Spivak and Mahasweta Devi
Gayatri Spivak's first major work of translation was Derrida's Of Grammatology which she translated from French into English. But her work in postcolonial theory, especially the question of whether the subaltern can speak (which is the title of her essay written in 1988), probed the issue of translation and transparency of texts, and the mediators who claim to represent a people / a text. Her own answer to the question was a qualified no, in that the intellectuals who speak for the marginalized subaltern cannot hope to represent them adequately. The only way they could do it, according to her, was to follow the Derridean concept of listening to the silences in the text. All that the translator can hope to do is try to listen to the marginalized voices that are caught in the web of representation woven by the colonizer.
She demonstrated her principles through the translation of three of the stories of the Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi, published in Imaginary Maps . She uses the translation to help the non-native reader to imagine a culturally different space and time, without letting the reader forget that the text is mediated through a translator. She makes use of a preface and other material like an interview with the author, to locate the text within a specific cultural context. She did not smooth out the source text by choosing a target text-oriented translation. In fact, her choice of title as “Breast-giver” instead of the more common “Wet nurse” for the Bengali “Stanadayini” is an example. There is no attempt to exoticize; on the other hand, this provides her with an excellent forum to work out her overlapping theories on feminism and Marxism.
In Spivak's translation theory we see a perfect blend of theory and praxis. Her translations succeeded in getting Mahasweta Devi the attention of the global literary field. This was done without the brouhaha of a William Jones ‘discovering' Kalidasa or the condescension of a Fitzgerald appropriating Omar Khayyam. Spivak was pointing to a pluralistic source culture that was richly textured and difficult to capture in a language/culture that was as foreign as the Anglo-American one. The only option for a translator here was to underline the artificial and constructed nature of all languages and attempt to bring the reader to the text. This postcolonial translation strategy of refusing to move towards the dominant culture is also an attempt to invert the power hierarchy between the colonizer and the colonized. This is a conscious political strategy, somewhat like Ngugi's decision to strew Gikuyu words in his English novel. It is a confident assertion of linguistic and cultural equality, a trait that was encouraged by postcolonial theory.
Assignments
- What fresh perspective does Niranjana’s work bring to translation theory?
- How has postcolonial theory helped translation activity in the former colonies?
References
Gentzler, Edwin. Contemporary Translation Theories. Second revised edition. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, 2001.
Simon, Sherry and Paul St-Pierre. Eds. Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era. 2000. Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 2002.
Tymoczko, Maria. “Post-colonial Writing and Literary Translation”, Post-colonial
Translation: Theory and Practice. Eds. Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi.
London: Routledge, 1999: 19 – 40 |
