Vanamala Viswanatha PhD
Professor, P.G. Dept. of English,
Bangalore University,
Bangalore.
From
the Translation Firmament
If the fledgling discipline of
Translation Studies has to take wing and soar high, what better
ground can it seek other than this vast and varied 'translation
area' called India, where several languages jostle animatedly
- now in unison, now in confrontation - in the daily business
of living? Conversely, if one is looking for new light on issues
of language, literature and culture, where else can one turn with
benefit but to the young discipline of Translation Studies? Translation
Studies, which investigates both the processes and products of
translation within a particular cultural politics, history and
location, offers the following insights in the Indian context:
Translation, which is founded on the basic fact that cultures
in contact negotiate (gain some, lose some), thrive and grow by
establishing links between/among the languages and literatures
of a region, compels us to add the plural suffix '-s' to all the
three terms in the label to rewrite them as 'Languages, Literatures
and Cultures' - only more so in the multi-lingual and multi-ethnic
political economy of India.
a) Translation Studies,
in the last two decades, is marked by a paradigm shift in the
very definition and understanding of the phenomenon of translation.
Translation is no longer seen as a simple matter of replacing
one linguistic text by another. Even the translation of a simple
sentence from one language to another presupposes a tacit knowledge
of assumptions which are at once linguistic, textual, cultural
and political. This insight forces us to rethink the punctuation
marks that set up each term in the above label as a separate and
discrete entity in order to suggest the essential interconnectedness
among them. Humanities education in post-independent India has
witnessed a rather unproductive and artificial segregation between
Language and Literature Studies with culture forcing a sly, backdoor
entry into the classroom, thereby eclipsing the fundamental fact
that language, literature and culture are essentially constitutive
of one another.
b) Even within the area
of Language Studies, the teaching of the first language bears
no relation to the teaching of the second and third languages;
the same is the case with the teaching of literature. For instance,
a child in Karnataka makes no connections between the literary
texts s/he reads in the Kannada class and the English or Hindi
class. One hand does not know what the other is doing. That explains
why textbooks in the English language, which is introduced only
in the V standard in Karnataka, often contain lessons whose cognitive
content is so elementary that it is an insult to the intelligence
of any normal child. For, these texts are oblivious of what cognitive
and communicative skills have already been in play in the life
of the child in the context of the first language. The child who
is at the centre of this education process is a single, organic,
holistic being. The consciousness of this learning-self, despite
our attempt at fragmenting it across the timetable, is still one
and the same. Therefore, it is imperative that we make connections
among the languages and literatures that are taught across the
curriculum. To quote E M Forster, we need to "only connect",
by establishing and strengthening the inherent connections between
our teachings of languages, literatures and cultures within the
discipline of Humanities. The holistic and integrating nature
of successful communication, which is at the heart of all translation
practice, is best captured using the metaphor of the six blind
men and the elephant. Language, narrative, culture and history
simultaneously inhere and cohere in a specific configuration and
a unique chemistry to produce particular texts; they are organically
related to one another like the different parts of the elephant,
without which the gestalt of the elephant would remain incomplete.
c) Perspectives derived
from translation help us to build stronger bridges between the
home and the world as well as the home and the school, by legitimately
and systematically building into the curriculum the available
knowledge and worlds that students already possess and bring in
along with their 'word-view'. This can form a tremendous
if untapped resource in an educational system that is increasingly
divorced from the challenges of 'real' life and living.
d) Translation works on
the basis of two contradictory conditions, a fact that is described
by the Spanish philosopher Jose Ortega Y Gasset (Gasset 2000:
49-64) as 'the misery and splendour' of translation. It works
because of the dual and simultaneous possibility of shared ground
as well as difference. To put it in A K Ramanujan's (Ramanujan
nd.) inimitable words, when we are reading a translated work,
we need to "attend carefully both to the uniqueness of cultural
expression and to the universal elements in it, both to its specificity
and its accessibility, both to its otherness and to its challenge
to our ability to share it." This defining feature of translation,
which deals with the traffic and transaction between/among languages
of contact can help in fostering the two larger goals of Humanities
Education - Articulation (communicative skills) and Awareness
(critique-al abilities).
The Shifting Grounds of English
Studies
"English", whether as
language, literature or culture, has always been a contentious
project in India. It has played a pivotal role in our history
as Indian society faced the impact of colonial modernity, the
nation-state and more recently, globalization. English exists
as the language of dominance simultaneously with the other languages
of India as well as in the global village - buffeted and shaped
by forces local and global. Within academia also, the discipline
of English Studies has been marked by changing constitutive discourses
about English as a humanizing force, a functional subject (as
the library language), a political /cultural project in a post-colonial
nation and now, as the 'single window' to upward socio-economic
mobility in a globalize India. The scholarship on English Studies
in the last 10 to 15 years - Gauri Viswanathan's Masks of Conquest
(Viswanathan 1990), Swati Joshi (Ed) Rethinking English
(Joshi 1991) and Susie Tharu (Ed) Subject to Change (Tharu
1998) - has offered incisive critiques of established practices
of English teaching. The questions of what and how are overshadowed
by issues of who, why and where. Yet another force that has compelled
us to interrogate the English classroom is the changing profile
of students in higher education. What was once the preserve of
the urban, English-educated elite has now rightly become more
democratic and heterogeneous. In particular, the English classroom
which was once dominated by young women (literature, being a soft
option in market terms, was deemed fit only as a female domain)
has today both women and men, coming from a wide variety of classes,
castes, languages, ethnic groups and locations -village, small
town and city. And thanks to globalization, a degree in English
does offer job opportunities comparable to or better than disciplines
such as Kannada Studies, Economics or Psychology. These larger
realities have justify us with no choice but to dislodge English
Studies from its colonial moorings and relocate it in a setting
of contemporary polemics.
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