Auchitya

There are other scholars who feel that another Sanskrit concept is more crucial for translators, which is that of auchitya. Auchitya means decorum, but in the context of translation it can be seen as the discretion that is exercised by the translator in the selection of texts for translation. Avadhesh K. Singh, in his introduction to the book Translation: Its Theories and Practices, says that auchitya “should mean propriety in the selection of a text for translation, of methodology and strategy used for translation; and of placing the text in proper perspective, so that the source writer's / text's intended, not merely articulated meaning finds its proper expression in the target text” (xi). Shanta Ramakrishna exemplifies the concept of auchitya in translation by going back to Premchand and Ganesh Shankar Vidyarthi in India . In the late 19th and early 20th century India, when the dominant trend was to translate from English to various Indian languages, Vidyarthi translated Victor Hugo's French book Quatre-vingt-treize as Balidaan. The book which was on the French Revolution was used by Vidyarthi to infuse the spirit of nationalism in the people of the day. But it was an ‘unfaithful' translation as it was more of an adaptation than a translation. In his preface, Vidyarthi expressed the opinion that a translation and the original can never be the same and that the reader should not expect it to be so. Premchand did something similar with his translation of Anatole France's Thais. He chose it for ideological reasons and wanted it to be an inspiration for his contemporaries. Shanta Ramakrishna argues that in making their translations more suitable to the target readers, these translators were exercising the principle of auchitya. They chose a text that they thought would be relevant to the target readership and adopted a translation strategy that was most suitable for that – this would be auchitya in translation (“Cultural Transmission through Translation”, Changing the Terms: 93).