Abstract: Translation of classical Indian texts into English was started by orientalist scholars like William Jones with a definite agenda to give the western reader a feel of the Indian mystique. The choice of texts and the strategies employed were in accordance with this agenda. This paper starts off from post-colonial translation. The main body of the paper looks at post-colonial translation as a part of globalization, an attempt to give global dimensions to local/regional texts. It enumerates the changes that a literary work undergoes in the process of being translated, specially when the target language is the language of the erstwhile colonizer and the target readership the so-called first world. The factors that influence the translator and can become problematic are taken up in detail. The first and foremost is the choice of the text in the source language and the reasons behind it. Fidelity to the source language text is taken up along with the strategies that the translator employs in translating what is strictly local/regional like folk songs, folk traditions etc. Condensation or deleting what seems irrelevant in the source language text is another problem area. The paper quotes from translations or opinions on some of these issues expressed by translators. The paper concludes with apprehensions that post-colonial translation can destroy the local/regional identity of a literary work if these problem areas are not tackled sensitively.  

                 To take a look at the term ‘translation’ and its Hindi/Bangla counterpart Anuvad or Rupantar before starting a paper on post-colonial translation would be in order. Translation has been defined by a number of critics. I quote F.L. Lucas, as his definition seems the most representative of the western way of thinking. According to him, the aim of translation is "to try to compensate the intelligent reader for his ignorance of the language concerned, and to give him, however imperfectly, the impression he would be likely to get, if he read the original fluently himself." Translated texts therefore are accorded a second rate place and the act of translation itself is far from creative.

In the multilingual Indian context the terms Anuvad or Rupantar attach no such stigma to the act of translation or the translated text. Anuvad literally means what comes later and Rupantar means change of form. These differences must be kept in mind as one looks at the way translation has evolved and carved a niche for itself in literature in recent years especially in a multilingual country like India . Creative activity similar to adaptation, which involves rendering classical texts like the Gita, the Ramayan and the Mahabarata into languages easily understood by the people, has been quite popular in India for a long time now. Thus translation to use the term in its broadest sense, has been a common literary practice in this country for a long time now, may be centuries. This is in keeping with our multilingual and multicultural set up which allowed translation to evolve freely as a creative activity and not be tied down by theories.

However translation has a western context and was undertaken as a serious venture in the latter half of eighteenth century in Indian by Sir William Jones who came to this country as a judge. He is known for his mastery of Sanskrit, his pioneering efforts in setting up the Asiatic Society in Kolkata and, most importantly, his English translation of Kalidasa's Shakuntala. The circumstances leading to his English rendering of the well-known Sanskrit play are curious. In the words of a critic, "he wanted to know whether Indians had plays as forms of literature, and if they had, what their nature was, and finally, whether they could be of use to him in the context of the administration of justice in India”. (Sastry 1958:33) To start with he translated a Bengali version of the play into Latin. This satisfied him and he translated it into English in 1789. His intention was to make "one of the greatest curiosities that the literature of Asia has yet brought to light” available to westerners. His rendering of the play is in prose (Arthur W Ryder and Laurence Binyon later rendered it in verse).

             A look at Jones’ translation reveals a tendency to comment elaborately. An example: Shakuntala feels that her blouse made of bark has been fastened rather tightly by her companion Priyamvada and complains to her other companion Anasuya. Priyamvada gives the reply that can be translated literally as: "In this matter, blame your own youth that has enlarged your bust”. Jones’ translation runs like this "Will, my sweet friend, enjoy, while you may, that youthful prime, which gives your bosom so beautiful a swell?”

             Jones also translated Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda. In his prefatory essay he says, "After having translated the Gitagovinda word for word, I reduced my translation to the present form, in which it is now exhibited, omitting only those passages, which are too luxuriant and too bold for an European taste”. Thus, his translation is characterized by

 (a)    a tendency to elaborate and

(b)   selective omitting where shringara reaches a point of verbal excess.

               One can understand the latter tendency when one takes into account the readership he catered to but the first is somewhat baffling.

             In Orientalism Edward Said criticizes orientalists in general and Jones (and other translators) in particular for what he considers a problematic attitude towards the orient on their part. For them the West is rational, developed, humane and superior whereas the orient is aberrant, underdeveloped and inferior. Secondly, he feels that these scholars prefer abstractions about the orient, particularly those based on texts representing a 'classical’ oriental civilization rather than direct evidence drawn from modern oriental realities. According to him the orientalists regard the orient as eternal, uniform and incapable of defining itself and are at the of bottom something either to be feared or controlled. About Jones, he says, "To rule and to learn then to compare Orient with Occident these were Jones' goals, which, with an irresistible impulse always to codify, to subdue the infinite variety of the Orient to a complete digest of laws, figures, customs and works, he is believed to have achieved” (Said: 178).

             One feels that despite the elaborate commentary that embellishes his translation and omissions that have been mentioned earlier, Jones and his contemporaries were not influenced as much by the biases mentioned by Said as the nineteenth century orientalists as also number of scholars (including translators) who came later. Among nineteenth century translators Edward Fitzgerald, who rendered Omar Khayyam into English, is a well-known name. While translating Attar's Bird Parliament from Persian, Firzgerald wrote to Rev. E.B. Cowell in 1851.

 “It is an amusement to me to take what liberties I like these Persians who (as I think) are not Poets enough to frighten one from such excursions, and who really do need a little Art to shape them”.                                     (Trivedi 1993:45)

             This is a typical instance of the western translator's patronizing/colonizing attitude to the source language text (though the Persians were never colonized by the British) that according to him (there were very few women translators in the colonial period) was being 'improved' by translation. Even today there are writers and translators who think it an elevation in status for a regional language text to be translated into English. In the main body of the paper I shall make an attempt to study some works recently translated from Indian languages into English with a view to look at the changes made by some translators and the possible motives / intentions behind them, keeping in mind this legacy bequeathed by the colonizer.

             In his 'Translator's Note' to the English translation of Rabindranath Tagore's Gora the late Sujit Mukherjee attaches a lot of importance to fidelity to the original. He says that the discrepancy between the Bangla text and Pearson's English translation that left out large chunks of the original motivated him to produce another translation of the novel. In his words, "This discrepancy more than other reasons made me resolve to produce a new English translation. Let me claim that if it has no other virtue, at least it is a complete and unabridged rendering of the standard Bangla text”. (Tagore 1997:479). In his collection of essays on translation, he reiterated his stand, "A translation must necessarily be true to the original and act as a kind of lens, a viewing medium, through which the original may be scrutinized when necessary”. (Mukherjee 1981:149). Interestingly, different translations of Gora indicate different readings of the novel and Tutun Mukherjee looks at these differences. She concludes, "It is a fact that words and language-use have polemical significance in Tagore, especially in this novel which debates issues of nationalism, religion, caste, class, gender and selfhood. The many translated versions of the text draw attention to the omissions, deviations, inflections, and emphasis as perceived by the reader - translators. These serve a greater purpose. The source text is enlarged and gains in what Andrew Benjamin has called 'differential plurality’” (Rahman 2002).

             There is another way of looking at it. Aruna Chakraborty who won the Sahitya Academy award for translation attaches great value to fidelity as well, but she believes in being faithful to the spirit of the work, the nuances and the cultural context rather then just the written word. She believes, "Some texts suffer a dent even if a line or phrase is taken away, with others it is possible to condense without significant loss to the original”. Incidentally Chakraborty has translated canonical texts like Saratchandra Chattopadhyay's ‘Srikanta’ and modern classics like Sunil Gangopadhyay's ‘Those days’ (Shei Shamay) and trimmed them considerably, in the latter case with the author's consent. Her main argument is that most Bangla novels first appear serially in magazines. The repetitions and meanderings are not edited when they come out in book form and therefore the translator is within his / her rights to edit it. A number of translators have very strong views on editing / condensing which they feel should be avoided in any case. Jasbir Jain is one of them. Her stand is very clear. "The translator is not re-writing in the sense of ascribing a new meaning to the original text, or borrowing the theme to suit an adaptation, or to shift generic priorities. Therefore either one should translate or be clear about other choices”.

             The "fidelity-betrayal syndrome” to use George Steiner's words, is no longer a simple this or that option. To this Susan Bassnett adds another one, "Should the translation be faithful to the author or be faithful to those who cannot read the original language”? Her answer to this question is that "translation is all about negotiating, negotiating the world of the original author and the world of the reader”. What one has to keep in mind throughout this process of negotiation is that the world of the reader (generally from the first world) should not be allowed to take over the translated text.

             In other words, the translator has to maintain a delicate balance between the source language and the language of translation. The translator might face problems rendering literary works with a folk bias in language, situation etc., but changing those in order to make the translated text more comprehensible (read palatable) to the western reader would only bring down their literary value. Equally disastrous would be literal word-to-word translation. Those of us who have read Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay's novels Pather Panchali and Aparajito in Bangla would have savoured the rhythm and lyricism of his language. When Gopa Majumdar started translating the latter novel into English she found that retaining every sentence of the original text did nothing to enhance the novel's readability. On the other hand "What was eloquent and beautiful in the original, in a painstakingly faithful translation, sounded not just stilted, but archaic, fanciful, or positively melodramatic” (Bandopadhyay, 1999:xvi). According to Majumdar (who has also translated Ashapurna Debi and Satyajit Ray and is now working on a biography of Michael Madhusudan Dutt) this is the "worst dilemma" of a translator which one has to solve oneself. In her own works she tries to retain as much of the original as possible and if she wants major changes to be incorporated, she tries to consult the author or the next of his / her in taking permission to deviate from the original. She puts it this way, "A good translator has to be both brave and wise enough to know where changes can and should be made to the text to enhance readability, without changing or distorting the essential meaning of the original”. (Ibid) This balance between braveness and wisdom helps the text to retain its identity and not get sucked into the global whirlpool.

             Translating indigenous / folk literature or even mainstream literary texts that are about tribal or indigenous people, is perhaps more challenging than translating mainstream literature and involves more complex negotiations. In an essay titled 'Are we the "folk” in this lok? Usefulness of the plural in translating a lok-katha’, Christi Ann Merrill talks about her experiences in translating a Hindi short story inspired by a Rajasthani folk tale. She observes, "For a lok-ocentric vision of a story would see translation as less of a tangible carrying across in the English sense of the word, and more of an intangible telling in turn, as is suggested by the Hindi word for translation, anuvad”. (Rahman 2002:78) I realized this when I read A River Called Titash (Barman: 1992) a novel by Advaita Malla Barman translated from Bangla into English by Kalpana Bardhan. The novel in Bangla titled Titash Ekti Nadir Naam is about the lives of the Malo people, communities of fisher folk on the banks of the river Titash in Comilla (a district in Bangladesh ) at the turn of the last century. The author was himself from this community, its first educated man and writer. The novel, autobiographical to some extent, was completed shortly before the author succumbed to tuberculosis and published posthumously by a group of his friends.

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