Poststructuralist translation

Postcolonial theory was very much influenced by post-structuralism, especially the disbelief in stable structures and meanings. It benefited from the Derridean dictum of listening to the silences in a text. Post-colonialism situated itself with respect to these silences or the unheard voices, by interrogating received knowledges. Gentzler says that the post-colonial translators were using translation “as a strategy of resistance, one that disturbs and displaces the construction of images of non-Western cultures rather than reinterpret them using traditional, normalized concepts and language” (176). The people who did significant work in post-colonial translation criticism are Tejaswini Niranjana and Gayatri Spivak. Niranjana's Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context published in 1992 takes off from Derridean deconstruction and interrogates the treatment of colonial cultures by Orientalist translators and writers. Niranjana conceptualises translation as the site where the conflict of cultures and languages was most clearly manifested. She argues that the colonialist translation endeavours sought to depict the colony as the ‘Other' to the Eurocentric colonizer. This was a two-way process – it helped the colonizers in identifying themselves as distinct from the colony, and also provided a self-image to the colonized.

Niranjana critiques the notion of translation that is source-text oriented and which claims to have an easy access to the original. Most of western translation criticism, she argues, favours this approach without questioning the notion of equivalence. Such methods only helped to reinforce the hegemonic power relations of the colonizer over the colonized. Niranjana does not spare George Steiner or even Gideon Toury (who advocated target text-oriented translation). She argues that Toury and other polysystem theorists have not considered the part played by translations in the subjectification of colonized peoples.

What Niranjana finds the most enabling in Derrida is the concept of the heterogeneous original, that it is “not some pure, unified source of meaning of history” (qtd in Gentzler 179). Gentzler adds: “With no primordial presence to be re-presented, much of Western philosophy and history, with its stable notions of truth, meaning, presence, logos, and telos, collapses” (179). This in turn would dismantle the principles of translation. By challenging fixed meanings, deconstruction opened up the space for alternative visions which are equally valid. This gives the translator greater scope to present his/her culture in a different light than the colonizers. Niranjana also draws upon Walter Benjamin in the building up of her argument. Gentzler points out how she focuses on certain aspects of Benjamin. For instance, in “The Task of the Translator” Benjamin states: “It is the task of the translator to release in his own language that pure language which is under the spell of another, to liberate the language imprisoned in a work in his re-creation of the work” (qtd in Gentzler: 180). Niranjana identifies with the liberatory aspect of translation though she may disagree with the idea of a ‘pure' language. She has case studies of Orientalist translations in her book, to validate her point that history and the so-called ‘objective' areas of knowledge are actually human constructs. She wishes to make the reader aware of the mediated nature of translations that were commissioned by the colonizers, and also of the treacherous nature of language which can hide multiple meanings. Besides this, she is also pointing out the facade of stability of the original, emphasizing that it is anything but a coherent unified entity.

Gentzler says that Niranjana's theory was effective in showing how the field of translation studies is interdisciplinary in nature. It showed the ‘constructedness' of categories, be it in literature or any other field of knowledge. But, besides expressing deep distrust of conventional epistemological methods, it did not really show an alternative. His argument is that this is provided by Gayatri Spivak who is herself a translator.