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T.S.Sathyanath
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T S Sathyanath is Reader
in the Dept of Modern Languages, University
of Delhi. He teaches Indian literature,
Indian literary historiography, comparative
literature and so on. He has published extensively
on literature, cultural studies, sociolinguistics
etc.
He can be reached at the e-mail id
of
satya@du.ac.in;
satyanath@vsnl.net.in
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lthough translation is generally considered
as a literary process, it involves a series of cultural maneuvers
by the cultures involved in the process, both ideologically
and otherwise. The absence of tragedy as a
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genre in Indian
literature has generally prompted scholars to perceive the
emergence of tragedy in Indian literature variously as influence,
reception, emergence of anew genre etc.
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However, a closer look at the controversies,
debates, criticisms and experimentations and the changes
in parallel native performing traditions reveal interesting
cultural maneuvers undertaken by different groups of people
in responding to the genre of tragedy, which also needs
to be looked as a part of the translation process. The paper
attempts to problematize the issue by going through different
modes of representations attempted in the history of modern
Kannada literature, particularly during the period 1920-50,
which constitute the formation period for the genre. The
problem has been approached from six different perspectives.
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- The early translations of tragedies.
- Controversies that surrounded the early translations.
- Attempts to create an appropriate aesthetics (sensibility) to appreciate the new genre.
- Attempts to demonstrate the existence of tragic elements in Indian literature.
- Attempts to demonstrate the existence of tragic heroes in Jaina literature, specifically in medieval Kannada epics.
- The tragic nature in Kannada folk performing traditions.
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The paper argues for a need to understand
translation as a process of cultural production and consumption
rather than as a literary one.
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1.
INTRODUCTION
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Translation, right from the time of its
inception, is a project of cultural domination and was conceived
and executed by the colonial rule in order to substantiate
its political interest. Whether it is translation of the
law texts or the classics, we can see the western Canon
operating behind it and gradually dominating the paradigm.
The notions such as the original text, interpolations, different
receptions, the accuracy of translation, the chronological
ordering of the texts, there by, implying the influence
of one over the other are only some of few the problems
that one confronts in the field of textual criticism and
translation. At the same time, it is equally important to
identify and explore the ways that medieval India used to
deal with the processes that are similar to translation
during the modern period. As many as three hundred renderings
of the Ramayana have been identified and terms such as versions
and variants have been used to denote them. However, looking
into the divergent and pluralistic nature of the narrative
traditions, Ramanujan, 1992 prefers to use the term tellings
to denote them. These medieval tellings, many of them radically
deviant from the reconstructed original text, seem to perform
multiple functions, sometimes mutually antagonistic to each
other.
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