Abstract: Translation studies and postcolonial studies have emerged as the two most significant areas of cultural studies in recent times. The purpose of this essay is to explore the link between the two, through the practice of translating postcolonial fiction from Bangladesh with special focus on the short stories of Humayun Ahmed, a major contemporary writer of Bangladesh . Most postcolonial theory continues to uphold the dominance/hegemony of English since it is the language in which such studies is conducted both in the West and the erstwhile colonies. However, despite the phenomenon of the Empire writing back a large number of writers from postcolonial nations write not in English but in their own national language. Hence, postcolonial theory in its negotiations with postcolonial literatures is dependent on the availability of English translations of non-English/vernacular fiction. The choice of fiction from Bangladesh was based on the fact that its identity as a postcolonial nation is integrally linked to a language named Bangla or Bengali. Unlike India, Pakistan or Srilanka, that have witnessed the rise of literature in English, Bangladesh has zealously maintained its unique linguistic identity and the narration of this nation has been almost enxclusively in Bangla. Hence, it is little wonder that the postcolonial literature from Bangladesh has remained largely ignored by postcolonial critics and is seldom included in the curriculum of postcolonial studies. The aim of translating Humayun Ahmed’s stories is a small step towards putting the fiction from Bangladesh on the map of postcolonial literatures. For discourses of translation the value of a translated work was often and still is, determined by the extent to which it can read as if it were written in the target language itself. Expectations of fluency imply an effacement of the very process of translation that makes a translated text available. Such invisibility of the translator and the translated work has ideological implications that are often ignored. Translation is not merely an aesthetic and literary activity that involves two languages but is a process embedded in cultural systems. That a translation be read like an original, implies an erasure of the cultural specificities of the cource language and establishes the cultural hegemony of the target language. Postcolonial translation is a radical practice that is aware of the politics of translation and is committed to maintaining the nuances of cultural difference and not domesticating the source language/vernacular text.

 The locution 'post-colonial translation' has gained currency in contemporary seminars and workshops but there seems to be little consensus among speakers/academics about its meaning and implications. In seminars there are still lengthy discussions of the pressing need to provide English equipments of culture specific ancient Indian/Aryan class terms like kshatriya as 'baron' (to provide a mild example) in order to make the Indian epic more intelligible and acceptable to an Anglo-American readership. Clearly the term 'post-colonial' appended to translation carries little or no significance and it functions as a fashionable and eye-catching garnish to a commonplace dish necessary to ensure its place in the academic carnival banquet. It is with a remembrance of such amazing encounters that I venture to clarify at the outset what I understand by the term 'post-colonial translations'.

             I shall attempt to explore the significance of the term 'post-colonial translation' by tracing the links between post-colonial studies and translation studies especially as they obtain in the academia. I shall begin by examining briefly the current ideological position of post-colonial studies, which upholds the hegemony of the English language and the political/ideological implications that it has for post-colonial regional / vernacular or what has gained currency as bhasha literatures. Post-colonial translations as I understand it is both translation of non-English post-colonial literatures as a sustained and systematic effort of dissemination of these texts as well as a methodology that draws on current translation theories to evolve a radical practice that can be termed post-colonial.

             The second section of my paper is more personal and is concerned with my role as a humble teacher concerned with the future of English studies and as a practicing translator who just has two languages, namely Bangla and English. My choice of translating fictions from Bangladesh was at one level a conscious attempt to affect a change in my own/our understanding of post-colonial studies as we choose to define it in the narrow confines of curriculum. It was occasioned by the sheer excitement of reading Humayun Ahmed a popular fiction writer from Bangladesh whose nuanced satire of the post-colonial condition created an impulsive desire to translate the stories from Bangla into English.

             Post-colonial studies may be regarded as a new entrant in the academic curriculum of Indian Universities staking its claim in the syllabi of English departments only in the 90's. The two factors responsible for its emergence were the development of a powerful body of post-colonial theories and the 80's phenomena of the Empire writing back in the language of its erstwhile masters/colonizers.

             These 'new makers of World fiction' as Pico Iyer terms them are a generation of writers from post-colonial nations, who truly reap the benefits of a globalized economy. Recipients of prestigious literary awards and whooping sums of advance, these writers enjoy a power and prominence in the world literary market unimagined by those who wrote fiction in English in the 30's or 60's. Tracing the contours of this difference is outside the purview of this paper and I mention global image of the English language writer from post-colonial nations because it has had serious consequences for the notion of post-colonial literary productions per se. The oft-quoted statement by Salman Rushdie is a case in point.¹ Recently a similar statement made by V.S. Naipul sparked off the Nimrana debate. Indeed so strong and influential has been this rather ridiculous swagger of vanity and ignorance expressed by post-colonial English writer-critics, that we now have to resort to underlining the obvious; i.e. the post-colonial nations like India also produce significant and powerful Indian regional languages or bhasha literatures. In spite of its hundreds of years of sophisticated and evolved literary tradition bhasha literatures are now orphans in a global market that refuse to grant them legitimacy and recognition. The Empire it seems is writing back with a vengeance and in the process settling a score with its own sibling, the vernacular or bhasha literatures that had once regarded it as an imposter and foundling in the heyday of the Empire.

             At this point I wish to digress a little to talk about the role of the English language as shaping the literary/intellectual minds in Bengal from the mid 19^th to mid 20^th century and the two-way traffic that existed between English and vernacular literatures.

             Perhaps the best example of the reversal of fortunes of English language writers of the Empire can be traced through the careers of two English educated elite Bengali young men in the early /mid 19^th century. Michael Madhusudan Dutt and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya both began their creative writing careers in English that were regarded as 'false starts'. Dutt went on to record thus in his famous sonnet (included now in almost all Bengali school textbook anthologies) in which he lamented his won ignorance and folly in his inability to recognize the rich jewels of Bangla and covet the goods of the English language like a beggar.

             Bankim Chandra whose first novel Rajmohan's Wife sank without a trace advised young men like Romesh Chandra "You will never live by your writing in English….Govind Chandra and Sashi Chandra's English poems will never live, Madusudan's Bengali poetry will live as long as the Bengali language will live." But this celebration of the mother tongue as the vehicle of creative writing was by no means an insular or chauvinistic / parochial tendency. Even if we leave aside the genius of Tagore who embraced internationalism as the credo in his writing, philosophy and pedagogical innovations the bourgeois Bengali in the post-independence era had always operated in two worlds, the world of English / Europe and Bangla.

             Indeed in the 1840's/50's Bengali intellectuals and writer - critics like Buddadev Bose, Bishnu Dey, Sudhindranath Dutta, Samar Sen were not only formidable scholars of English and European literature but were prolific translators of English and European works and especially modernist / symbolist poetry into Bangla. This traffic from the west through translation not only of texts but critical thinking played a significant role in setting the trends of post-Tagore Bangla literature. However not only is such creative/critical bi-lingualism largely on the wane, but also there is an attendant malaise amongst the middle-class educated younger generation of Bengalis who affect a disdain for Bangla literature and language. It is ironic that the parents of Bengali youngsters would encourage them to read the Bangla nonsense verses of Sukumar Ray in translation. This I'm afraid indicated not recognition of the genius of the translator Sukanta Chudhury but a social snobbishness, a mind-set that associates only English with 'great literature'.

             In the agenda of post-colonial studies Bhasha literatures thus have to contend with the sheer power and prominence of post-colonial English literatures on the one hand and the dominance/hegemony of English language as the medium through which such studies is conducted. The blinked vision of post-colonial literatures it seems can only be corrected through dissemination of post-colonial bhasha literatures in English translation. Indeed one might say that it is the post-colonial predicament of the non-English writer her/his identity as a post-colonial writer is hinged on the critic/readers' accessibility to her/his works in English.

             A famous case in point is that of Mahasweta Devi who was translated into English in the early eighties by the prominent Marxist feminist deconstructionist academic Gayatri Chakrabatri Spivak. By the seventies Mahasweta Devi was well known as a powerful writer among a circle of Bengali readers and also widely known through the translation of her works into other Indian languages. However, her entry into the post-colonial agenda and her canonical status in the curriculum of post-colonial studies (she is now a part of the post-colonial canon) was largely the effect of the prestige of her English language translator in the western academia.

             Since English is the linguistic register of post-colonialism, English language translation thus determines the visibility of the writer from multilingual ex-colonies to the West and at home. It is at this crucial juncture that post-colonial translation as a radical practice comes into being and must be distinguished from the indigenous traditions that have existed in India over a long period.

             As Meenakshi Mukherjee observes, "Translations have always been a vital part of Indian literary culture even when the word 'translation' or any of its Indian language equivalents - anuvad, tarjuma, bhasantar or vivartanam -were not evoked to describe the activity" The important point to note is that such anuvad, tarjuma or bhasantar almost never drew attention to its own status creating a notion of seamless narratives that are a part of an entire body of writing from a culture. However, what was evidently a virtue/plus point in the indigenous tradition can take on an entirely different political/ideological connotation when translations occur in the powered relation that exist between languages such as vernacular and English in a colonial and post-colonial context. I shall return to this shortly in my discussion in which current translation theory has paved the way for radical revision of translation practice.

             Mukherjee also points out that there was a healthy tradition of translation from one vernacular into another by which a reader of Kannada or Marathi could access literature in Bangla or Oriya without the mediation of English. This form of continuous cultural exchange and interaction accounted for making India into a nation that is 'a translation area'. However, this has lamentably declined over the years for the sheer lack of translators who are proficient in another Indian bhasha or vernacular apart from her/his mother tongue. It is at this point that one has to look into the role played by the state supported Sahitya Akademis that were set up with the purpose of translating the representative or best works of regional/vernacular/bhasha literatures into English. Inspite of its attempts to foster across cultural exchange with the objective of linking literature, as Ritu Menon points out in these non commercial ventured the quality of translation and production values were secondary. Menon's essay also traces the development in the 60's of private publishing houses, like Jaico, Hind Pocket Books, Sangam Books, Vikas, OUP and Bell Books that took up translation as viable commercial ventures. Even as these houses ceased publication or became sporadic in their attempts in the late 1980's translation received an extra fillip through 3 independent publishing companies namely Kali For Women (1984), Penguin India (1985) and Katha (1988).  I am not equipped to go into a discussion of the roles of these and other publishing enterprises as the disseminator of translations. Suffice it to say that as a feminist academic/teacher I find it invigorating that Kali with its avowed aim of dealing exclusively with women's writing created a kind of revolution in feminist/women's studies in India . It paved the way for feminist scholars who have used translation as a tool of recovery and discovery of forgotten and neglected women writers from bhasha literatures. This in turn has opened up new directions for research into women's contribution in history, politics and literature in various disciplines in the universities and centers for culture studies. However, inspite of the spate of translation activities that now mark the publishing enterprise there is little consensus among them about the theoretical underpinnings of such work. Thus it is difficult to trace the emergence of a theory and methodology of translation of these texts, which is indispensable for translation studies and post-colonial studies in the academia. The presence or the lack of translation apparatus such as glossary, a detailed translator's note/preface along with an indication of the status of the original or publishing houses. However, such inconsistencies and neglect go a long way in perpetuating the short shift that is given to translation in our culture. An awareness of the politics of translation cannot be treated as the special provenance of post-colonial culture critics who have shown how Orientalist translations in colonial Indian served as a tool of hegemonic control. This is where academic institutions/universities can step in to work in tandem with publishing houses taking up translation projects that using contemporary translation theory can turn the practice into a radical cultural - political one.

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