Evolution of Translation in Human Civilization

Lecture 2 Paper V( B )

Translation in the broader perspective is as old and as common as human civilization or in other words its inception can not be traced back to a specific date. When verbal languages did not exit or was not formulated , human being did communicate to each other , though not in words but with the help of different gestures, acting, dancing i.e. one can say human being translated their ideas into different types of performances. Once languages came into existence communication between different languages started taking place by means of inter-lingual translation. Hence communication took place between people belonging to different groups/communities, speaking different languages.

Each civilization holds to own method, practices and culture of translation. Translation is a continuous process and force in all civilization. Each civilization shows its own pattern of translation, reception of translation and objective of translation. Translation takes place both within and outside a community. Translation as a medium holds record of knowledge of a particular community.

Often we find the record of oral traditions into manuscripts. In the process of carrying knowledge of a particular community translation is observed in the method of changing signs and mediums. Translations role as communication is one of the oldest practices in the domain of knowledge transfers. Ancient travellers used to communicate through different modes of translation. Ancient and Medieval civilization of India and Arab found translation as a mode transferring knowledge from one civilization to another.

e.g. Indian ancient text Panchatantra was received by Persians and it was translated into Persian. In India translation is seen in a wider perspective, and is received in its multiplicity. Generally it is accepted by the scholars of the translation studies that the scientific study of translation did not begin in India. It was first studied in west. More or less it can be said that scientific study of Indian translation is yet to get adequate attention of researchers and scholars.

Colonial experiences and Post-colonial studies insisted for a scientific study of Indian translation as translation carries history of culture and civilization. Translation studies as a discipline deals with translation as a method, as a production and as a phenomenon. Translation in India was received in broader perspective as against the western theory of faithfulness to the original. When theorists and scholars started studying translation they referred to different texts and notes of the translators to understand the nature of Indian translation.

If we trace the history of literary translation in India (pre-colonial) it was popularly practiced as retellings in different languages. for e.g. the Ramayana , Mahabharata etc. were translated into many different languages . Stories of these sanskrit texts were recreated in different languages to make it accessible and acceptable to wider population or target audience. Such retellings has immense importance in the formation of bhasa or modern Indian languages. Through these translations, bhasa, loka, sanskriti was imagined and formulated. It helped people to imagine their desh .

According to K. Sachidanandan, original has never been specially privileged and the translator s position has never been secondary in India. Such kind of retelling of classics or epics is also known as recreation or creative departure which was very common practice or prevalent norm of translating. Pre-colonial translation in India was also very much Intertextual, with reference of Sujit Mukherjee s analysis of Indian translation. Shibani Phukan says, While I use transcreation to describe translation practice of pre-colonial India, Sujit Mukherjee notes in Transcreating Translation that a variety of terms such as anuvada , vivartanam from Sanskrit and tarjuma from Arabic were prevalent in India in that period.

Drawing on Mukherjee, I waved like to argue that it is lack of a single equivalent Indian word for the modern term translation that demonstrate the plurality of practices informing translation activities in pre-colonial India. Indranath Choudhary mentions that India is a translation area . Chaudhary refers Suniti Kumar Chatterjee and says Polyglotism in ancient India was responsible for developing translation consciousness among Indian. Vatsayan s phrase lokopichanuvada which means translatibility explains the historical length of existence of India s translating consciousness

While piecing together what has been said about translation in different texts one can say that in Indian context the term translation is anuvada i.e. repetition of what is enjoined by a vedic text with a different wording. But repetition is not understood as a literal word-by-word rendering of the original from source to target. In the Indian context the reader is never a passive receiver of a text in which its truth is enshrined. Choudhary also mentions that besides the notion of repetition (vidhivihita tasya nuvachanuvadah), Gopatha Brahmana reflects on the doctrine of purposefulness of translation (saprayojanamanuvadah).

This is how Choudhary points out that the problem of translation is not cultural or linguistic problem purely but aesthetic problem too. And the word prayojanam is to mention the aesthetic necessity of translation. Ancient Indian translation theorists were very much concerned about the aesthetics of translated text. Jaminiya Nyaya says that the revelation of meaning is translation .

Kayyat and Tolkapier talks about Pramanaantar, the contextual meaning which means, when transferred translation becomes a reality. Indranath Choudhary refers Ayappa Panikar has pieced together some very useful concepts in the content of medieval Indian translation of Sanskrit classics which, in fact, reveal all that is said about translation by the Sanskrit theoreticians , but in a new dimension These concepts are - Anukriti Arthakriya Vyaktivivekam Ullurai

Anukriti is the imitation of the original. One can imitate only what one is not. The product of imitation is not the same text, but a similar text. 1. Arthakriya is putting emphasis on the manifold ways in which meanings are enacted in different texts. 2. Vyaktivivekam is rendering of the meaning inferred by the reader or invoking interpretation based on anumana or reference potential of a given passage. 3. Ullurai is a Dravidian term primarily means the inner speech, not the heard melody but the one unheard or the speech within. In a literary text this is the vital layer. 4.

During colonial era translation was a very political act. On one side it was a cultural (east/west) exchange and on the other side it was used to establish political hegemony, cultural hierarchy. Ganesh Devy says, translation as a political weapon is not always and necessarily employed towards reducing the gap between the divine and the profane, the high and the low. In recent years translation theorists like Sujit Mukherjee , Ganesh Devy , Harish Trivedi , Uday Narayan Singh , Tejaswani Narayan produced masterpieces on Indian translation of colonial and post-colonial era. Courtesy Web-sources