Remember, for instance, Richard Schechner's theories in the context of performative arts. They plead for the avant garde "cosmopolitan style" and the "multi-cultural thinking" for the western theatre so that it can "produce works across various borders-political, geographical, personal, generic and conceptual" (Schechner: 18). In this process, it can appropriate into the theatrical practices all the indigenous styles and techniques, both folk and classical, from the Indian, Balinese and Thai theatres. The effects of power implicit in such a syncretic global knowledge were all there for us to see in Peter Brook's version of the Mahabharata. It was an effort to globalise a culture-specific text, to remove it from its cultural moorings and take it onto a neutral ground wherein a more sanitized, universal version of the epic could be projected. It was translation with a vengeance!

Readers usually ask how faithful a piece of translation is to its original, or how authentic it is. Their anxiety to be faithful is often very touching. The original text is like a wife who happens to be very demanding, and the translator tries hard to be faithful to her/it. But there are always hurdles, distractions on the way, I mean verbal distractions. While the translator is apt to philander quite a bit with words, it would be dangerous when it comes to translating a philosophical treatise. By and large, it may be admitted, that translating expository prose is fairly easy. However, where the translator needs to be extra cautious is with philosophical concepts. For as George Steiner emphasizes, "polysemy, the capacity of the same word to mean different things, such difference ranging from nuance to antithesis, characterises the language of ideology" (Steiner: 34). Therefore the translator requires an inter-textual knowledge, and an awareness of the historical evolution of the concept in its philosophical tradition, and its culture.

Let me cite an example: The concept of Maya has often been translated as 'illusion'. The mischief, perhaps unintended, was first committed in the 19th century by W.D.Whitney, when he translated into English from a German translation of the Vedic Sanskrit, Atharva Veda Samhita. There are more than hundred occurrences of the term Maya in the Vedas as scholars tell us, and it first refers to Mitra and Varuna, and their powers of creating objects characterized by forms and dimensions. 'Ma', the root word, means etymologically to measure, also to know. It is the phenomenal world with measurable, visible forms. And when the concept traverses down to Shankara, it does acquire a certain illusory aspect, but only in the context of Brahman. 'Ya', the suffix in Maya, according to Yaska's Nirukta, means 'by which the objects are given specific shape' (O'Neill: p27).

When it comes to literary texts, the story gets more complicated. Here the translator is not only an ideal reader, but also an intimate reader, and he surrenders his self to the text. He realizes that the translation is not a matter of looking for synonyms, arranging syntax and throwing a bit of local colour. Reading is the most intimate act, and one begins to understand why Roland Barthes emphasizes that the act of reading is like a "juissance", an erotic experience (p 21). You need to savour the sound and semantic values of words and to be in love with them. Surrendering to the text in this way means most of the time being literal-for the 'spirit killeth and the letter giveth life'. That is how you retextualise the original in the receiving language. To maximise the problematic of translation, for purposes of analysis, you need that the language you translate from and the one you translate into are alien, and not cognate languages.