Translation of a literary text in recent times has come to be a means of enriching a culture's language and literature - an intercultural and intracultural activity, besides being a linguacultural activity. In the additional context of Indian regional literatures, it is a mode of empowerment to gain global recognition, while retaining its singular regional ethos, its ethnic character. Though the corpus of translation from English to Telugu has been encouraging, the same is not true of translations into English. That translation into English is a mode of joining the general pool of national literatures is also true of Seela Subhadra Devi's War, a Heart's Ravage. Its multi-dimensional, international and universal treatment of the subject of war and the related suffering of women as well as children obligates a demand for translation into English. Its multi-dimensionality of theme - plural, heterogeneous and diverse - is as varied as the concerns of woman as individual in the society, with a socio-political and economic role-playing denied to her. This multi-dimensionality of theme is inclusive of a denial of political and civic rights leading to crisis of identity. As such, in times as cataclysmic as war, her suffering is no less heroic than that of soldiers fighting on the battlefront. Following this close on heels is the issue of ravages of war and its impact on children irrespective of gender difference. By a conscious choice of the subject of war, with the collapse of WTO towers lurking constantly as shadows in the background, the poem breaks free of the limitations of rationality of theme. Then there is the subject of the religio-political struggle for domination fought out on the canvas of human life. In treating so all encompassing a subject as this, the poem maps its own space at the national and international levels, facilitating a culture study and bonding nations together in an inter-exchange of human values. Into this web of interdependencies is woven elemental simplicity of theme, which in this vitiated modern world may appear transparently innocent. In a world devoured by fire of hatred, the poem successfully legitimates the essential necessity of the discourse of family and motherhood as crucial for the sustenance of social order. The poem seems to lend credence to the words of Nabaneetha Dev Sen:

"Now we see that the kind of history we write is what historians won't write about. That, which is not seen … by men is written by us. It fills that gap".

(Subhadra Devi 2003: 68)

If historical sensibility alone is a measure to assess a poem's significant contributory feature, it is nowhere better evidenced than here in War, a Heart's Ravage, since the poem grows out of the writer's subjectivity, her own being.

That the poem is inextricably interwoven in its native Telugu culture does not allow it in any way to compromise the international political issues of the contemporary world, that demand attention of all at this very moment, when world's war theatre has shifted to living rooms (Jayalakshmi and Rao 2003: 23). Treating the theme of death and violence as common in the present day world, Seela Subhadra Devi cautions that the world is inexorably moving to the brink of disaster, an Apocalypse. Catastrophic to war are terrorism, nuclear stockpiles, nuclear testing in oceanic depths, manufacture of weapons of mass destruction and other related destructive attitudes with accompanying mass migration, poverty, hunger, homelessness and the like.

As an empowering construct War, a Heart's Ravage is a recognition of, a drawing out and an expression of power at once both intrinsic and a given from without. It awakens the deeply hidden powers of a woman, which comes from being at home to, and connected with, the life force as Bryan Law, affirms in his From Power to Empowerment. Her potential to indulge in a discourse of alternativity on power, away from her marginalized identity by re-contextualizing it in social discourse, needs to be recognized. As such, through translation the poem empowers itself, raises a voice of caution to the world of the impending collapse of cultures, when

World's countries mindless
continue to cross bounds
as boundaries unbound,
trench earth
sow seeds to root war shoots.

(Jayalakshmi and Rao 2003: 13)

Today doubt, suspicion and uncertainty are endemic to life, militancy and militarization mistaken for empowerment, and nations are caught between the contentious issues of religion and politics. For which reason, the poem calls for demilitarization and disarmament, implicit to which is the necessity of disempowering unhealthy competitors in war, who strike at man's personal power, a power which, according to Julia Kraft and Andreas Speck, has a spiritual quality. The war games represent an instrumental power comparable to the sport of war:

Power, strength, arrogance -
Twisted together, ride the world.
Men persist, flock of sheep-like
Till all pawns arranged are played out.

(Jayalakshmi and Rao 2003: 29)

War in all forms denies the discovery of, according to Bryan Law, power within as well as co-operative power among all groups and communities, which help in working toward a common goal, a shared vision of peace. When operative in its true spirit, existing only in times of peace, this power can become a consciousness-raising mode, with power sharing as its end. The poem War, a Heart's Ravage, in this context, is a voice-raise, an awareness awakening against a world maddened and possessed of war. The chief casualty of this madness is spiritual knowledge culled since centuries being pounded to powdery dust (WHR 47). The poem refers to a mythic struggle between religion and politics, and demands for a change over to a more egalitarian society, where a non-violent power would prevail. It is a power to be and to do (Kraft & Speck 2003), but the real war as always is waged on the canvas of women's hearts … where tearful thoughts are penned! (Jayalakshmi and Rao 2003: 20) The poet reminiscences

Wherever war is fought,
Don't women-victims alone,
with their cohort-consort train
leap to watery well's death,
resort to selves' immolations on funeral pyres,
torch inner courts, bear fourth degree tortures
behind closed closet doors?
From pages of history leap out
such tales of owe
as slag from ore!

(Jayalakshmi and Rao 2003: 20-21)

If at the human level women represent a petrified, regressive force, at the level of aesthesis they regain their regenerative empowering force. In this, the demonic Satans, Hiranyakhasipas/ Black magicians, Bhasmasuras threaten, upheaving from earth's deep sepulchres (WHR 49) not really belonging to the dead past but living, throbbing and pulsating, fattening and spreading flames of hatred among nations. Recovery of life is attempted wherein women exercise control, Ahalyas stone-cursed as quasi-mystical creators, are sought to be revived. They regenerate ethical and spiritual values of purity and chastity, since the petrified woman and emasculated humanity both are found incapable of power to offer release and relief from oppression of arrogance blown heads or from those mad of religion. She is the carrier of human values, a therapist who raise(s) voice as a fresh leaf bud / to show us the way through the dark crematory. This apart, she helps to re-consecrate this planet with humane touch and people with human beings (WHR 50), capable of burning down the destructive forces by harnessing constructive forces.

Translation as a Mode of Empowerment

As has been stated earlier, the thematic concern of the poem and the translation's intent is empowerment. This point, when taken further as a language having internationally recognized excellence and merit, translation from a less known SL like Telugu into a wider and widely accepted literary tradition of English is also empowerment and enrichment of vernacular creative literature. Besides the problematics of the hierarchization of languages, the politics of translation recognizes translation into English as a necessity for the survival of Indian vernacular literatures in a world fast moving towards globalisation, be it mainstream literature or gendered writing like that of women. Adding to the difficulty is urban youth moving away from regional mother tongues to acquire skills in English. So to speak, the translation of War, a Heart's Ravage not only stretches the linguistic boundaries of the SL Telugu gaining a revitalizing force in English, but also takes the TT to readers estranged from their mother tongue. Besides pitching the poem against political and economic power structures in today's world, the poet also invests it firmly in its regional Telugu culture. In doing this the writer appears to be adept at co-mingling the two on a wide canvas. If a poet's work, in addition, has to cut across a plethora of class, gender, race, and linguistic groups, then, a translator subscribing to this view gives the poem out to the world, by traversing through all groups trans-nationally. The readers can by no means be dismissive of this poem terming it as regional, vernacular and local, hence, less likely to be seriously reviewed and receive widespread publicity; thus less likely to be translated and published in other languages … (Subhadra Devi 2003: 24). Since the readers of the TT are not necessarily limited to one regional language group, they have an access to participate and have a share in that consciousness-raising attempt. Translation, in this regard, opens lines of communication between languages and cultures.

Besides being a mode of empowerment as enunciated earlier the translational mode adopted in War, a Heart's Ravage may be likened to a tri-level approach postulated by Serghei G. Nikolayev in his article Poor Results in Foreign-Native Translation: Reasons and Ways of Avoidance. His approach to empowerment works in a three-phased manner - the initial superficial awareness of the original to a stage of deep awareness of the original to finally a creation of the new utterance - as a parallel semantic and connotative construct in the TT. In analysing the mode employed in translating the poem, the passage, as instanced below, traces these different stages of the process, which also finds a parallel in Julia Kristeva's linguistic-psychoanalytical approach. Looking at her Two Modalities of Signification: the Semiotic and the Symbolic, the mode of translation may be said to have passed through the initial stage of translational transfer of unstable meanings at the Semiotic stage to that of Symbolic stability of meaning. Translation of War, a Heart's Ravage involved an initial reading aloud, followed by a reading to oneself absorbing the sounds and rhythms of the poem in the ST analogous to Kristevian idea of babbling incoherence of a child. The stage may also find likeness in the semiotic, and language of poetry - a pre-entry stage into the receptor language domain. The initial readings of the text were, therefore, always a random toss (of) words back and forth/between mouth and ear (Jayalakshmi and Rao 2003: 17) between the translators and from time to time in the interactive sessions with the poet. Issues were called into question, debated and ruled. To cite Julia Kristeva, issues were over-ruled and opinions were brought to trial, and unstable ambivalent meanings were identified, until the process reached the possibility of creation, of sublimation (Kristeva 1996: 129-131). The disruptions hallmarking this stage passed through silences, elisions, and not through any semantic arrangements amounting to a refusal to submit to communication (Kristeva 1996:131). It was a refusal to submit to translational poetic articulation. It is a realm for experimentation at the level of thought and idea, not precisely meaningless, but reserving for itself that which is traditionally accepted as emotive, intuitive and trans-rational. More generally, the stage is an acquaintance with alliterative, metaphoric, symbolic and the musical rhythms native to the words in the SL.

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