Unit 3 comp. lit. & tran. studies
From Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (Eds.) Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi
Introduction
This article is about the importance of translation in transmitting literary movements across linguistic borders. In this article Ganesh Devi begins with Christian metaphysics and ends with the Indian metaphysics. Various acts of translation include the origins of literary movements and literary traditions. Translations are widely regarded as unoriginal, and the aesthetics of translation have received little attention.
According to J. Hillis Miller ‘ Translation is the wandering existence of a text in a perpetual exile’. Christian myth of the Fall, exile and wandering. Christian Myth : Post- Babel crisisI n Western metaphysics translation is an exile, a fall from the origin; and the mythical exile is a metaphoric translation, a postBabel crisis. No critic has taken any well-defined position about the exact placement of translations in literary history.
Roman Jakobson in his exposition on the etymology of interpretation proposed a triple order of interpretations:
those starting with one verbal request then onto the next verbal request inside a similar language framework
those starting with one language framework then onto the next language framework, and
those from a verbal request to one more arrangement of signs (Jakobson,1959, pp. 232-9).
In A Linguistic Theory of Translation, J.C.Catford gives a far reaching assertion of hypothetical plan in regards to the semantics of interpretation, in which he endeavors to recognize a few etymological degrees of interpretation.
Since interpretation is a phonetic demonstration, any hypothesis of interpretation should begin from semantics, as indicated by his primary reason: 'Interpretation is an etymological activity: the method involved with supplanting a message in one language for a message in another; subsequently, any hypothesis of interpretation should lay on a hypothesis of language - an overall etymological hypothesis.'
Different areas of humanistic information were separated into three classifications in Europe during the nineteenth century:
1. Near investigations for Europe,
2. Orientalism for the Orient,
3. Humanities for the remainder of the world
Following Sir William Jones' 'disclosure' of Sanskrit, recorded phonetics in Europe turned out to be progressively dependent on Orientalism.
The Problems in Translation Study
The interpretation issue isn't simply a phonetic issue. It is a stylish and philosophical issue with a significant bearing on the topic of abstract history.
Scholarly interpretation isn't simply a replication of a text in one more verbal arrangement of signs. It is a replication of an arranged sub-arrangement of signs inside a given language in one more comparing requested sub-arrangement of signs inside a connected language.
Conclusion
Comparative literature means that there are regions of significance that are shared across two related languages, as well as areas of significance that can never be shared. When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its essential significance. Indian philosophies of the relationship between form and essence, structure and significance are guided by this metaphysics. The true test is the writer’s capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to revitalize the original. And in that sense Indian literary traditions are essentially traditions of translation.
Translating a tamil poem by A.k. Ramanujan.
Introduction
Article starts with the talk of world literature Ramanujan ask the question, 'How does one translate a poem from another time, another culture,another language? subject of this paper is not the fascinating external history of this literature, but translation, the transport of poems from classical Tamil to modem English; the hazards, the damages in transit, the secret paths, and the lucky bypasses. Ramanujan took various examples of Tamil poems that he translated into English and he described difficulties that he faced during translation.
Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi said in the article that,
In his published work Ramanujan reflected on translation most often in the context of poetry, and conceived of it as a multi- dimensional process in which the translator has to deal with his or her material, means, resources and objectives at several levels simultaneously.
Ramanujan was acutely conscious that even the most scrupulous translator’s care and craftsmanship cannot solve the problems of attempting what John Dryden, in 1680, had called metaphrase, the method of ‘turning an author word by word, and line by line, from one language into another’.
Ramanujan developed his conceptions of ‘outer’ and ‘inner’ poetic form from two culturally incommensurate sources. On the one hand, he owed the distinction in part to Noam Chomsky’s analysis of surface and deep structure in discourse, and to Roman Jakobson’s rather different structuralist analysis of the grammar of poetry, especially the latter’s distinction between ‘verse instance’ and ‘verse design’.
Key Argument
Frost once said that “poetry as that which is lost in translation”. Evans-Pritchard, the anthropologist, used to say: If you are translate all the European arguments for atheism into Azande, they would come out as arguments for God in Azande. Such observations certainly disabuseus of the commonly-held notion of 'literal' translation. Woollcott argued that English does not have leftbranching possibilities, but they are a bit abnormal. Hopkins's and Thomas's poetry the leftward syntax is employed for special poetic effects-it alternates with other, more 'normal', types of English sentences. In Tamil poetry the leftward syntax is not eccentric, literary or offbeat. but part of everyday 'natural' speech.
Interpretation isn't just about text it's about interpretation of time, other culture, other language.
Issues in interpretation.
Any single sonnet is important for a set, a group of sets, a scene, a class.
While interpreting Tamil sonnet Ainkurunuru 203, He start with the sounds. He observe that the sound arrangement of Tamil is altogether different from English. For example, Old Tamil has six nasal consonants: a labial, a dental, an alveolar, a retroflex, a palatal and a velar-m, n, n, ñ, n, n-three of which are not particular in English.
How might we interpret a six-way framework into a three-way English framework (m, n, n)? Tamil has long and short vowels, however English (or most English tongues) have diphthongs and floats.
For instance : in Gujarati there are 13 vowels and 34 consonants (Holmes, Jonathan) and in English 5 vowels and 21 consonants.(Questions on Vowels and Consonants)
The language inside a language turns into the second language of Tamil verse.
The interpretation should address,, however address, the first. One navigates a precarious situation between the To-language and the From-language, in a twofold reliability.
Conclusion
An interpreter is an 'craftsman on promise'.
Contention against the Frost.
Illustration of a Chinese ruler - burrow - work from both side of mountain - compromise - imagine a scenario in which they don't meet ? - guide replied - 'in the event that they don't meet, we will have two passages rather than one'.
In the event that the portrayal in another dialect isn't adequately close, yet prevail with regards to 'conveying' the sonnet in some sense, we will have two sonnets rather than one.
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