Since several decades, the process of Translation has been regarded as a ‘carrying across’ of literature and culture between two distinct languages. The process entails communicating the meaning of a source language text by means of a target language. According to Bassnett and Trivedi, the process of Translation is a continuous and ‘ongoing’ process of ‘intercultural transfer’ which is highly significant as it makes possible the coming together of people from various regions and cultures.
According to the periodization of Translation in the Indian subcontinent, the period from 1957 onwards is regarded as the Post-Colonial Translation period. Essentially, the activities from colonization to the present are dealt with. Though this distinction indicates that Translation process has a rich wide historical account, it also encloses ideological and political implications and isn’t just a mere interactive session between two authors. Post-colonial Translation decenters the Euro-centric Imperial narratives and challenges the Orientalist notion- ‘knowledge is power’, which according to Colonizers was concentrated in the West and also the discourse concerning the ‘Other’.
Right from the start, Translation practices have been studied as a part of the asymmetrical power structure that exists between two languages and cultures and has been considered a front-line participant in the process of Colonization. A tool under the hand of Colonizers, they used Translation for governing over the Colonized. Though on the surface, the Occident maintained the facade of a civilizing mission meant for the colonies, their underlying agenda had been to ‘domesticate’ the Orient.
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Through a variety of translation practices, the Colonial powers substantiated their urge of knowing and orientalising the tradition and culture of their colonies.For instance, scholar William Jones’ English translation of Kalidasa’s “Abhijnanasakuntalam”(originally in Sanskrit) didn’t retain the rich imagery and indigenous descriptions as the original. Similarly Edward Fitzgerald, in his translation of Omar Khayyam’s “Rubaiyyat”(originally in Persian), disregarded Khayyam as being not a ‘poet enough’, and thus sought to make him one. These translationns can be seen as a ‘discovery’ of the East by the ‘superior’ Westerners. Thus, taking great liberties with the original, the Colonial intellectuals aesthetically subjugated the text to cater the taste of Western cultivated readers.
On the contrary, in case of the Colonized masses, Translation has been a patriotic act of exposing their country’s cultural heritage before the world at large. Breaking the European Imperialists’ unflinching faith in their language and culture being racially, aesthetically and intellectually superior to the colonized, the Indian intellectuals from nineteenth century onwards, intervened and sought to redefine India’s richly laden historic past, retrieval of which became a matter of grave importance of the anti-colonial agenda.
For instance, activists like Raja RamMohun Roy, after inculcating and enriching his mind with the colonizer’s English; he translated extensively from Indian languages into English and suggested others to acquire English for economic and cultural gains. He translated the “Kena Upanishad” and several other culturally adept texts as a revolt.
As translator Rita Kothari opines, Translation became a tool to carry out the: “agenda and issue correction in the Westerner’s version of India’s past.”
That is, the Post-Colonial translators pledged to recreate the meddled up image of the Indian subcontinent by the colonizers.
Though emergence of English as the first choice as a target language among intellectuals appears quite baffling and ironic, they didn’t compromise with the ‘Indianness’. Creating a special arena which aimed at rupturing the colonial motive of showcasing the indigenous as primitive, superstitious and backward, translators prioritized the colonizer’s language.
Neither did they distort the powerful narrative nor the culturally rich dialect. With the usage of footnotes, glossaries and prefaces meant for the Western readers as well as those who are unfamiliar with a specific regional language, translators maintain the reach of readership into account. Also, in certain cases, Translators domesticate a foreign text by discarding all the elements of the original.
This too is done keeping in mind the target audience’s culture. English still remains to be the presiding language in Post-colonial translations as it is the language of power and a marker of social and cultural reputation as well. An English translation of several Indian works has produced a corpus of knowledge about the Third World which enables the nucleus of power to revise and establish a rewritten image of the ‘East’.
Moreover, Post-Colonial Translation believes in and stresses upon the popular dictum- unity in diversity. Within the Indian subcontinent, several institutional endeavours are adapted to erase the linguistic and cultural split among people which aim to encourage unity through translations. Organizations such as The Sahitya Akademi via its multifarious schemes popularized translations from one Indian language into another.
Further, Premchand’s Hindi novel, “Godan” was translated as “The Gift of a Cow” (1968) under the UNESCO project of translation. Post-Colonial Translations also revived the already powerful voices of the marginalized communities, such as Dalits and Women by bringing their bold narratives from their respective regions to the national and international forefront.
Scholar Maria Tymoczko decodes Translation as a ‘metaphor’ for the Post-Colonial. Her views are in accordance with the fact that the Imperial politics of ‘Representation’ granted Europe with the status of the ‘original’. And thus maintaining their monopoly, they heavily translated the works of the inferior colonies.
Translator and scholar Tejaswini Niranjana opines that- the Post-colonial translators observe Translation as a medium of revolt as it cross-examines important questions of ‘Representation’, ‘Power’ and ‘Historicity’.
According to translator Sherry Simon, Post-colonial translation plays a dual role. First, it has upgraded translation studies to a ‘global’ level. And secondly, it helps in understanding ‘power relations’ and relations of ‘alterity’.
Postcolonial translation has gained prominence as it successfully bring together the once powerful language and culture of the Colonizer along with the languages of the culture once marginalized and ignored on the same plain. The latter now writes back to the earlier supremacists through translations.
The translator’s ultimate target is to rectify the wrongly perceived and falsified narrative by which the Colonizers scrutinized third world societies like. Thus, Post-colonial translators extensively indulge in dialogue about social and political practices that resists the Anglo-American academic approach in order to overturn the stratified position between the linguistic and cultural worlds represented by the source text and the target text involved in the process of Translation.
Bibliography
- Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, eds. Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice, London: Routledge, 1999.
- Kothari, Rita, “Recalling: English Translations in Colonial India” in her book Translating India, 2003.
- Tymoczko, Maria. Translation in a Postcolonial Context: Early Irish Literature in English Translation. London and New York: Routledge, 1999.
- Niranjana, Tejaswini, Siting Translations: History, Post-Structuralism and the Colonial Context Berkeley, Los Angeles, Oxford: University of California Press, 1992.
- Simon, Sherry and Paul St-Pierre (eds.) Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2000.
