Current Issue  Volume 3  No 1&2  Mar & Oct 2006

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            Here it may be argued that that there is a shift in the very nature of ‘translational authority’ while dealing with English either as a source language or a target language. The tradition of retellings and free adaptations in Indian traditions was never haunted by the anxiety of authenticity. This was perhaps because they could be sure that the text would not translate them. In the precolonial period the ritualistic context allows translations to realize the possibilities of subtexts in the target language. Translating any text is finally a matter of locating its subtexts and it is here that English poses some of the basic problems. And English poses problems here largely because of its historical location.

There is a dialectical relation between English as the language that translates us and English as a language that we translate in. As the story of Tagore’s self-translations would suggest, English regulates the subjectivity of the text to suit the requirements of Englishness as a colonial site. When Tagore realizes that he has not been translating his poems into English but has been translated by English into what he never was, he disowns his translations. I think this is a moment of post-coloniality in the Indian translation tradition. In other words, the ‘colonial phase’ was a period when English translated us into its epistemology. The translation of Shakuntalam uses the conventions of Romantic comedy and in the process produces a colonial text that corresponds to their world-view.

Nikhila’s paper suggests that strategies of translation employed in creating genres like ‘partition literature’ which is deeply implicated in the narrative of nationhood and collective identities, misread and misrepresent the texts for appropriating them into categories that are arbitrary and misleading. The post-colonial moment, in this sense, is a moment of contesting Englishness through textual practices which would include translational (and sub-national) ones.

Ideally, post-colonial translation should involve a project of decolonization where subtexts will remain strongly Indian. What was described as pre-colonial translation was in this sense post-colonial. Perhaps Indian traditions in translation will always have to contend with the problem of colonialism in its various forms. The post-colonial phase promises to open up a different way of evaluating translations of the last two hundred years. As has been shown for Marathi (Kimbahune, unpublished), Shakespearean plays which were successful on the stage were unfaithful to the text while those which remained loyal to the conceptual apparatus of the original were not stageworthy. There were about 70 adaptations/translations of Shakespeare into Marathi between 1850 and 1920. Just as Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayyam was translated into most of the Indian languages in the first half of the 20^th century, Shakespeare was appropriated in various forms in the second half of the 19^th century in most of the Indian languages. A new literary history of Indian languages based on translational practices remains to be written. The paradigm of rewriting is particularly relevant when we discuss the adaptations of canonical texts like Shakespeare and Omar Khayyam in Indian languages. In his paper K.M. Sherrif suggests that Translation Studies could come closer to Culture Studies if they can profitably study ‘the vast unchartered terrain of cultural rewriting’ under whose rubric he includes a large variety of popular cultural forms such as film remakes, Harikatha and Kathaprasangam, a uniquely Kerala art form where a literary work is retold before a large audience with an emphasis on the sentimental and the sensational, to the accompaniment of music.

One of the effects of the ‘colonial’ phase of translation has been its disruption of the relationships between Indian languages. Asaduddin points out that in the last few decades most of the translations have been from Indian languages into English. The creative use of translation to negotiate the power structures of a living community is one of the salient features of the Indian translation tradition. In a forthcoming article on the making of literary culture in Malayalam between 15^th century and 18^th century, I have argued that it was through translations that Malayalam defined its specific identity distancing itself from Sanskrit and Tamil traditions. As articles on Oriya, Kannada, Hindi and Gujarati would testify, translation has meant the creative assimilation of the other in the Indian context. In the first half of the twentieth century some of the languages such as Bengali and Marathi became languages of power largely due to the presence of major writers in them. In the second half of the twentieth century it is pan-Indian movements like Modernism, Dalit literature and feminist writing that have reclaimed the dialogue between Indian languages. This has also revived the relevance of the precolonial discourse of Bhakti. In the context of Dalit and feminist movements translation becomes a subversive act of resistance as well as a creative act of affirmation. Here it must be added that our celebration of Bhakti poetry very often does not take into account questions of caste, cult, dialect, literacy, ritual and several similar problems that are relevant to pre-colonial society. Scholars like Vivek Dhareswar have argued that the use of post-colonial categories tend to misrepresent the whole experience of Bhakti poetry. The task of understanding some of these pre-colonial categories will require scholarship of a kind that is no more available within our academy. It is however necessary for Indian languages to recover the dialogic relationships between them. This is where theoretical discussions can prove productive.

The paper by Chandrani Chatterjee and Milind Malshe points to the possibilities of translation in an open world where translation becomes enabling and empowering. Two well-known American poets, Adrienne Rich and Phyllis Web find the ghazal form striking because it allows them to overcome the monologic elements of the Western lyric tradition. A genre is a way of validating a text. These poets use ghazal to challenge the conventions and authority of patriarchal American society. The translational process confronts the politics of the genre and also realizes the potential of the form in a different historical context. What is carried across in this cultural transaction is the intimate tonality inherent in the ghazal, a sort of ‘person presence’ that makes the form itself ideologically loaded. Translation has to be sensitive to this subliminal world of voices which are very often suppressed when English is used as a target or source language. The example of ghazal suggests that translations from Indian literature have to be informed by an understanding of Indian literary traditions as well. It also illustrates that translation becomes productive when it involves a creative assimilation of the other. Perhaps this is the most outstanding feature of Indian translation traditions. Its revisionist potential is relevant to a world of asymmetrical power relations where culture will have to contest and negotiate inequality in one form or the other.

In conclusion, we hope that the issues raised in these papers will be taken up for further discussion and debate, and will be dealt with more substantially with reference to some of the literary traditions of India which are equally vital but could not be studied here due to unavoidable reasons. A separate volume of essays dealing with the medieval Indian translation scene seems to be a viable project, considering the complex nature of the field.

It is also time we recognized the ‘anxiety of translation’ in the context of English as a manifestation of its ‘authority’ that has deep roots in colonial cultural history. Translations of Shakespeare finally led to the emergence of the Indian proscenium theatre. The reception of Shakespeare in Indian languages is part of an Indian literary history that is yet to be written. The way he has been translated and received in sociocultural ethoses is a significant comment on the receiving sociocultural ethoses. We need both diachronic and synchronic studies across several Indian languages to map the uncharted expanse of Indian translation traditions.

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