Name : Dhruvita Dhameliya
Roll no : 03
Semester : 04
Year: 2021 to 2023
Subject :Comparative Literature & Translation Studies
Topic : Ganesh.N. Devy’s views in ‘Translation Theory from an Indian perspective.
E-mail ID : dhameliyadhruvita24@gmail.com
Submitted to : S. B. Gardi Department of English Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University
What is Translation Studies:
Translation studies is an academic interdiscipline dealing with the systematic study of the theory, description and application of translation, interpreting, and localization. As an inter discipline, translation studies borrows much from the various fields of study that support translation. These include comparative literature, computer science, history, linguistics, philology, philosophy, semiotics, and terminology. The term "translation studies" was coined by the Amsterdam-based American scholar James S. Holmes in his 1972 paper "The name and nature of translation studies", which is considered a foundational statement for the discipline. Writers in English occasionally use the term "translatology" and less commonly "traductology" to refer to translation studies, and the corresponding French term for the discipline is usually "traductologie" as in the Society Française de Traductologie. In the United States, there is a preference for the term "translation and interpreting studies" as in the American Translation and Interpreting Studies Association, although European tradition includes interpreting within translation studies.
In everyday language, translation is thought of as a text which is a "representation" or "reproduction" of an original one produced in another language. It is a written or spoken rendering of a word, speech, book or other text in another language.
The more detailed definition of translation raises at least four separate issues:
(1) Translation as a Process and/or Product
(2) Sub- types of translation
(3) Concern with written texts
(4) Translation vs. Non-translation
THE RISE AND DEVELOPMENT OF TRANSLATION
The word 'translation' comes from a Latin term which means "to bring or carry across". Another relevant term comes from the Ancient Greek word of 'metaphrasis' which means "to speak across" and from this, the term 'metaphrase' was born, which means a "word-for-word translation". These terms have been at the heart of theories relating to translation throughout history and have given insight into when and where translation has been used throughout the ages.
‘Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile,’
says J. Hillis Miller.
The statement 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.
One of the most revolutionary events in the history of English style has been the authorised translation of the Bible. It was also the literary expression of Protestant Christianity. The recovery of the original spirit of Christianity was thus sought by Protestant England through an act of translation. It is well known that Chaucer was translating the style of Boccacio into English when he created his Canterbury Tales. When Dryden and Pope wanted to recover a sense of order, they used the tool of translation. Similar attempts were made in other European languages such as German and French. During the last two centuries the role of translation in communicating literary movements across linguistic borders has become very important. The tradition that has given us writers like Shaw, Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Heaney in a single century – the tradition of Anglo-Irish literature – branched out of the practice of translating Irish works into English initiated by Macpherson towards the end of the eighteenth century. Indian English Literature too has gathered its conventions of writing from the Indological activity of translation during the late eighteenth century and the nineteenth century. Many of the Anglo-Irish and Indian English writers have been able translators themselves. Similarly the settler colonies such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand have impressive modern traditions of literature, which have resulted from the ‘translation’ of the settlers from their homeland to alien locations. Post- colonial writing in the former Spanish colonies in South America, the former colonies in Africa and other parts of the world has experienced the importance of translation as one of the crucial conditions for creativity. Origins of literary movements and literary traditions inhabit various acts of translation.
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. However, since translations are popularly perceived as unoriginal, not much thought has been devoted to the aesthetics of translation. Most of the primary issues relating to ‘form’ and ‘meaning’ too have not been settled in relation to translation. 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.
Unfortunately for translation, the various developments concerning the interdependence between meaning and structure in the field of linguistics have been based on monolingual data and situations. Even the sophisticated and revolutionary theoretical formulation proposed by structural linguistics is not adequate to unravel the intricacies of translation activity.
Roman Jakobson in his essay on the linguistics of translation proposed a three fold 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, and
(c) those from a verbal order to another system of signs.
As he considers, theoretically, a complete semantic equivalence as the final objective of a translation act – which is not possible – he asserts that poetry is untranslatable. He maintains that only a ‘creative translation’ is possible.
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. After the act of translation is over, the original work still remains in its original position. Translation is rather an attempted revitalization of the original in another verbal order and temporal space. Like literary texts that continue to belong to their original periods and styles and also exist through successive chronological periods, translation at once approximates the original and transcends it.
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 point that needs to be made is that probably the question of origins of literary traditions will have to be viewed differently by literary communities with ‘translating consciousness’. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thank You
Word Count: 2315
Works Cited
Bose, Abhish K. “Prof. G.N. Devy: 'All our languages are losing linguistic prowess.'” Frontline, 12 April 2022, https://frontline.thehindu.com/the-nation/interview-g-n-devy-all-our-languages-are-losing-linguistic-prowess/article38467813.ece. Accessed 27 March 2023.
Devy, Ganesh. ““Translation and Literary History: An Indian View.”” Translation and Literary History G N Devy, https://udrc.lkouniv.ac.in/Content/DepartmentContent/SM_c30be09c-d6c7-4cd2-a95c-a81119f654eb_6.pdf. Accessed 27 March 2023.
Ganesh Devy. “. .” . . - YouTube, 30 December 2017, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/002198949302800110. Accessed 27 March 2023.
“What is Translation Studies? - Translation Studies at Exeter.” University of Exeter WordPress -, 17 April 2018, https://blogs.exeter.ac.uk/translation/blog/2018/04/17/what-is-translation-studies/. Accessed 27 March 2023.
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