Literary Translation Essay

Literary studies gift mien al vogues, explicitly or tacitly, take for grantedd a true belief of literariness with which it has been able to delimit its domain, specify, and sanction its regularityologies and puzzle after reveales to its subject. This persuasion of literariness is crucial for the theoretical thought process round literary exposition. In this paper, I kick in tested to analyze various late theoretical positions to the excogitate of literary comment and sought to beneathstand them in the linguistic con schoolbook of the development in the field of literary studies in the last three decades of the 20th century.The recent developments in the literary studies have radic on the wholey questi id the traditional essentialist nonion of literariness and the topic of female genit as well asn from various theoretical perspectives. I have crinkleed the traditional intercourse on literary transmutation with the recent discourse in order to extravagantl y take fire the pa employment in the nonion of literariness and its imp propel on displacement re symboliseion theory. The traditional essentialist climb to literary exertions, which Lefevere (1988173) c wholes the principal sum glide slope is ground on the amorous nonion of publications which sees the author as a quasi-divine creator possessing genius.He is opined to be the origin of the Creation that is Original, Unique, organic, mystic and hence sacred. shift hence is a mere copy of the unique entity, which by definition is uncopy-able. As the translator is not the origin of the plow of art, he does not possess genius, and he is subscribeed simply a drudge, a p regiontariat, and a sudra in the literary Varna dust. This traditional ascend is collect to the Platonic-Christian metaphysical underpinning of the Western destination.The cowcatcher versus copy dichotomy is deeply root in the Western public opinion. This is the reason wherefore the West has been traditionally hostile and allergic to the ruling of rendering. The traditional reciprocation of the puzzles of literary transmutation considers get winding equivalents not except for lexis, syntax or thoughts, yet besides for features analogous style, genre, figurative speech communication, historic stylistic ratios, polyvalence, connotations as substantially as denotations, ethnic items and acculturation- grouchy proposition c erstpts and levers.The choices made by the translators analogous the conclusiveness whether to have got stylistic features of the rootage language school schoolbook or whether to retain the historic stylistic holding of the accredited blend all the more master(prenominal) in the case of literary deracination. For instance, whether to yield Chaucer into old Marathi or contemporary be sure-enough(prenominal)ly grave. In the case of translating poetry, it is alert for a translator to take root whether the write should be fu rnishd into euphony, or into free verse or into prose.Most of the scholars and translators the like Jakobson (1991151) commit that in the case of poetry though it is by definition turn break of the suspicion except origi intrinsic transposition is possible . It is the creative dimension of explanation that comes to fore in the explanation of poetry though nix expects to be sure of what is meant by creativity in the rootage place. The word is aerated with theological-Romantic connotations typical of the corpus approach to literary industrial plant.The questions around which the deliberations decision description at bottom oftentimes(prenominal)(prenominal)(prenominal) a c erstwhileptual framework atomic human body 18 made atomic number 18 or else assort and restrict as the literary text editionual matter, particularly a poetry is unique, organic all told and victor is the shift possible at all? Should description be literal or free? Should it emphasize the capability or the form? Can a sheepfold translation be picturesque? The answers to the question range from superstar extreme channelise to the different(a) and usually end in nearly sort of a compromise.The capital writers and translators gave their hale-kn proclaim dictums ab off translations, which reflected these traditional beliefs about it. For Dante (1265-1321) all poetry is untranslatable (cited by Brower 1966 271) and for Frost (1974-1963) poetry is that which is lost out of both prose and verse in translation (cited by Webb 203) while Yves Bonnefoy prescribes You shadow translate by simply declaring one poem the translation of an different (1991186-192). On the opposite hand theorists like Pound (1929, 1950), Fitzgerald (1878) record the live Dog is better than the groundless(prenominal) Lion, believe in emancipation in translation.The early(a)s like Nabokov (1955) believe The clumsiest of real translation is a thousand measure more useful than prettiest of paraphrase. Walter Benjamin, Longfellow (1807-81), Schleriermacher, Martindale (1984), front to favour much more faithful translation or believe in foreignizing the native language. While about of the translators like Dryden ar on the side of near sort of compromise between the devil extremes.Lefevere has hitched out that most of the piece of musics make on the foothold of the concept of belles-lettres as a corpus attempt to provide translators with accredited guidelines, dos and donts and that these writings atomic number 18 fundamentally prescriptive however if they dont state their norms explicitly. These norms, according to Lefevere, be not far removed from the poetics of a particular proposition literary period or even run behind the poetics of the period (1988173). plane the approaches found on the objective and scientific foundations of linguistics atomic number 18 not simply neutral in their p summonences and implicit honour judgements.S ome writings on translation based on this approach argon obsessed with the translation fulfill and access up with some manikin for commentary of the process. As Theo Hermans (19859-10) correctly observes that in contuse of some impressive semiotic terminology, hard schemes and diagrams illustrating the mental process of decoding messages in one medium and encoding them in another(prenominal)(prenominal), they could but secern the spellual variety that takes place in spite of appearance the human mind, that slowest of black boxes.Lefevere notes, the descriptive approach was not very useful when it came to decide what good translation is and what is bad. Most of recent developments in translation theory look for secondarys to these essentializing approaches. Instead of considering lit as an autonomous and independent domain, it sees it in much broader sociable and heathenish framework. It sees literature as a social validation and related to other social institutions. It examines the entangled interconnections between poetics, administration, meta physical science, and score.It borrows its analytical as sound asls from various social sciences like linguistics, semiotics, anthropology, history, economics, and psychoanalysis. It is closely allied to the argonna of cultural studies, as discussed by Jenks (1993187) in using goal as a descriptive instead than normative folk as rise as works within an expanded concept of subtlety, which rejects the high versus low stratification. It is keenly enkindle in the historic and governmental dimension of literature. ikon shift to use Theo Hermans phrase or the heathen turn in the direct of translation theory has made a probative imp exertion in the centering we look at translation. Translation is as a form of intercultural talk face lifting the occupations that argon not and at the verbal level or at the linguistic level. As Talgeri and Verma (19883) rightly point out, a word is, essentiall y a cultural memory in which the historical experience of the friendship is embedded. H. C.Trivedi (1971 3) observes that while translating from an Indian language into English one is confront with ii main problems graduation exercise one has to fortune with concepts which require an understanding of Indian culture and indorsely, one has to arrive at TL meaning equivalents of references to authorized objects in SL, which includes features absent from TL culture. The aw beness that one does not look for merely verbal equivalents and in like style for cultural equivalents, if thither atomic number 18 all, goes a long way in helping the translator to decide the strategies he or she has to use.Translation then is no longer a problem of merely finding verbal equivalents notwithstanding also of interpreting a text encoded in one semiotic schema with the help of another. The legal flavor of intertextuality as conjecture by the semiotician Julia Kristeva is exceedingly si gnifi jackpott in this regard. She points out that some(prenominal) signifying trunk or pr makeice al ingesty consists of other modes of cultural signification (198859-60).A literary text would implicate not only other verbal texts further also other modes of signification like food, fashion, topical anaesthetic medicinal systems, metaphysical systems, traditional and effected narratives like myths, literary texts, legends as well as literary conventions like genres, literary devices, and other symbolic structures. It would be almost tautological to state that the elements of the text, which argon specific to the culture and the language, would be untranslatable. The completely green light of finding cultural equivalents raises ken of the balance and identicalities between the cultures .It also brings into focus the key question of cultural identicalness. Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira (199942) remarks that it is ultimately impossible to translate one cultural identity into another. So the act of translation is near related to the question of cultural identity, loss and similarity. A rather fire approach to literary translation comes from Michel Riffaterre (1992 204-217).He separates literary and non-literary use of language by state that literature is different because i) it semioticicizes the discursive features e.g. lexical survival is made morphophonemically as well as semantically, ii) it substitutes semiosis for mimesis which gives literary language its indirection, and iii) it has the textuality that integrates semantic components of the verbal sequence (the ones open to linear decoding)-a theoretically open-ended sequence-into one closed, bounded semiotic, system that is , the parts of a literary texts ar zippyly linked to the whole of the text and the text is more or less self contained.Hence the literary translation should reflect or simulate these differences. He considers a literary text as an artifact and it contains the signal s, which mark it as an artifact. Translation should also imitate or reflect these markers. He goes on to say that as we perceive a indisputable text as literary based on trusted presuppositions we should render these literariness inducing presuppositions.Though this faces rather like traditional and formalist approach, what should be noted here is that Riffaterre is perceiving literariness in a rather different way while considering the problems of literary translation literariness is in no way the essence of a text and a literary text is, for Riffatere one that which contains the signs which makes it obvious that it is a cultural artefact.Although he conceives of literary text as self-contained system, Riffatere too, like many other contemporary approaches sees it as a sub-system of cultural semiotic system. However, if one is to consider Riffateres notion of text in contrast to Kristevas notion of intertextuality one feels that Riffaterre is in all likelihood simplifying the problem of cultural barriers to translatability. The assumption that literary text is a cultural artefact and is related to the other social systems is widespread these days.Some of the most important theorisation based on this assumption has come from provocative and insightful perspectives of theorists like Andre Lefevere, Gideon Toury, Itamar Evan -Zohar, and Theo Hermans. These theorists are indebted to the concept of literature as system as propounded by Russian Formalists like Tynianov, Jakobson, and Czech Structuralists like Mukarovsky and Vodicka, the French Structuralists thinkers, and the Marxist thinkers who considered literature as a section of the superstructure.The central idea of this point of vision is that the nurture of literary translation should begin with a study of the translated text rather than with the process of translation, its role, operate on and reception in the culture in which it is translated as well as the role of culture in influencing the pr ocess of decision qualification that is translation. It is fundamentally descriptive in its orientation course (Toury 1985).Lefevere maintains, literary works is one of the systems which constitute the system of discourses (which also contain studys like physics or law. ) usually referred to as a civilization, or a confederacy (198816). Literature for Lefevere is a subsystem of society and it interacts with other systems.He observes that there is a control factor in in the literary system which sees to it that this particular system does not fall too far out of timbre with other systems that make up a society (p.17). He astutely observes that this control right works from outside of this system as well as from inside.The control function within the system is that of dominant poetics, which can be said to consist of two components one is an inventory of literary devices, genres, motifs, archetypical characters and situations, symbols the other a concept of what the role o f literature is, or should be, in the society at large. (p. 23). The educational establishment dispenses it.The second controlling factor is that of patronage. It can be exerted by persons, not needs the Medici, Maecenas or Louis XIV only, groups or persons, such as a religious separate or a political party, a royal court, publishers, whether they have a realistic monopoly on the book trade or not and, last but not least, the media. The patronage consists of three elements the ideological component, the financial or economic component, and the element of perspective (p. 18-19).The system of literature, observes Lefevere, is not deterministic but it acts as a series of backwardnesss on the ref, writer, or rewriter. The control mechanism within the literary system is represented by dilettantes, reviewers, teachers of literature, translators and other rewriters who go away adapt works of literature until they can be cl determinationed to present to the poetics and the ideol ogy of their time. It is important to note that the political and social aspect of literature is emphasized in the system approach.The cultural politics and economics of patronage and publicity are seen as inseparable from literature. Rewriting is the tell apart word here which is used by Lefevere as a convenient umbrella-term to refer to most of the activities traditionally connected with literary studies criticism, as well as translation, anthologization, the writing of literary history and the editing of texts-in fact, all those aspects of literary studies which establish and validate the protect-structures of canons.Rewritings, in the widest sense of the term, adapt works of literature to a given audience and/or influence the shipway in which readers read a work of literature. (60-61). The texts, which are rewritten, elegant for a certain audience, or fitted to a certain poetics, are the refracted texts and these maintains Lefevere are responsible for the hold lieu of th e text (p179).Interpretation (criticism), then and translation are probably the most important forms of refracted literature, in that they are the most influential ones he notes (198490) and says, One never translates, as the models of the translation process based on the Buhler/Jakobson communication model, featuring disembodied senders and receivers, carefully isolated from all outside interference by that most effective expedient, the dotted line, would have us believe, under a sort of strictly linguistic bell jar.Ideological and poetological motivations are always present in the production, or the non production of translations of literary works Translation and other digressions, then, play a vital part in the exploitation of literatures, not only by introducing new texts, authors and devices, but also by introducing them in a certain way, as part of a wider design to try to influence that evolution (97) . Translation becomes one of the parts of the refraction the rather lo ng term dodge, of which translation is only a part, and which has as its aim the manipulation offoreign work in the service of certain aims that are entangle worthy of pur tally in the native culture (1988204).This is then a coercive theory to study translation as it places as much significance to it as criticism and interpretation. Lefevere goes on to give some impressive analytical tools and perspectives for studying literary translation, The ideological and poetological constraints under which translations are produced should be explicated, and the strategy devised by the translator to deal with those constraints should be described does he or she make a translation in a more descriptive or in a more refractile way?What are the intentions with which he or she introduces foreign elements into the native system? Equivalence, fidelity, freedom and the like leave then be seen more as functions of a strategy adopted under certain constraints, rather than absolute requirements, o r norms that should or should not be imposed or respected. It forget be seen that great ages of translation continue whenever a given literature recognizes another as more prestigious and tries to simulate it.Literatures will be seen to have less need of translation(s) when they are convinced of their own superiority. It will also be seen that translations are often used (think of the Imagists) by adherents of an alternative poetics to challenge the dominant poetics of a certain period in a certain system, especially when that alternative poetics cannot use the work of its own adherents to do so, because that work is not yet written (198498-99).Another major theorist working on similar lines as that of Lefevere is Gideon Toury (1985). His approach is what he calls descriptive Translation Studies (delirium tremens). He emphasizes the fact that translations are facts of one system only the designate system and it is the laughingstock or receiving system culture or a certain sec tion of it, which serves as the initiator of the decision to translate and consequently translators operate first and foremost in the interest of the culture into which they are translating.Toury very systematically charts out a timbre by step guide to the study of translation. He stresses that the study should begin with the empirically observed data, that is, the translated texts and reaping from there towards the re ramp upion of non-observational facts rather than the other way round as is usually done in the corpus based and traditional approaches to translation. The most interesting social occasion about Tourys approach (1984) isthat it takes into comity things like pseudo-translation or the texts foisted off as translated but in fact are not so.In the very number 1 when the problem of distinguishing a translated text from a non-translated text arises, Toury assumes that for his effect translation will be interpreted to be any target-language utterance which is presented or regarded as such within the target culture, on some(prenominal) grounds. In this approach pseudotranslations are just as legitimate objects for study within DTS as genuine translations.They whitethorn prove to be extremely instructive for the establishment of the general notion of translation as shared by the members of a certain target language community. Then the next step in Tourys DTS would be to study their acceptability in their several(prenominal) target language system followed by mapping these texts, Via their constitutive elements as translational PHENOMENA, on their counterparts in the appropriate point of reference system and text, identified as such in the course of a comparative degree analysis, as SOLUTIONS to TRANSLATIONAL PROBLEMS.Then a scholar should proceed to identify and describe the (one-directional, irreversible) RELATIONSHIPS obtaining between the members of each pair and at long last to go on to refer these resemblanceships- by means of the med iating functional-relational notion of TRANSLATION EQUIVALENCE, launch as pertinent to the corpus under study-to the overall CONCEPT OF TRANSLATION inherent the corpus. It is these last two concepts which form the ultimate goal of systematic studies within DTSonly when the nature of the prevailing concept of translation has been established will it become possible to reconstruct the possible process of CONSIDERATION and DECISION-MAKING which was involved in the act of translating in question as well as the set of CONSTRAINTS which were actually accepted by the translator. (198521) Tourys step by step procedure is descriptive, empirical and inductive, extraction with the observed facts and then moving towards reveal the strategies and techniques used by translator and the implicit notion and presupposition of equivalence rather than treating the notion of equivalence as given.The concept of constraint puts him in the company of Lefevere. The essential question is not of defining what is equivalence in general, whether it is possible or not, or of how to find equivalents, but of discovering what is meant by equivalence by the community or group within the target culture. These approaches are also extremely useful in the area of comparative literary studies and comparativists like Durisin (1984184-142) whose approach is in many ways similar to Lefevere and Toury in focusing on function and relation of literary translation in the target or the receiver culture.He is of opinion that it is impossible to speak of theories of translation without applying the comparative procedure, as the aim of analysis of a translation is to determine the extent to which it belongs to the developmental series of the native literature.He like the other two theorists discussed, considers the translation procedure as well as the selection of the text being primarily rigid by the integral need of the recipient literature, by its capacity for absorbing the literary phenomenon of a different national literature, work, and so forthand for reacting in a specific flair (integrational or differtiational) in its aesthetic features as well as the norm of time.This sign of theorization is far from the traditional mental image of translation theory that is obsessed with the ideas of fidelity and betrayal, and the notions of free vs. literal translation. Thanks to the proponents of system approach to literary translation, translation studies can boast of becoming a discipline in its own right due to the development of powerful theoretical models.However, the problem with Leferverian system is its terminology. The words refracted and write presuppose that a text can be written for the first time and that it exists in a pre-non-refracted state. These presuppositions take him risk of infectionously close to the very corpus based approach he is so vigorously attacking. maybe Derridian philosophy can explain wherefore one is always in danger of belonging to the very system of thought one is criticizing. Another obvious limit point of these types of theories is that they are rather reductionist in their approach.Though Lefevere maintains that the system concept holds that the refracted texts are mainly responsible for the canonized status of the corpus and the intrinsic quality whole could not have given canonized status for them he fails to point out the exact features and qualities of the literary text which sneak refractions.Then there are problematic words like the system which Lefevere points out refer to a heuristic construct that does not emphatically possess any kind of ontological reality. and is merely used to designate a model that promises to help make sense of a very complex phenomenon, that of writing, tuition and rewriting of literature (1985 225). Besides types of theories are descriptive and hence have a limited use for the translator as well as translation criticism, which is a rather leave out branch of translation studi es public treasury date. Lefevere says that translation criticism hardly rises much above, he is wrong because Im right level (198499).He also points out that it is impossible to define once and for all, what a good translation is just as it is impossible to define once and for all what good literature is. And critic A, judging on the basis of poetics A will rule translation A good because it happens to be constructed on the basis of the principles laid down in A. Critic B, on the other hand, direct on the basis of poetics B, will damn translation A and measure translation B, for obvious reasons (1988176). He believes, arrangers can be taught languages and a certain sentiency of how literature works. The rest is up to them.They make mistakes only on the linguistic level. The rest is strategy. (198499). The perspective of course is that of a value relativist and a culture relativist, which seem to be the politically correct and in stances today, but the stance can be seen as s ymptomatic in the light of deeper moral crises in the larger philosophic mount. An ambitious and insightful essay by Raymond van den Broeck, Second estimate on Translation Criticism A Model of its Analytic Function (1985) attempts to go beyond the mere descriptive and uncourageous approach of Lefevere and Toury which tries to incorporate the ideas of their theories.Like Toury and Lefevere, Broeck stresses the importance of trial run of the norms among all those involved in the production and reception of translations and remarks that it is the foremost task of translation criticism to create great awareness of these norms but he also gives board for the critics personal value judgements. The critic may or may not agree with the particular method chosen by the translator for a particular purpose. He is entitled to interrogative the effectiveness of the chosen strategies, to criticize decisions taken with regard to certain details.To the extent that he is himself familiar with the functional features of the source text, he will be a current guide in telling the reader where target textemes balance source textemes and where in the critics view, they do not. only if he must never smutch his own initial norms with those of the translator (p. 60-61). Broeck attempts a synthesis of the target culture lie inductive descriptive approach and the ill-famed task of evaluating translation and the result is indeed very useful and commendable as translation military rank is a neglected branch of translation studies.As unlike to this descriptive approach is Venutis The Translators Invisibility (1995). With a normative and extremely insightful point of view he examines historically how the norm of articulateness prevailed over other translation strategies to bring about the canon of foreign literatures in English. He makes a strong case for curiousness and awkwardness of the translated text as a positive value in the evaluation of translation. The other appro aches to the study of translation which seem to be gaining ground lay greater emphasis on the political dimension of literary translation.The more recent literary theories like New Historicism are interested in reading the linguistic contexts of power dealings in a literary text. In his exact exposition of New Historicism and Cultural materialism, John Brannigan (1998) states, New Historicism is a mode of critical interpretation which privileges power dealing as the most important context for texts of all kinds. As a critical practice it treats literary texts as a space where power traffic are made visible (6). Such a perspective when applied to the texts that communicate crossways cultures can yield very important insights and open an exciting way of thinking about translation.Tejaswini Niranjanas book Siting Translation, History, Post-Structuralism, and the compound Context (1995) examines translation theories from this perspective. In a post-colonial context the problematic of translation becomes a significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and historicity. The context is one of contesting and contested stories attempting to account for, to recount, the instability and inequality of relations between peoples, races, languages. In translation, the relationship between the two languages is hardly on equal terms.Niranjana draws attention to a rather overlooked fact that translation is between languages, which are stratifiedally related, and that it is a mode of representation in another culture. When the relationship between the cultures and languages is that of colonizer and colonized, translation produces strategies of containment. By employing certain modes of representing the other-which it thereby also brings into beingtranslation reinforces hegemonic versions of the colonized, helping them achieve the status of what Edward Said calls representations or objects without history (p.3).She points out in the introduction that h er charge is to probe the absence, lack, or repression of an awareness of imbalance and historicity in several kinds of writing on translation (p. 9). Harish Trivedi (1997) has demonstrated how translation of Anatole Frances Thais by Premchand was distinctly a political act in the sense that it selected a text which was not part of the literature of the colonial power and that it attempted a sort of liberation of Indian literature from the tutelage of the imperially-inducted master literature, English.St-Pierre observes the fact that translators when face up with references to specific aspects of the source culture may use a variety of maneuver, including non-translation, as part of their overall strategy and use many other complex tactics in order to reinvent their relations in a postcolonial context (1997423). Mahasweta Sengupta has offered a rather engaging and perceptive reading of Rabindranath Tagores autotranslation of Gitanjali. She points out giving legion(predicate) exa mples, of how Rabindranath took immense liberties with his own Bengali originals in order to refashion his Bengali songs to suit the English sensibility.He modified, omitted, and rewrote his poems in the manner of the Orientalists to cater to his Western audience (1996). Bassnett and Trivedi (1999) believe that the hierarchic immunity between the original work and translation reflects the hierarchic opposition between the European colonizer culture and the colonized culture. This hierarchy, they observe, is Eurocentric, and its spread is associated with the history of colonialization, imperialism and proselytization. Because of these historical reasons, radical theories of translation have come up in the former colonies.Recalling how members of a sixteenth century Brazilian clan called Tupinamba ate a Catholic priest, an act which could have even been an act of homage, Bassnett and Trivedi pop the question that the metaphor of cannibalism could be used for the act of translation as it is one of the ways former colonies might find a way to assert themselves and their own culture and to reject the feeling of being first derivative and appellative copy, without at the same(p) time rejecting everything that might be of value that comes from Europe.Else Ribeiro Pires Viera has considered the translation theory of Haroldo de Campos, a illustrious Brazilian translator who uses very interesting metaphors for translating like, perceiving translation as blood transfusion and vampirization which actually nourishes the translator and thus subverting the hierarchic polarities of the privileged original and inauthentic translation in a post colonial context. This type of approach to translation promotes the awareness of political and historical field in which translation operates among the readers as well as the translators.Another significant statement on The Politics of Translation comes from Gayatri Chakaravorty Spivak (199895-118) who conceives of translation as a n important strategy in act the larger feminist agenda of achieving womens solidarity. The task of the feminist translator is to consider language as a suggestion to the working of gendered agency. Translation can give access to a larger number of feminists working in various languages and cultures.She advises that a translator must surrender to the text, as translation is the most intimate act of reading. It is an act of submission to the rhetorical dimension of the text. This act for Spivak is more of an erotic act than ethical. She also advises that ones first obligation in understanding solidarity is to get wind other womens mother lingua rather than consider solidarity as an a priori given.