Khushbu Lakhupota
MA Semester 4
Paper 208 Comparative Literature & Translation Studies
Written Assignment
A Brief Note on Translation
Batch 2020-2022
Submitted to: Department of English, MKBU.
khushbu22jan93@gmail.com
18 March 2022, Friday
Translation is the bridge and the road that connects to the world of knowledge. Translation study makes the writers work known beyond their own linguistic boundaries. To achieve a high standard in Translation and faithful to the original text one has to take note of the linguistic problems and refer to the theoretical components. Many writers have formulated theories of Translation and established the principles for the Translators. Problem of Equivalence is a major concern in any theory of translation. Translation equivalence is a semiotic category comprising syntactic, and semantic components. Translators must study the translation theories that can be used as a guideline for the production of translation.
Semantic is the study of meaning and it is far more complex than grammar. The semantic problems of polynymy, homonymy, synonymy, connotative meanings and collocation problems are discussed. Syntactic is a science of structure which deals with the different structural elements of language. The problems of Ellipsis, ambiguity, obscurity, word order have dealt with the syntactic problems. In the stylistic problem the component features of a literary composition are discussed with reference to the translated texts. In the cultural problems Translating religious names of deities, epic characters, historical characters from SL text to TI. text are discussed. The prose text is noted for its rhetoric, persuasive arguments concerned with the topic sentences. In prose translation importance is given not to the structure but to the content. This is intended to serve the future translators to understand the names of the translation problems to equip themselves when they undertake translation.
The present generation of mankind coalesce to back one world. In a multilingual culture the world is need of unity. It realizes that mankind and the world is one. It's intent desire is exposed in many dimensions. Translation is one of its aspects that ensures the unity. Translation is the bridge and road that connects to the world of knowledge.
Now translation is gaining momentum and its progress is refulgent. It has been upcoming as a separate branch and its utility value is highly regarded as an essential part in schools, colleges and university curricula, arts, science, music and philosophy and other arena.
Language and literature, the research fields of comparative literature depend on translation. It appealed to many writers who discovered more profound sense of technical virtuousity in translation. Translation makes the writers works known beyond their own linguistic boundaries. Among the various forms of translations literary translation share in the creative process because it is a labour of love. Language users come to realize the value of translation.
Translation supports the world significantly to exchange their invaluable treasures of thoughts, ideas, objects and other things across the continents. The present world typically comfortable with technology interact on social media, websites for a significant portion of their socializing. This is possible only because of translation.
The fragrance of flower spreads only in the direction of the wind. If translation spreads in all directions it will widen the scope of language, literature and culture of a land to posterity. Many fields may hugely be benefitted by translation. If there were no translation there would not have been any intercommunication among the speakers of different languages.
New Standard Encyclopaedia defines "Translation' as passing on meaning in writing from one language into another. Catford (1965) detines - Translation from the linguistic point of view. "The replacement of textual material in one language by equivalent material- in another language". Translation is generally understood to involve a transfer of meaning. It is considered to be an act of representation of the idea obtained from one set of language signs into another set of language signs.
Shakespeare borrowed stories from famous Greek and Latin classics. They had been translated into English and were readily available to Shakespeare. Bacon, the father of English essay, was inspired by the French essayist Montaigne. Montaigne's essays were available in English.
The Bible was available only in Greek and Latin. King James appointed forty-seven scholars in 1607 to translate The Bible into English. The Bible influenced and continues to influence many people. The Bhagavad Gita and the Vedas have all been translated into English. They profoundly influence the Western thought.
As Subramaniya Bharathi (1987) the great Tamil poet said, "Go in all directions and bring the treasures of knowledge". On insisting Bharathi's statement on the important treasures of knowledge Rabindranath Tagore (1999) said, "Literature of a country is not chiefly for home consumption. Its value lies in the fact that it is imperatively necessary for the lands where it is foreign".
It is said that Translation is as old as original writing. Willis Barnstone considers translation as the other 'Babel'. In his book After Babel, George Steiner draws the history of translation from the Roman days. To him, the Rosetta stone found on the bank of the Nile in 3000 BC, marked the beginning of translation. There is an acute need for translation in India. There are large numbers of regional languages in India. Translation is necessary to make the literature of one region known to other regional groups. Charles Wilkin's translation of Gita into English and William Jones' Translation of Kalidasa's drama Sakuntala inte English are worth mentioning.
Some scholars such as Theodore Savory defines translation as an art, Eric Jacobsen defines it as craft, while others such as Engene Nida defines it as science. Horst Frenz (1961) claims that "Translation is neither a creative art nor an imitative art but stands somewhere between the two".
Generally the study of Translation of literature analysed scientifically because literature is the special function of language. Sa translation is the special function of literature. George Steiner (1975) says, "Literary communication through translation sharpens and broadens the sensibility of the receptor language besides enriching it thought penetration and modification and extending the native idiom of the receptor language towards the hidden absolute meaning".
Rene Wellek (1985) says, "Translation across languages is possible because the human voice springs from the same hapes and fears though different words are said. In spite of the peculiarities of details the poetry and arts spring from the same source because the human beings are the same every where".
Before eighteenth century there was a marked preference for the retention of sense over words in translation. In the nineteenth century writers preferred literal translation method. Only in the recent years linguists turned their attention to the investigation of translation process.
Translation improves the boundary lines of communicative power of language as well as brings to light new ways of insight. It enhances the language and culture of a country and comes to have an intense link between two languages and cultures and tries to formulate an international language.
There are two diametrically opposed views about translation. One view is that the semantic structure of each language is different from those of all other languages, so translation is quite impossible. The second view is that though there are many differences among the languages those dissimilarities are only at the surface-level.
Susan Bassnett McGuire (1980) say, "Translation is a highway, the translator is a driver. To continue his Journey on the highway the driver ought to know the mechanism too. There is close relationship between the theory and the translation. If the translator who makes no attempts to understand the how behind the translation process is like the driver of a rolls - who has no idea what makes the car move. Likewise the mechanic who spends a life time taking the engine apart but never goes out for a drive in the country is a fitting image".
One of the first writers to formulate a theory of translation was the French humanist Etienne Dolet (1509-16). In 1540 Dolet published a short outline and established five principles for the translator:
i. The translator must fully understand the sense and meaning of the original author, although he is at liberty to clarify obscurities.
ii. The translator should have a perfect knowledge both SL and TL.
iii. The translator should avoid word-for-word renderings.
iv. The translator should use forms of speech in common use.
V. The translator should choose and order words appropriately to produce the correct tone.
Dolet's views were reiterated by George Chapman (1559-1634) the great translator of Homer. In his dedication of the Seven Books (1598) Chapman declares that a translator must
i. avoid word for word renderings.
ii. attempt to reach the spirit of the original
iii. avoid over-loose translation, by basing the translation on a sound scholarly investigation of other version and glosses.
Susan Bassnett-McGuire (1980) considers, "translator and original writer as equals and sees it as the translator's duty to his source text to extract what he perceives as the essential core of the work and to reproduce or recreate the work in the Target language".
John Dryden (1631-1700) in his important Preface to Ovid's Episteles (1680) tackled the problems of translations by formulating three basic types.
i. Metaphrase → or turning an author word by word and line by line. from one lanauge into another.
ii. Paraphrase →→ or translation with latitude, the sense for sense.
iii. Imitation where the translator can abandon the text of the original as he sees it.
Of these types, Dryden chooses the second as the more balanced path providing the translator to fulfill certain criteria to translate poetry.
The purpose of the study of translation theories is, as Andre Lefevere (1975) says "to produce a comprehensive theory which can also be used as a guideline for the production of translation".
Translation of poetry is the only aspect of Translation in which a high proportion of the experts show agreement among themselves. They agree only in the opinion that an adequate translation of poem is impossible. Poetry is the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the senses.
Rajagopalachari (1982) a translator of some of Bharathiar's poems feels that "it is not possible in a translation to reproduce the exquisite art of the poet the rhythm, the sparkles or the literature of the original".
Sri Aurobindo (1971) renders two ways of translating poetry. "One is to keep strictly to the manner and turn of the original, the other to take its spirit. Sense and imagery and reproduce them freely so as to suit the new language. In poetry there is rhythm, emotions and increased use of figures of speech, semantic syntactic equivalence, meaning and style. To produce all these things in translation and to get satisfactory in quality of translation is difficult".
Verse translation demands more efforts and skill than prose. In general, the power of verse to stir the emotions is greater than the power of prose. Poetry is incomplete without the aesthetic effects of metre. To translate a poem without sacrificing sense, sound and metrical arrangement is akin to dancing on ropes with fettered legs. Words have magic spell in poetry. The words, vowels, and diphthongs present a short of flesh and its consonants something like a bone structure.
Julian House (1977) says, "a translation text should not only match its source text in function, but employ equivalent situational-dimensional menas to achieve that function".
Bayard Taylors- Translation of Goethe's Faust and Fitzerald's translation of Rubaiyat are the successful attempts of verse translation. Rubaiyat is not a translation but a redelivery of a poetic inspiration.
The Translator is a guide and a reader and therefore his not of reading becomes co-terminous with his reading of it. Hugh Kenner (1953) says thus "As the poet begins by seeing, so the translator by reading, but his reading must be a kind of seeing" (10) Translator must bring sympathy and understanding to the work he translates. Translator must be the original author's most intimate, most exact in short, his best reader. Successful directors are able to give box-office hit movies of very good actors because they study the actors, become close to them and they could give the most exact. Similarly translator must understand the work he is to translate.
"Great things are done when men and mountains meet This is not done by jostling in the street" William Blake.
The famous lines of William Blake reminds one of Abdul Rahman's writings, says the Tamil poet Sirpi (1986). He extols Rahman to the skies in the Foreword to "Moon is her name".
Works Cited
Radhakrishnan, C. Practical Difficulties in Translating Kavi Ko Abdul Rahman's Select Prose and Poetry into English. 2017.
Thank you.