed internal critiques of Western modernity. In other words, they had access to the intellectual resources of alternative traditions of modernity that were bred in the native context. This enables them to selectively assimilate resources of a Western modernity on their own terms. They 'translate modernity/modernism through the optics of postcolonial 'modernities'. There is an internal dialectic and an external dialogic involved here. The modernist subject was fragmented and fractured in the Indian context, but not for reasons that constituted fragmented selves in the Western context. Colonial modernity operated within the Indian context as a realm of desire which brought into being a new social imaginary.Thus, language became, for the modernists, the only reality that they could relate to. Their moment of recognition, enabled by the discourses of 'Western' modernism, was postcolonial in its essence. The self-reflexive movement was also made possible by the carrying across of not content or form, but an interior mode of being that questioned the prevailing limits of freedom.
This task is in response to the task assigned by professor Dilip Barad sir as part of a thinking activity in which I would like to share my understanding of the article.
The book is by Tejaswini Niranjana, in our syllabus only the first chapter of that book is there. She mainly discusses how the history of translation is , how people look at the concept of translation and How William Jones looks at India as an inferior country. Object of the article is to not translate the book but how the translation happened and what is the purpose behind the translation of any work. In the article to criticise western ideas she used Western Theories to criticise that culture or way of looking. What is our history of translation and how it is changing and how people see it today. Chronology of translation became important in the article of Tejaswini Niranjana.
Article divided into three parts:-
She started her book with interesting thing,
The passion for English knowledge has penetrated the most obscure, and extended to the most remote parts of India. The steam boats, passing up and down the Ganges, are boarded by native boys, begging, not for money, but for books.... Some gentlemen coming to Calcutta were as- tonished at the eagerness with which they were pressed for books by a troop of boys, who boarded the steamer from an obscure place, called Comercolly. A Plato was lying on the table, and one of the party asked a boy whether that would serve his purpose. "Oh yes," he exclaimed, “give me any book; all I want is a book." The gentleman at last hit upon the expedient of cutting up an old Quarterly Re- view, and distributing the articles among them.
In a post-colonial context the problematic of translation becomes a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity. The context is one of contesting and contested stories attempting to account for, to recount, the asymmetry and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages. Since the practices of subjection/subjectifi- cation implicit in the colonial enterprise operate not merely through the coercive machinery of the imperial state but also through the discourses of philosophy, history, anthropology, philology, linguistics, and literary interpretation, the colonial "subject" constructed through technologies or practices of power/knowledge is brought into being within multiple discourses and on multiple sites. One such site is translation. Translation as a practice shapes, and takes shape within, the asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism. Translation depends on the Western philosophical notions of reality, representation, and knowledge. Jacques Derrida suggests, the concepts of metaphysics are not bound by or produced solely within the "field" of philoso- phy. Rather, they come out of and circulate through various discourses in several registers, providing a "conceptual net- work in which philosophy itself has been constituted." Translation functions as a transparent presentation of something that al- ready exists, although the "original '' is actually brought into being through translation. Paradoxically, translation also pro- vides a place in "history" for the colonised.
Her concern here is to explore the place of translation in contemporary Euro-American literary theory using the name of this "discipline" in a broad sense through a set of interrelated readings. She argues that the deployment of "translation" in the colonial and post-colonial contexts shows us a way of questioning some of the theoretical emphases of poststructuralism.
Chapter 1 - She outlines the problematic of translation and its relevance to the post-colonial situation. Reading the texts of different kinds of colonial translators.
In chapter 2,She examines how "translation" works in the traditional discourse of translation studies and in ethnographic writing. Discussing the last two, which are somewhat marginal to literary theory, may nevertheless help us sharpen our critique of translation.
In chapters 3, 4, and 5, her main focus is the work of Paul de Man, Jacques Derrida, and Walter Benjamin, an earlier critic who is becoming increasingly important to post-structuralist thinkers. Her analysis shows how translation functions as a "figure" in all three thinkers, becoming synonymous or associated with a major preoccupation in each: allegory or literature in de Man, the problematics of representation and intentionality in Derrida, and the question of materialist historiography in Benjamin. Pointing out the configurations of translation and history in Benjamin's work, She describe the kind of reading provided by de Man and Derrida of Benjamin's important essay "The Task of the Translator." Her argument is that Walter Benjamin's early writings on translation are trapped in significant ways into his later essays on the writing of history, a trope that goes unrecognised by both de Man and Derrida. She uses trope to indicate a metaphorizing that includes a displacement as well as a re-figuring. The refusal of these major proponents of deconstruction to address the question of history in Benjamin suggests a critical draw- back in their theory and perhaps indicates why deconstruction has never addressed the problem of colonialism.
In the final chapter, with the help of a translation from Kannada, a South Indian language, into English, She discusses the "uses" of post-structuralism in post-colonial space. Throughout the book, her discussion functions in all the registers- philosophical, linguistic, and political-in which translation "works" under colonialism.
Translation As Interpellation
As translator and scholar, Jones was responsible for the most influential introduction of a textualized India to Europe. Within three months of his arrival, the Asiatic Society held its first meeting with Jones as president and Warren Hastings, the governor general, as patron. It was primarily through the efforts of the members of the Asiatic Society, themselves administrators and officials of the East India Company's Indian Government, that translation would help "gather in" and "rope off" the Orient. And he declared that,"to know India better than any other European ever knew it."
His works were carefully studied by the writers of the age, especially the Germans-Goethe, Herder, and others. When Jones's new writings reached Europe, the shorter pieces were eagerly picked up and reprinted immediately by different periodicals. In Jones's construction of the "Hindus," they appear as a submissive, indolent nation unable to appreciate the fruits of freedom, desirous of being ruled by an absolute power, and sunk deeply in the mythology of an ancient religion. The idea of the "submissive" Indians, their inability to be free, and the native laws that do not permit the question of liberty to be raised are thus brought together in the concept of Asian despotism.
The glorious past of India, according to Jones, is shrouded in superstition, "marked and bedecked in the fantastic robes of mythology and metaphor", but the now "degenerate" and "abased" Hindus were once "eminent in various knowledge." The presentation of the Indians as "naturally" effeminate as well as deceitful often goes hand in hand in Jones's work.
As a Supreme Court judge in India, Jones took on, as one of his most important projects, the task of translating the ancient text of Hindu law, Manu's Dharmasastra. In fact, he began to learn Sanskrit primarily so that he could verify the interpretations of Hindu law given by his pandits. Even before coming to India, Jones had formulated a solution for the problem of the translation of Indian law.
The Question Of History:-
Her central concern here is not to elaborate on the battle for "history" now being staged in Euro-American theory but to ask a series of questions from a strategically "partial" perspective that of an emergent post-colonial practice willing to profit from the insights of post-structuralism, while at the same time demanding ways of writing history in order to make sense of how subjectification operates.
She uses the word historicity to avoid invoking History with a capital H, her concern being with "local" practices or micro practices as Foucault calls them of translation that require no overarching theory to contain them. We may also find useful Louis Althusser's critique of his- toricism, which leads him, in Jameson's words, to formulate the notion that "history is a process without a telos or a subject," "a repudiation of... master narratives and their twin categories of narrative closure - telos and of character.
The most profound insight Derrida's work has afforded to post-colonials is the notion that origin is always already heterogeneous, that it is not some pure, unified source of meaning or history. What Derrida is claiming is that there is no primordial "presence" that is then represented. The "re-" does not befall the original. It is the concept of representation that suppresses the difference that is already there in the so-called origin and grounds the whole of Western metaphysics. Derrida's critique of representation is important for post- colonial theory because it suggests a critique of the traditional notion of translation as well. In fact, the two problems have always been intertwined in Derrida's work. He has indicated more than once that translation perhaps escapes "the orbit of representation" and is therefore an "exemplary question." The point is not just to criticise these characterizations as "inadequate" or "untrue"; one should attempt to show the complicity of the representations with colonial rule and their part in maintaining the asymmetries of imperialism.
Conclusion:-
Clearly, the notion of hybridity, which is of great importance for a Subaltern critique of historiography as well as for a critique of traditional notions of translation, is both "ambiguous and historically complex." "To restrict "hybridity," or what she call "living in translation," to a post-colonial elite is to deny the pervasiveness, however heterogeneous, of the transformations wrought across class boundaries by colonial and neocolonial domination. This is not to present a meta narrative of global homogenization, but to emphasise the need to reinvent oppositional cultures in non essentializing ways. Hybridity can be seen, therefore, as the sign of a post-colonial theory that subverts essentialist models of reading while it points toward a new practice of translation.
This blog is in response to the task assigned by professor Dilip Barad sir as part of thinking activity in which we have to write about our understanding of the topic.
1)Define Literature Review
Basically Literature review is an account of what has been published on a particular topic or subject by accredited scholar and researchers.
2)Why literature review is carried out in research?
Purpose of Literature Review:-
If you don't know what research has been done in your research area then might be you see only those things or might you done only things which already done by somebody. Literature Review is kind of research in which you have to find out gap between research which already has been done by somebody.
Literature Review suggest that you have to stand on the shoulder of previous scholars and researchers, to prove your arguments.
In writing the literature review our purpose is to convey our readers that what knowledge and ideas have been established an a topic and what their strength and weaknesses are.
The Literature Review must be defined by a guiding concept of our objective, the problem or issues which we want to discuss in the dissertation or thesis. Basic purpose of literature review is to identify the gap between the literature or particular topic, to avoid reinventing the wheel and this will stop us from making same mistakes and save our time. To carry on from where other have already reached.
In short we can say that,
- To identify opposing views
- To put our work into perspective
- To demonstrate that you can access previous work in your area
- To Identify information and idea that may be relevant to your project
- To identify methods that could be relevant to your project.
Two important objective of LR:-
Information seeking:-
The ability to scan the literature efficiently,using manual or computerized methods to identify a set of useful articles and books.
Critical appraisal:-
The ability to apply principles of analysis to identify unbiased and valid studies.
If you are writing an annotated bibliography, you may need to summarize each item briefly, but should still follow through themes and concepts and do some critical assessment of material. Use an overall introduction and conclusion to state the scope of your coverage and to formulate the question, problem, or concept your chosen material illuminates. Usually you will have the option of grouping items into sections—this helps you indicate comparisons and relationships. You may be able to write a paragraph or so to introduce the focus of each section.
This blog task is in response to the task assigned by professor Dilip Barad sir as part of thinking activity.
Translation and Literary History: An Indian View:-Ganesh Devy
Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile,' says J. Hillis Miller! The statement obviously alludes to the Christian myth of the Fall, exile and wandering. In Western metaphysics translation is an exile, a fall from the origin, and the mythical exile is a metaphoric translation, a post-Babel crisis" Given this metaphysical precondition of Western aesthetics, it is not surprising that literary translations are not accorded the same status as original works. Western literary criticism provides for the guilt of translations for coming into being after the original, the temporal sequentiality is held as a proof of diminution of literary authenticity of translations. The strong sense of individuality given to Western individuals through systematic philosophy and the logic of social history makes them view translation as an intrusion of "the other" (sometimes pleasurable). This intrusion is desirable to the extent that it helps define one's own identity, but not beyond that point. It is of course natural for the monolingual European cultures to be acutely conscious of the act of translation. The philosophy of individualism and the metaphysics of guilt, however, render European literary historiography incapable of grasping the origins of literary traditions.
During the last two centuries the role of translation in communicating literary movements across linguistic borders has become very important. Considering the fact that most literary traditions originate in translation and gain substance through repeated acts of translation, it would be useful for a theory of literary history if a supporting theory of literary translation were available. No critic has taken any well-defined position about the exact placement of translations in literary history. Do they belong to the history of the "T" languages or do they belong to the history of the 'S' languages? Or do they form an independent tradition all by themselves? This ontological uncertainty which haunts translations has rendered translation study a haphazard activity which devotes too much energy discussing problems of conveying the original meaning in the altered structure.
As he says, the translator didn't get more respect compared to the original writer - and if we tried to copy then we lose our epics and literature.
As Plato said - Copies are inferior to original work. Whatever today we look as Indian is also Western way and idea of looking. In Western tradition speaking is more important but in Eastern tradition seeing is more important.
Roman Jakobson in his essay on the linguistics of translation proposed a threefold classification of translations:
(a) Those from one verbal order to another verbal order within the same language system
(b) Those from one language system to another language system,
(c) Those from a verbal order to another system of signs
In order to explain linguistic change, historical linguistics employs the concept of semantic differentiation as well as that of phonetic glides. While the linguistic changes within a single language occur more predominantly due to semantic differentiation, they also show marked phonetic glides. However, the degree of such glides is more pronounced when a new language comes into existence. In other words, whereas linguistic changes within a single language are predominantly of a semantic nature, the linguistic differences between two closely related languages are predominantly phonetic. Technically speaking, then, if synonymy within one language is a near impossibility, it is not so when we consider two related languages together.
Structural linguistics considers language as a system of signs, arbitrarily developed, that tries to cover the entire range of significance available to the culture of that language. The signs do not mean anything by or in themselves, they acquire significance by virtue of their relation to the entire system to which they belong. This theory naturally looks askance at translation which is an attempt to rescue/ abstract significance from one system of signs and to wed it with another such system. But language is an open system. It keeps admitting new signs as well as new significance in its fold. It is also open in the socio-linguistic sense that it allows an individual speaker or writer to use as much of it as he can or likes to do. If this is the case, then how 'open' is a particular system of verbal signs when a bilingual user, such as a translator, rents it open? Assuming that for an individual language resides within his consciousness, we can ask whether the two systems within his consciousness can be shown as materially different and whether they retain their individual identities within the sphere of his consciousness.
The concept of a 'translating consciousness" and communities of people possessing it are no mere notions. In most Third World countries, where a dominating colonial language has acquired a privileged place, such communities do exist. In India several languages are simultaneously used by language communities as if these languages formed a continuous spectrum of signs and significance. The use of two or more different languages in translation activity cannot be understood properly through studies of foreign-language acquisition.
In Chomsky's linguistics the concept of semantic universals plays an important role. However, his level of abstraction marks the farthest limits to which the monolingual Saussurean linguistic materialism can be stretched.
J.C. Catford presents a comprehensive statement of theoretical formulation about the linguistics of translation in A Linguistic Theory of Translation, in which he seeks to isolate various linguistic levels of translation. His basic premise is that since translation is a linguistic act any theory of translation must emerge from linguistics: "Translation is an operation performed on languages: a process of substituting a text in one language for a text in another, clearly, then, any theory of translation must draw upon a theory of language - a general linguistic theory'. During the nineteenth century, Europe had distributed various fields of humanistic knowledge into a threefold hierarchy: comparative studies for Europe, Orientalism for the Orient, and anthropology for the rest of the world. After the discovery? of Sanskrit by Sir William Jones, historical linguistics in Europe depended heavily on Orientalism.
Translation can be seen as an attempt to bring a given language system in its entirety as close as possible to the areas of significance that it shares with another given language or languages. All translations operate within this shared area of significance. Such a notion may help us distinguish synonymy within one language and the shared significance between two related languages.
He further says that The translation problem is not just a linguistic problem. It is an aesthetic and ideological problem with an important bearing on the question of literary history.Literary translation is not just a replication of a text in another verbal system of signs. It is a replication of an ordered sub-system of signs within a given language in another corresponding ordered sub-system of signs within a related language. Translation is not a transposition of significance or signs.
The problems in translation study are, therefore, very much like those in literary history. They are the problems of the relationship between origins and sequentiality. And as in translation study so in literary history, the problem of origin has not been tackled satisfactorily. The fact that Indian literary communities do possess this translating consciousness can be brought home effectively by reminding ourselves that the very foundation of modern Indian literatures was laid through acts of translation, whether by Jayadeva, Hemcandra, Michael Madhusudan Dutta, H.N. Apte or Bankim Chandra Chatterjee.
Conclusion:-
Indian metaphysics believes in an unhindered migration of the soul from one body to another. Repeated birth is the very substance of all animated creations. When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its essential significance. Indian philosophies of the relationship between form and essence, structure and significance are guided by this metaphysics. The soul, or significance, is not subject to the laws of temporality; and therefore significance, even literary significance, is ahistorical in Indian view. Elements of plot, stories, characters, can be used again and again by new generations of writers because Indian literary theory does not lay undue emphasis on originality. If originality were made a criterion of literary excellence, a majority of Indian classics would fail the test. The true test is the writer's capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to revitalise the original. And in that sense Indian literary traditions are essentially traditions of translation.
Video Recording of this article presentation:-
On Translating a Tamil Poem:-
This article divided into three parts
1) Basic introduction of language
2) Example of poem
3) Concluding remarks
Part -1
According to A.K. Ramanujan When you translate something, you lose the spirit of original work. But in this article the writer talks about Tamil poems in English, and Tamil is harder than English. He talked about a poem which was written 2000 years ago in a corner of South India. Sanskrit in India, Greek and Latin in Europe, Hebrew in the Middle East, and Chinese in the Far East were Tamil's contemporaries.
The subject of this paper is not the fascinating external history of this literature, but translation, the transport of poems from classical Tamil to modern English; the hazards, the damages in transit, the secret paths, and the lucky bypasses.
The chief difficulty of translation is its impossibility. Frost once even identified poetry as that which is lost in translation. Once we accept that as a premise of this art, we can proceed to practise it, or learn endlessly to do so.
Tamil is very different from English. For instance, Old Tamil has six nasal consonants:a labial, a dental, an alveolar, a retroflex, a palatal and a velar-m, n, n. ñ, n, n--three of which are not distinctive. in English. How shall we translate a six-way system into a three-way English system (m, n, n)? Tamil has long and short vowels, but English (or most English dialects) have diphthongs and glides. Tamil has double consonants that occur in English only across phrases like 'hottin' and 'sir right.' Such features are well illustrated by the above poem in Tamil. Tamil has no initial consonant clusters, but English abounds in them: 'school, scratch, splash, strike, etc. English words may end in stops, as in 'cut, cup, tuck, etc.: Tamil words do not.
Poetry is about,
SoundGrammarCulture
Phonology Syntax Rhetoric
Metre/Rhymelexicon
Semantics of words PoeticTaxonomy
Part-2
Tamil metre depends on the presence of long vowels and double consonants, and on closed and open syllables defined by such vowels and consonants. Even if we use familiar devices like rhyme, they do not have the same values in different languages. English has a long tradition of end-rhymes-but Tamil has a long tradition of second syllable consonant-rhymes.
Evans-Pritchard, the anthropologist, used to say: If you translate all the European arguments for atheism into Azande, they would come out as arguments for God in Azande. Such observations certainly disabuse us of the commonly-held notion of 'literal' translation. We know now that no translation can be 'literal,' or 'word for word'. That is where the im- possibility lies. The only possible translation is a 'free' one.
When we attend to syntax, we see that Tamil syntax is mostly left- branching. English syntax is, by and large, rightward. Even a date like 'the 19th of June, 1988,' when translated into Tamil, would look like 1988, June, 19.' A phrase like
A. B. C. D. E
The man who came from Michigan
would be 'Michigan-from come-past tense who man":
E D C. B A
In Gujarati
એ માણસ મિશિગન થી આવ્યો છે.
B. A. E. D. C.
The Tamil sentence is the mirror image of the English one: what is A B CDE in the one would be by and large E D C B A in Tamil.
If poetry is made out of, among other things, 'the best words in the best order, and the best orders of the two languages are the mirror images of each other, what is a translator to do? Many of his devices' indentation, spacing and compromises are made in order to closely mimic the syntactic suspense of the original. The most obvious parts of language cited frequently for their utter untranslatability are the lexicon and the semantics of words.
Even when the elements of a system may be similar in two languages, like father, mother, brother, mother-in-law, etc., in kin- ship, the system of relations (say, who can be a mother-in-law, who can by law or custom marry whom) and the feelings traditionally encouraged about each relative through mother-in-law jokes, step-mother tales, incest taboos are all culturally sensitive and therefore part of the expressive repertoire of poets and novelists. Add to this the entire poetic tradition, its rhetoric. the ordering of different genres with different functions in the culture.
Now, the classical Tamil poetic tradition uses an entire taxonomy, a classification of reality, as part of its stock-in-trade. The five landscapes of the Tamil area, characterised by hills, seashores, agricultural areas. wastelands, and pastoral fields, each with its forms of life, both natural and cultural, trees, animals, tribes, customs, arts and instruments-all these become part of the symbolic code for the poetry. The five real landscapes of the Tamil country become, through this system, the interior landscapes of Tamil poetry. And each landscape or mood is also associated with a time of day and a season. Each landscape, along with its mood and the genre of poetry built around it, is usually named after a tree or flower of that region.
Every field has their semantic fields so Ramanujan says that if you want to talk about that particular thing you have to use words from that semantic field. Though the way original appeals translation doesn't
Time is very important in which work is written, for example in history there were no issues in using words like Spanish flu but in contemporary time if somebody used words like - China virus or Vuhan virus then it became problematic. There we found problems with old language and new language.
Part -3
'Process of translation is process of failing'
If attempting a translation means attempting such an impossibly intricate task, foredoomed to failure, what makes it possible at all? At least four things, maybe even four articles of faith, help the translator.
1) Universal:-
Every language has some universal meaning. Language doesn't have meaning but context has meaning.If such universals did not exist, as Voltaire said of God, we would have had to invent them.
2)Interiorised Contexts:-
When one translates a classical Tamil poem, one is also translating this kind of intertextual web, the meaning-making web of colophons and commentaries that surround and contextualise the poem. Even when we disagree with them, they give us the terms in which we construct the argument against them. There is no illusion here of the poem itself".
3)Systematicity:-
The systematicity of such bodies of poetry, the way figures, genres, personae, etc., One translates not single poems but bodies of poetry that create and contain their original world. Even if one chooses not to translate all the poems, one chooses poems that cluster together, that illuminate one another, so that allusions, contrasts, and collective designs are suggested. One's selection then be- -comes a metonymy for their world, re-presenting it. Here intertextuality is not the problem, but the solution. One learns one's lessons here not only from the Tamil arrangements but from Yeats, Blake, and Baudelaire, who all used arrangement as a poetic device.
4)Structural Mimicry:-
The poetry and the significance reside in these figures and structures as much as in the un- translatable verbal textures. So one attempts a structural mimicry, to translate relations, not items-not single words but phrases, sequences, sentences; not metrical units but rhythms, not morphology but syntactic patterns.
Conclusion:-
To translate is to metaphor, to 'carry across Translations are trans- positions, re-enactments, interpretations. Some elements of the original cannot be transposed at all. One can often convey a sense of the original rhythm, but not the language-bound metre: one can mimic levels of diction, but not the actual sound of the original words. Textures are harder and impossible to translate than structures, linear order more difficult than syntax, lines more difficult than larger patterns. Poetry is made at all these levels-and so is translation. At the end he concluded that 'If they don't meet, we will have two tunnels instead of one. So too, if the representation in another language is not close enough, but still succeeds in 'carrying' the poem in some sense, we will have two poems instead of one.
