Translating consciousness of India

India is a multi-lingual country and has always been so. G. N. Devy terms the Indian consciousness as a “translating consciousness” (In another Tongue:135). Sanskrit was the dominant language in the northern part of India but other languages like Prakrit, Pali and Apabhramsa were used as languages of communication by the common masses. Sanskrit was the language of literature and religious rites. But even in the Sanskrit plays of Kalidasa and other playwrights of the time, the women and lower caste/ class characters speak Prakrit or other dialects like Sauraseni and Magadhi. It was normal and acceptable to change from one dialect into another or one language into another in the course of the same text. Devy points out: “The extent to which bilingual literary production has been accepted in India as a normal literary behaviour, and the historical length of the existence of such practice are indicative of India 's ‘translating consciousness'.” (136)

There are actually two distinct language families in India – the Indo-Aryan and the Dravidian. The most ancient of the Dravidian languages is Tamil.The other Dravidian languages are Kannada, Telugu and Malayalam which evolved later than from Tamil. The primary Indo-Aryan language is Sanskrit which combined with various local dialects to give rise to the languages of the north. The Indo-Aryan languages might share linguistic features with the languages of the west, more than with the Dravidian group of languages. So, translation from Hindi to Malayalam means that translation is between two languages that are radically different although they belong to the same region called India. The translator has to be very conscious of this while s/he translates in India. But despite this diversity, we can safely state that Indian languages own a shared sensibility, partly derived from ancient theories of literature and language.

Devy points out how the obsession with equivalence in translation is essentially a western metaphysical obsession. He quotes Hillis Miller's statement: “Translation is the wandering existence in a perpetual exile”. This is linked to the Christian theological concept of the fall from Paradise and the consequent exile in search of a country. Devy explains: “In Western metaphysics translation is an exile, and an exile is a metaphorical translation—a post-Babel crisis. The multilingual, eclectic Hindu spirit, ensconced in the belief in the soul's perpetual transition from form to form, may find it difficult to subscribe to the Western metaphysics of translation” (135).

What he is emphasizing is the basic difference in the world views of two different cultures that is bound to have an impact on all aspects of creativity, including translation. The obsession with the original and the anxiety of not being able to capture the meaning is in some way connected to the theological concept of a paradise that has been lost and has to be regained. The Indian psyche that believes in the constant progression of the soul from one birth to the other is not concerned about an original state. This is because we have the cyclical concept of life and time where there are no origins or endings. Hence the almost metaphysical obsession about equivalence that haunts translation activity in the west is alien to us.