Therefore, it was the content of the text that mattered. Long wrote an introduction in which he explained the reasons for undertaking the venture, but there is hardly anything about the difficulties or the problems of translating such a culturally different text, nor anything about the translation strategies. The editorial presence is observed only in the passages 'expunged or softened’ as they were found to be too coarse for or offensive to Europeans state; such passages Long had said were the 'prominent … defects in many Oriental works of high reputation’ (Mitra 2001:101). There is a perfunctory glossary at the end of the translation; its inadequacy became obvious when Long had to explain in the courtroom certain culture specific perceptions in order to assuage his offended readers. In Act I. Sc.4 of the play, one of the female characters belonging to the lower class makes disparaging remarks about Mrs Wood's (wife of the tyrant indigo-planter Wood) familiarity with the magistrate. The British took this to be a slur on their women: Long had to explain the difference in cultural / social perceptions in such matters and elucidate the problems of translation and reception of alien cultures in a courtroom in Calcutta .

             The translation as the title page shows is by "A Native”. However, he seems to be a native who had very little acquaintance with Bangla idioms, phrases or words. There are many inaccurate translations, inaccurate to the point of being howlers. Of many such, I may mention two; a woman says her husband had offered her a 'bau'. This is a short form of 'bauti' or 'baju', a variety of bangle. The word is phonetically close to 'bou', daughter-in-law: the 'native' translator translated the sentence as, '… He even wanted to give me a daughter-in-law’. The second is a literal translation of a Bangla idiom that means 'to go on a fast': 'I will not give rice and water to my body’. Such absurdities make out a strong case against the story that Michael Madhusudan Dutt was the 'native' translator⁵. In the seventies, several scholars argued convincingly against the claim (Sengupta, 1972 Preface viii-xxii). Even the British jury refused to believe that the translator was a native (Proceedings of the trial as printed in Pradhan 114).

   II

            In 1992, Oxford University Press published a translation of the play in the book, The Blue Devil: Indigo and Colonial Bengal with an English Translation of Neel Darpan. Four editions were published in between the publications of Long and the Raos.⁶ All the four are reprints of Long's publication; the last two make alterations/corrections in the original translation but the result is not always felicitous (Sengupta 1972:xxx-xxxiii). The OUP edition is perhaps the first (post-Independence), and till now the last, direct-translation from Dinabandhu Mitra's Bangla play.

             Dinabandhu Mitra addressed the benevolent administrators and the oppressive indigo-planters and wrote to seek redress for the oppressed natives and to appeal to the administrators to salvage their fame. Long had similar motives behind the translation; but his readers were the 'Europeans of influence’, and he intended his work to be also a warning against possible rebellion (his reference was to the Mutiny). The Raos, the authors of The Blue Devil felt the 'necessity for a modern annotated translation of the play to perceive the reality of the oppressive world Dinabandhu Mitra had portrayed’ (12), and they declare that their translation is 'for all' (13).

             From a postcolonial/post-Independence perspective, the play acquires a fresh significance. With the change of historical context, the relevance of the play / translation is not lost, but altered. The title of the book indicates a changed perspective against which the translation is set: the historical backdrop, the context of the play, the documents of Long's trial and other such contemporary socio-political details become a part of the extended textuality of the play. The contents page provides the initial idea of this arrangement: seven chapters that deal with the colonial context precede the translation of the play. Such multilayered textual strategies are common in contemporary literary works intended for an intercultural audience. Embedded texts like footnotes / endnotes, glossary, and such other para-textual devices used in such literary translations and in post - colonial writings suggest that the differences between the two 'are more prima facie than they are upon close consideration’ (Tymczko 2000:22).

             The personal narrative of the authors relating to the conception and execution of the project of translation shows the way they had read a contemporary account of oppression in the play of 1860. During their visits to the villages that were once the indigo-planting areas, they had heard various kinds of tales about the planters and their atrocities. 'Despite these exhilarating tales the villagers had lost all interest in those oppressors; new, indigenous oppressors, no less ruthless had begun to take their place’ (1-2; my emphasis). On the one hand, the authors situate the play on the local political / historical mapping (literally, the maps of colonial Bihar , the indigo - growing provinces are provided), on the other; they release it from the local by connecting it to the global theme of oppression and exploitation that transcends time and space. The ideological stance is fore-grounded through the quotation from Brecht, which precedes the contents page.⁷

            Thus, the function of this text differs from Dinabandhu Mitra's and Long's as well. Translation, as Snell - Hornby has aptly reminded us, is not a trans-coding of words or sentences from one language to another, but a complex form of action whereby the translator offers information on a source - language text in an altered, new situation and under changed functional, cultural, linguistic conditions, retaining the formal aspects as far as possible (see Bassnett and Lefevere ed. 82). The awareness of the difficulties involved in translating a text which is written in colloquial and dialect registers of a village community (in fact, the language is difficult even for a modern day Bengali) is manifest in the translator's statement (11-13):

 All translators face the difficulty of choice and unwittingly many tend to become creators of their own discourse rather than the faithful renderers of the original. We too faced this problem. We wanted our translation to be readable, but above all we wanted our text to stick to the original without altering the ideas or dispensing with local sayings, songs, idioms and mythological references. We have adhered to the text meticulously, but within permissible limits tried to clarify some points, so that they might be understood and appreciated by all (13).

            The authors have used notes and glossary as supplementary texts to bring out the nuances of specific cultural and social practices. The innovative aspect of the work lies in translating the different Bengali registers used by the native and the English characters. In the original, the planters spoke a kind of patois, a non-standard, corrupt form of Bangla that has been translated to similar non-standard, corrupt English. The natives, irrespective of the distinction of their class and consequent difference in their language, are given Standard English speech. Here is an example:

   Wood: Case nothing - this magistrate good man - five years civil suit, case not end. Magistrate my good friend. See, or evidence accept. New law use, four rascals jailed……

Gopinath: My Lord, Nabin Basu's helping the families of those peasants. He has lent his own ploughs, cattle and men to plough their land that they might not lose their crops (217).

            This stylistic strategy successfully meets the challenge of translating such a linguistically difficult text. However, in spite of all the labour and meticulous care they have taken for the publication, certain areas of incomprehension surface only through the process of translation. Translation in this perspective is a re-reading of the source language at the demand of the target language. The 'native' translator often takes for granted certain expressions without trying to probe into their cultural etymology. This is particularly true about texts that deal with issues distant from our present day culture and concern. I refer to three translations of a passage- each different from the other and the one in The Blue Devil is the worst as not only does it fail to translate it, it mistranslates it, fortifying the mistranslation with a historically false information as a 'note'.

             In Act IV. Sc. 2, a pundit, on being questioned by the Deputy Inspector why the senior pundit could not be seen for some days, answers;

 1.      Long's edition … It does not seem good for him now to go to and come from the college looking, with his books under his arms, like a bull bound to the cart. He is now of age. (Mitra 53; my emphasis).

2.      (the above as it 'Should have been’ suggested by Shankar Sengupta);

… It does not look nice for him to come college (sic) when it is about time to erect for him the stake to which the bull of the sradh ceremony is tied (Preface xxxii; my emphasis).

3.      The Blue Devil version …  Besides it does not look nice to go to college every day with a bull's halter tied round one's neck and he is no longer young either (237; my emphasis)

 For the expression I have emphasized, the translators add: 'This is a reference to the necktie, which was introduced by the Europeans’ (270; note 2, Act IV).

 The old Bengali proverb - to tie a brisakastha around one's neck - suggests extreme old age when a person bends double.⁸ 'Brishakastha' was a heavy wooden structure used for sacrificing bulls on Sradh ceremonies. The sheer weight of the frame to be set about 3 feet below and 6 feet above the ground is perhaps the source of the proverb, anyone carrying it would be bent double; hence figuratively, extreme or stooping old age. (I owe the explanation to Sri Madhusudhan Verantatirtha) 'He has become very old’ would have been a perfectly adequate rendering.

Another such major irresponsible editorial misinformation may be cited from Pradhan's edition. In Act V, Sc.i, planter Wood kicks the manager Gopinath. After Wood leaves the scene, Gopinath comments: '….Oh! What kickings? Oh the fool is, as it were, the wife [wearing a gown] of a student who is out of college’. The footnote runs as follows:

The wife- College : the enlightened Bengali wife of those days was a departure from the run of ordinary women, in so far as she would not easily submit to her husband, but would, on the contrary, demand submission from him -Ed (83).

            This explanation has no historical support whatsoever. The idea of the enlightened wife dominating, or maltreating her husband had its origin in the contemporary Bangla popular songs and numerous farces expressing the anxiety of the orthodox guardians of society who were apprehensive of the effect of formal education of the women of Bengal . The statement could have been constructed more meaningfully in the context of the complex dynamics of the relationship between the oppressor and his victim. In this respect, within the scope of this paper, I can only draw attention to the note appended to this line by Long. The politics of interpretation is evident in the editorial avowal, 'This is said only in reference to his [Wood's] dress’ (Mitra 84, note 53; my emphasis). The carrying over (translation) of Wood to the domain of the wife would be feminizing the ‘masculine Anglo-Saxon race’ through the counter - gaze of the colonized other. The Raos have acknowledged the difficulty of decoding the lines by expunging them from their edition.

             Unless translators translating from Indian regional languages to target languages (mostly English) work with special caution they might disseminate incorrect information as in the cases mentioned above.¹⁰ Re-dressing a vernacular text for a larger, multicultural reading public the translator re-presents a text, a culture for a global market: the value of the translated text as a disseminator of cultural identity/history depends much on the ethics of the translator.

Notes

1.      Quoted from The Blue Devil. (148). For complete details see the list of works cited. All citations with only the page no. in parenthesis, unless otherwise mentioned, are from this book. For the discussion of a major part of the contextual/historical matter, I have deliberately confined my references to this book as it draws on most of the important material available in English on the textual and contextual issues. Since my paper discusses their translation as well, interested readers may find it easier to locate contextual details in the same book. Those interested in looking up the original sources may consult exhaustive bibliography provided in this book.

 2.      Two spellings are used: Nil Durpan as in Long's edition and Neel Darpan by the Raos - the latter retain the long 'e' sound of the Bangla word.

 3.      The missionaries considered the planters obstacles to their mission; since the planters were also Christians the natives did not easily believe in the efficacy of Christianity. The animosity between the missionary and the planter was well known; and this was one of the main causes leading to the trail of Long.

 4.      The oppression in the colonies hardly sustains this claim.

 5.      Besides the novelist Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyay's comment that Madhusudan Dutt translated the play, there is no other evidence or supportive documents in favour of the claim.

 6.      Simpkin, Marshal & Co, London 1862; Messers. A.N. Andini & Co. Calcutta, 1903; Pradhan and Sailesh Ch. Sengupta, Eastern Trading Co., Calcutta 1953-54; and Sankar Sengupta, Indian Publications, Calcutta, 1972.

 7.      The authors do not mention the source of the lines quoted. They are from the poem 'Literature will be Scrutinized’ from Martin Andersen Mexo. Brechi Poems, (ed) by John Willett and Ralph Manheim, 1981 repr. Radhakrishna Prakashan, New Delhi , I owe the information to Dr. Ramkrishna Bhattacharya, Anandamohan Colelge, Kolkata.

 8.      Bangiya Sabdakosh, p.68. All editions of the Bangla original explain the proverb in the correct sense.

 There are many such examples which may be cited - there is a reference to 'Rajah' I,iv. (Radhakanta Deb and others who were the leaders opposing widow remarriage). This has been translated as 'king'. 'Rajah' in this context is a conferred title.

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