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The Politics of Postcolonial Translation*
HARISH TRIVEDI
Cop
Tospcak of postcolonial translation is^ at once to beg a crucíal question,
forit is^ to^ assume^ that^ there is not only a chronologícal but a
qualitative
difference betwoen translations done in the coloníal period and thosc
done afurwads. The chronological factor has in this contexta
doubly
problematic bearing So^ far as "original" literary works are concerned,
the date of composition or publication indicates
accurately eacugh a
historical coniguration. In the case of translations,
but however,^ nol^ one
two sets of historical co-ordinates necd to be identified: one for
the orignial text and the other for the translatíon. .The
periodization
pftransations, thcrefore, as colonial or postcolonial is inevitably a
diachronic marker, and it is at the sanme time an act of
ideological or
political faith.
Some basic questions of fact which one may need to ask wichin
this framework in order to validate the nomcnclature of
may be: (i) whether broadly the samc kind of texts continue topostcolonial be
translated in postcolonial times as in the colonial times but as a
recognizably distinct political project, (ii) whether quite diffcrent kinds
of Lexts now begin to be translated instead or as well, and (ui) whether
the balance of payments (or indced the balance of cultural
power)
between the formar colony and thc mctropolis is in any
significant wa
allered in^ terms of thequantun oftranslations transacted between them,
and in^ terms^ of^ their respective reception and inpact.
As has increasingly been
tecognizcd, tran_lation^ iavolves^ an
nicrection (^) not (^) only between iwo (^) autlors, or (^) two (^) author-functions, but
also betwoen languages and cultures, an intcraction
fraught wath
political implications. Thc SL-TL power relationship can be highly
earli Version^ ths^ paI was prenled at the biemmial ounfererce of tee Comparane
tcatume Avwnialiwn of lxha, Frkau 19*4, Iclh
POJTICS UF^ OSTCOLONIAI, TRANSIATUN 37
variablc onc, as the long history of translation activity amply illustrates
One of^ the^ most notorious (^) (and (^) convenicntly (^) quotablc) instancc (^) horp
perhaps is that of Edward Filzgcrald, who claimed, in the immodiat
context not of Omar Klhayyam bul of Atar, that he twok such liberties
as he pleased with the Persian pocts when translatung then becausc
they weeo Pocts cnough" for his taste untiL hc made thcm so
(Basnctt3). This roughshod, high-and-mighty SL atitude is not mcrely
a matter of pcrsonal preference; it may be soen to be at last subliminally
a function of the historical fact that it was adopted ai dhe high noon
of the British empirc (Trivedi 45).
The relationship bctwecen^ all^ the^ Indian^ languages^ on^ the^ onc^ hand and English^ on^ the^ other,^ either^ as^ SLTLor^ as^ TL/SL,^ represents^ many
of the same factors. As is again wcll known, Tagore the English
translator trcatcd Tagore the Bengali poet in the most cavalier fashion,
now changing, now chopping now omitting, now adding, and fcign altogether cver so solicitous of the orientalist expectations of the English reader, ofen at the expense of the poor Bengali author, /e. himself, even^ to^ the^ Cxtent^ of^ falsifjing^ him^ (Thompson^ 264).^ If^ this was not an cffect of direct imperialism,it was at least a high deerçe
of voluniary assimilation, facilitated by that notably anglophile and
anglicizod dimension of Tagore's personality.
A tendency on the part of many translators into English, whether
foreign or Indian, of works of Indian literature, which is frequent cnough
to soem to fom a significant pattern, is their practice of lcaving bchind
substantial chunks ofIndian novels when fransteming them, 50mctmes
to the tune of as much as one-fourth or even one-thirdof the whole
2s for cxamplc in Edward Thompson's translationofSrarmitaaunder
the title 7he Brothers, in Narayan Menon's translation of Cemmeen,
or in (^) the translation (^) by (^) T.W Clarke and (^) Tarapada (^) Mukherjec (^) ofPather Panchali (^) (Mukherjee (^) 29) As (^) what (^) olten (^) gets (^) delcted (^) or modiscd in the proccss is the ending, such suppression probablysubstantially
represcnts Uhc acstlhctic subjugation of an Indian sensc of+alediction
by a^ Wcstern scnsc of cnding, and is a matter that should cspccially
concerm (^) Frank (^) Kemode, (^) author of (^) the highly (^) sophisticatcd (^) cxcgctical work The (^) Sense (^) ofm (^) Ending (^) (which (^) tile, (^) aptly for our
is presenl^ purpose,
rocallcd as #hat's (^) the (^) Sense (^) ofan (^) Ending? by Lodgc novei) a^ character^ in^ David
A hclpful, and cven necessary, perspcctive on colial and
postcolonial iranslations, Ihcercfore, is to study them not as translations
THE POLITICS OF POSTCO! ( i IK siATIUN
it has changod perceptibly. Translating Shakespeare, for example,
ypically colonial literary activity whuch had begun in a big way
most of our languages in the last quarter of the ninctoenth century, has lately acquired a ncw justification which is oftcn so nationalist as to be almost an instrument of decolonization In Hindi for example (as I haveshown elsewhere), the most prolific translator of Shakespear so far, Rangey Raghav, stated that his fsifteen iranslatons publshed
in the mid-1950s were motivated rather morc by his love of Hindi than
by his love of Shakespeare: "A languagc which docs not possess
translations of Shakespeare cannot be counted among the more devclopcd language'" (qtd. in Trivedi 33). Some modern Anglo-American authors too have been translated
by young and rising Hindi authors on their own appropriatory termis
rather than as a tribute to their mctropolitan canonical status, as im
the case of The Waste Land by Vishnu Khare or of The Portrait of
aladyby Mohan^ Rakesh.^ Anyhow,^ some^ other^ authors^ whom^ Rakesh's
cqually cminent^ contcoporaries^ chose^ to^ translatc^ at^ the^ same^ time
were distinctly not Anglo-American: Camus, whose The Stranger was
translalod by Rajendra Yadav, or Brecht, whose Caucasian Chalk Circle was translated by Kamalcshwar. In another instructive but not a typical instance, Kedanath Singh first discovered his poctic talent through translating Paul Eluard in an outpast of the vast Hindi hinterland Fro Anglo-America through Westem Europe, he postcolonial Hindi translator moved further aficld to explorc next Central and Easten Europe; Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia. Hungary, Poland, Russia.
I The Told War decades of the 1960s and the 1970s, this was not
only to go boyond the Anglo-American literary wodel and hegemony
bul virtually to go against it. Such was the scnsc of cxcitcment and
discovery expericnced by some of our translators that a direct and fruitsul nk can be scen between what they translatcd and what thcy
themsclics went^ on to writc creativcly, osT their own bat. To take only
thc most cminent examples, Nirmal Varma, the loremost novelist in
Hindi today, not only translatcd carly in his carcer Cacch writers of
fiction such as (^) Milan (^) Kundcra (^) dircc1ly into Handi beforc (^) they had (^) been
ranslalcd even^ into English, but also sct his own firsl novel,
in Cechoslovakia. unusually,
Smlarly, (^) Raghuvir (^) Sahay, onc (^) of the (^) ontstanding Hindi (^) pocts of our (^) postcolonial (^) half-ccntury, translatcd (^) not
only Shakespcare and
TRANSLATION: TS TEORY AND PRACTICE
Lorca, but also a selection of Hungarian poets, the Polish novelist Jerzi
Andrezejewski, and the Yugoslav/Bosnian novelist Ivo Andric. Four
of Andric's novels had boen published in Hindi in 1969 in transiations
by various Hindi writers including Sahay, under the common editorship
of Ajneya, and Sahay later went on to translate Andric's major epic
novel encompassang four ccnturies of national history, Na Drini
Chupriya, as Drina Nadi ka Pul (1985). In his Introduction, Sahay
more than once related the distinct and particular appeal of Andric
to something familar^ closcr^ at^ home:
While Andric's remarkable power of comception brings home to us through his delineation of human characters and their conduct the struggle for opposing valucs within European history on the
ane hand, it also alerts the sympathctic indian reader to the present
state of India and to its future, on the other. Such universality is the dharma^ of^ a^ great writer.^ (Andric (^) 4) Andric's literary or historical vision of the ups and downs of modern Europe is significant for own society now about to enter
thetwenty-first century.^ ..^ In^ his^ work,^ while^ people^ accept^ the
new, they do not barter away the old for it. This is the true mcaning of knowing onc's tradition, and this is also the Indian philosophy
of history. (Andric 7)
As in te case of Nimal Vama, Sahay too went on to et the
shedow of his translation Sall on his own creative work. His pocn1 *"Pul
ka Jtihas" is a Sond íronic testimany of he olectíve alinity he fel
with a work such as Andric's novel, which he had taken on to translate not as apprentíce work but relatively late in fife, at the pcak ef his oW ereative powers il is a pocm so subtly rich is suggestions of
reaching oui^ to^ dimam^ places^ and^ then^ roturning^ home^ with^ a^ wry^ now
recognition of^ ons's^ own^ self^ that^ it^ may wsll^ stand^ as^ an^ omblen
of the raaslauorkal cideavout itscf, and may theresore be citod lere
in fall (ay translauan)
History of Bridge
I travellod to a country far away.
Changod plancs al threc airporls,
Driving in fie weather
$2 TRANSIATION^ TSTHEORY^ AND^ PRACTICE
literary works as national allegorics; and the fourth reveals how,
contrary to Jameson's thesis, international/universal cosmopolitanism
can flourish in the Third World as well, and at thc samc time, as in
the mclropolis
A significant fcature of thesc translations is that a substantially
larger number of them are being published now, in the earhy 190s, thar was he casc some ten ycars or morc ago, and that thesc are being
published mostly in Idia by Indian imprints such as the Oxford
University Press Indin (including the Oxford India Paperbacks)
Penguin India, Rupa/HarpcrCollins/ndus, and Oricnt Longman/Disha,
not to forget the Sahitya Akademi and the National Book Trust,
presumably for a largcly Indian readership. The English language has
thus become the clearing house for various Indian litcrature of India,
just as it was already supposed to serve as the link-language. The
success of dhese translations (and Penguin Indía alone have published
on average about ten tisles per year for the last four or sive years)
would amply prove that to coin a phrase-English sor us is an Indian
language fir and an intermatíonal language afterwards. This is furdber
Coroboratcd by the facet that of all the translations (or even original
tles) published by Penguin India so far, the parcnt imprint, Penguis
London, has picked up for ínternetional distributíon barcly sny copies
of hardly any titles.
Such domestícation of tho English langungs or, if one preíers
1o put it so, such reverse-colonization of it serves at the san, in
to thwart the politucal potential of the project of rcndcring Tndian
literature, through translation into English, as part of world literataree
The Empire iranslatces back all right, but the metropolitan response
sccms to be that the Empire itself may h1mp thesc translations. The big dream chorished by ncarly all writers in the lndian languages, whether grcat or small, is that one day, aftcer they have won the Sahitya Akademi award and the Jnanapith award and have had art-filuns made oul of thcir works, the ultimato will happen and they will be translatcd mlo English and will burst upon the intcrnational sccne in a blaze of global glony. t hasn't happcned yet- at least not Since lghnang struci Tagore feil cighly yeas ago, in ho fonn of the Nobel Prize-but if st (^) can happen lo a (^) Marqucz and Liosa and a Kundcra and an (^) Eco,
why (hope springs ctcrnal!) can'i it happen to a Karanth or a Varua
or a (^) Sarang or (^) a (^) Sahay or (^) a (^) Gangopadliy ay? Welt, oue reason
why
THE POLITICS OF POSTCUM ANIAL TRANSLATION (^3)
not, it would seem, is that it is somewhat ikclier to happcn to a Seth
Dr a Sealy or a Tharoor or a Ghosh. The bottom-line on the politics of translation in India's iterary cuture, so far as translation of world literalure into the Indian languages is concermed, is that trenslation is not nccded and can be dispensed with. Even in the rare cases whcre translaors are devolodly rendering works of world literature into an Indian language like Hindi and two cmincnt recent cxamplcs are Wole Soy1nha ki Kavilayen (1991) translated by Vircndra Kumar Baranwal, and Wanhi Dibiya Vasco Popa ke^ Kavitayen^ (1988)^ translated^ by^ Somdatt they are^ doing so
as an act of personal love, homage, allegiance and affinity, rather than
with any realistichopeofeffectivepublic transmission and dissemination.
If even obviously relevant English classics such as A Passage to India
or Kim lave^ never^ becn^ translated^ intoa^ language^ like^ Hindi,^ it^ can
only be^ because^ alf^ Hindí^ speakers^ who^ are^ at^ all^ likely^ to^ read^ hese
books already have or at lcast have pretensions to enough English
o bc able to read these works in the original.
Even more acute is dhe case of Indian writers writing in a language
such as Hindi but aspiring ultimately to reach beyond to a larger international readership by being translated into English. For such seem recently to^ have^ been^ pre-empled^ by^ other^ Indian writers^ writing, if
one may so put i, directly in English. Rigt from R.K. Narayan
omwards, the Indo-Anglian writer has wTitten with one eye somewhat
airily and bopcfully aimed at sighling Anglo-America and the other experientially and realistically fixed on India. But roccntly, since the advcnt of Rushdie and magic rcalism, the old debate ccntring on this dichotomy, about imaginativce authenticity and its correlation to the medium onc writcs in, has well and tuly becn buried cven if it isn't quite dead yet. There is not much local let now, it would seem, for we have all gone global now, cven thosc of us who are culturally
disorienied enough hardly to know whether we are coming or we are
BOung This aspoct of our contemporary cultural situation was highlighled
by Gillian Wright in the vcry first page of her "Translator's
Iatroduction" to a Hindi novcl.
Raag Darbarn is not widely rcad n Delhi socicty and you'd be
bard-prcssed to find anyonc who'd ihcard of it or its author at the
average dinner party. The latest (ludian) Fnglish novcls, on th
