Pre-colonial Translation

It has already been pointed out that multilingualism, or the simultaneous co-existence of multiple languages in ordinary speech or a literary text was quite common. So, translation if done, must have been from Sanskrit to languages like Prakrit. Avadhesh Kumar Singh points out that although there were no major translations as such, the bhashya (commentary on sacred texts), tika (sub-commentary) and anvyaya (explanation of meaning or interpretation) written in those days were much like translation activity. Gopinathan states that the translations done during this period were called ‘chhaya' or ‘translation as shadow of the original text' (“Translation, Transcreation and Culture”: 1). However this does not only imply that the translation is a shadow of the original and matches it exactly, but also that just as the shadow can differ from the object, depending on the intensity and angle of light falling on it, the translation can also differ depending on the translator and his/her interpretation of it.
                                                                                                           
The concept of creating a new text out of the old is very much evident in the numerous Indian language versions of the epics. The Bhakti poets, by transferring vedic and other scriptural knowledge from Sanskrit into the language of the common man, can also be thought of as translators in this sense. Avadhesh Kumar Singh thinks of this period from 1100 – 1700 as the time of lokbhashikaran , a term he uses to denote this activity of the knowledge in Sanskrit being passed on to ‘lokbhasha' or the languages of ordinary people (“Translation in/and Hindi Literature”: 3). It was also the period of the translation of Ramayana and Mahabharata into the Indian languages. Tulsidas's Hindi Ramcharitmanas, Kamba's Tamil Ramayana, Ezhuthachchan's Malayalam Adhyatma Ramayanam, Sarala Das's Oriya Sarala Mahabharata etc were all composed during this period. It has to be again noted that all these were transcreations, which were written specifically for a particular region and culture. Naturally these were translations done in the Indian oral tradition where not much effort went into maintaining equivalence.