Colonial England
But with the rise and spread of colonialism, we perceive a distinct difference of opinion. The imperialist expansion especially in Asia saw the rendering of ancient language texts in English. But contrary to their attitude to Latin and Greek texts, they thought that translations from Arabic and Sanskrit texts were efforts to polish the barbaric beauty of those ancient works. Edward Fitzgerald who translated Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat is the best possible example of this sort of a translator. His translation was more of a recreation of an exotic original, transformed to an entity that the native reader could understand. In the process the translator attempts to polish what he perceives to be the roughness of the original even as he retains its exotic nature. This is apparent even in the early English translations of Sanskrit works like Abhijnanasakuntalam, undertaken by Orientalist scholars like Sir William Jones.
This attitude came to be criticized a lot later on as being a part of the orientalist mindset. The original text was translated and packaged in such a way to project and preserve a particular image. The East was seen as mysterious and inscrutable and at the same time sensual and indulgent. Hence the translation had a lot of archaisms in it, but sometimes the effect was very far from that of the original. Although these translations were like a ‘discovery’ of the east by the west, it often presented a distorted version of the original. Translation also became a sort of esoteric activity that was open only to orientalist scholars.
Thus in the 19th century we can see two diametrically opposite viewpoints on translation—one by Dante Gabriel Rossetti who thought that the translator has to be subservient to the original work and the other by Edward Fitzgerald who thought that it was alright to take liberties with works. He was more like a master who made the servant language obey his whims and fancies. |
