LANGUAGE IN INDIA

PRACTICING LITERARY TRANSLATION
A SYMPOSIUM BY MAIL - ROUND 10
V. V. B. Rama Rao, Ph.D.

HOW DO DIFFERENT PRACTITIONERS DRAW IN THE CREATIVE FEELING?

I would invite your attention to my Round Two, where I mentioned B.S.R.Krishna’s book NIVEDANA (2003) wherein he carried forty-one Telugu renderings of Rabindranath Tagore‘s poem in the GITANJALI beginning “Where his mind is without fear”. He took care to include Tagore’s original poem written in Bengali along with his own rendering in English. Krishna is Secretary General of World Telugu Federation with headquarters in Chennai.

I have been attempting to show how different practitioners view and draw in the creative feeling and imagination in a literary text and to communicate it in a different tongue. Our Gurudev, Rabindranath Tagore, the Viswakavi, would not have made it to the Nobel but for his rendering of that poem into English and poet William Butler Yates’s good offices. We have a proverb in Telugu: Even a golden plate needs the prop of a wall.

RENOWNED WRITERS AND MANY RENDERINGS OF THEIR WORKS

Renowned actor and parliamentarian Jaggaiah wrote in his intro to Krishna’s volume:

In this genre (literary translation) the most important thing is that the original writer must be renowned. Only then there would be a possibility for many (or any) to render it into another language. Though the subject and the feeling are the same, the rendering of the imagination, style and substance of the poem would depend upon the understanding of the translator. And this leads to the variations or variety in renderings. The more the variety, the more would be the readers drawn to this genre with fresh efforts to understand it. When a number of renderings are brought together in a single volume, there would be an opportunity for the reader to note the variances, weigh and understand the glory of the original.

EXPRESSING ONESELF IN DIVERSE TONGUES

When a great poet expresses himself in two diverse tongues, he would phrase his thought, feeling creatively in a style and diction that is nearer that of the target language. The poet is the best judge and a mere rendering would leave odd ends sticking out. One would not be a mere replica, linguistically, for each language has its own genius. Language conditions the thought process and the process of expression when languages differ would not be the same.

In Tagore’s rendering the Bengali original underwent transformation, not merely transcreation. If we study the original and the rendering many modifications are apparent.

DYNAMIC RESULTS

In practice the literary rendering acquires besides the beauties intended by the original poet to be put across the beauties intended by the practitioner. This alsd leads either to transcreation or free translation. The prime objective of the practitioner is to make available to the readers in the target language the beauty in the source to which his reader does not have access.

PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN A PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

V. V. B. Rama Rao

Communication Across Castes | The Hells Envisioned in the Divine Comedy and Bhagavtam | Telugu Parts of Speech Tagging in WSD | Practicing Literary Translation: A Symposium Round 10 | The Effectiveness of Genre-based Approach to Develop Writing Skills of Adult Learners and Its Significance for Designing a Syllabus | Structural Predictability of Malayalam Riddles | Parsing in Tamil - Present State of Art | HOME PAGE OF AUGUST 2006 ISSUE | HOME PAGE | CONTACT EDITOR