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Issues in India
The translation tradition is very strong in India at present. Prominent publishing houses have entire series on translation from Indian languages into English. Macmillan and Katha are significant examples. Translation Studies as a discipline is part of the curriculum in many prominent Indian universities.
Translation in India has the tradition of appropriation and recreation. For instance, what is the term for translation in an Indian language? In Sanskrit the term is ‘anuvad’, meaning ‘to say after’ while in some other Indian languages the words are terms ‘bhashantar’ (change from one language to another), ‘roopantar’, or ‘tarzuma’ (change from one code to another in terms of external form or language). In a way they reflect the issues in the translation field today in India. What is translation? Is it just change from one language to another or a more radical alteration where the form itself is changed? In this context, how relevant are the concepts of fidelity to the SL? Today the debates in translation also centre on the power dynamics between languages. Why is it that most Indian texts get translated into English and not other Indian languages?
These are questions that cannot be answered simplistically. They reflect the complexities that surround the issue of translation in a multilingual country like India. |
