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Tapati Gupta is Professor and Head, Department of English, Calcutta University, College Street, Kolkata, West Bengal. She had her Ph.D. from Calcutta University with a Teacher Fellowship from the University Grants Commission. The Title of her Ph. D thesis is "Identity & Adjustment in Shakespeare's Problem Plays: Studies in an aspect of the relationship between the Individual and society in Alls Well that Ends Well, Measure for Measure, Troilus & Cressida, and Hamlet". She has to her credit a number of published articles and translations. Her areas of special interest include Drama, Translation - Bangla to English, and Literature and the visual arts. She was on the Board of Editors of Subodh Chandra Sen Gupta Foundation, 2000. Her postal address is 47A Diamond Harbour Road, Flat 4A, Kolkata 700027, West Bengal.

Abstract

Translation presupposes the existence of borders between cultures. The translator is aware of these borders and the necessity of crossing them. In actual fact however there is a common resonance zone between cultures without which translation would not have been possible. The borders too are not lines but dots, which offer entry points to the translator to come and go freely across cultures so that the intersections become horizontal portal lines. Borders, which are thus porous and open, should not be considered barriers. That the activity of translation obliterates borders is not quite true. The translator's knowledge of the source text may be termed internal knowledge. She knows the language and culture of the source text as well as the target text she creates. The reader's knowledge is only of the target language and culture and she is made aware of the source text only as it appears in the translation. The translator is supremely powerful and may empower the translation with a linguistic nationalism and instrument of resistance, which may reinforce borders rather than annihilate them. The above hypothesis is cogently expressed in the writings of Anthony Pym. I would like to add that the translator herself is necessarily bilingual and is the self-styled agent of the source culture but the vehicle she drives is meant for monolingual, mono-cultural people who respond better and become more politically charged if that vehicle belongs to the colonizer's territory. The reassembling of it, re-configurations, are suitable instruments of appropriation which re-inforce the differences between the two cultures-- the British colonizer's and the native colonized people's, and at the same time show the way towards vulnerable entry points. I have chosen two late 19th century translations of Shakespeare's The Tempest and Romeo & Juliet by the poet Hemchandra Bandyopadhyay as paradigmatic of the above viewpoint. Since there is no record of their performance I shall treat them as texts to be read.

The Bengali translations of Shakespeare began to appear during the 1890s. Most of these were adaptations and not 'faithful' translations. Shakespeare's world was so far removed from that of the Bengali middle class that it was felt to be comprehensible only on being endowed with the Indian ambience. In the preface to his translation of The Merchant of Venice (adapted as Bhanumoti Chittabilas) Harachandra Ghosh (1817-84) says,

"I undertake to write it in the shape of a Bengali Natuck or drama taking only the plot and underplots of the Merchant of Venice with considerable additions and alterations to suit the native taste; but at the same time losing no opportunity to convey to my countrymen, who have no means of getting themselves acquainted with Shakespeare - save through the medium of their own language - the beauty of the author's sentiments as expressed in the best passages in the play in question". ¹

(---- 1964: 8).

The translator is armed with internal knowledge. She/he is bilingual and is supposed to have acquired intimate knowledge of the SC and SL (Source Culture and Source Language). She/he is also conscious of his power over the text as well as aware of her/his responsibility. She/he knows at what point the border is crossed and how best to plant a foreign seed in the native soil. The 19thc Shakespeare translator was on the one hand the colonizer's deputy, and on the other, a cultural ambassador as well as an agent of subversion of the SC and ST. If opening up of gateways was the aim of 19th century translations of the English dramatist, the task was not easy at all. It was found that translation, more often than not, set up barbed wire fencings across cultures. The translator crossed borders not to erase them but to mark them afresh on the cultural map.

The availability of translated texts of mainstream British narratives to the educated middle class Bengali must have lessened the desire to take the trouble to read the originals. It also must have given him the opportunity to develop a sense of self-gratification for accessing a text across the border and transgressing into the white colonizer's territory. The SC certainly acquired an indigenous look through transcreation. The politics of translation as an intercultural exercise paved the way towards decolonization of the bard. The accession of agency in a linguistic nationalism is the subtle appropriation of Shakespeare who was more precious to the British than the Empire.

Ironically, the first appropriation of Shakespeare into an 'other' script in an Indian language (=Bengali) was done by an Englishman, one Monckton. He translated The Tempest into Bengali as part of a college exercise in 1809/1811. The text is lost and there is no record of its performance. There is no way of studying the quality of the translation for no copy is extant. One may assume however that the translation was more or less literal and the problem of intercultural transference may not have been attended to, though it is unfair to suggest attitudes without first hand knowledge, one may take on a theoretical stance and even attribute a certain condescension on the part of the British colonizer and a certain nationalistic pride in handing over an object of the white man's literary domain to the colonized people and in their own language - A touch of ego and a consciousness of power.

In the event of an Indian writer translating a Shakespeare text the satisfaction of having attempted a difficult task would have been commingled with a subtle, unarticulated consciousness of power, a feeling of gratification at the thought of having appropriated the colonizer's product and indigenized it, because cultural transfer is an integral part of translation. In translating an alien culture into one's own realm of knowledge the consciousness of difference, the difficulties of erecting bridges led to adaptations and Indianized versions of Shakespeare. It was also the dawn of a sense of the power and potentiality of one's own mother tongue and an awareness of the need to develop it so that it should cope with Shakespearean nuances. It may not have been a coincidence that the creative potentialities of the Bengali language came to be realized in the hands of subsequent generations of original writers, just as its critical power was explored in the articles of Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay's periodical Bangadarshan.

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