Introduction

What is the position of translation today? And what constructive role can translators play in a world that does not quite know how to deal with pluralities of belief, language and culture? This is what this lecture deals with.The cultural turn resulted in widening the area of enquiry of translation studies, so much so that today it is subsumed under the broad rubric of cultural studies. The concept of translation as an exchange between cultures rather than languages has helped in the term being applied to various non-linguistic activities as well. The postmodern world has come to realize the plurality of languages and discourses, and is attempting or pretending to attempt a better understanding of ‘other’ languages and cultures. This has made translation an important activity. In fact, Edwin Gentzler thinks that the time is ripe for a “translation turn” in fields like linguistics, anthropology, psychology, women’s studies, cultural studies and postcolonial studies (187). We are coming to occupy a ‘translated world’ today.

The shift of focus from linguistics to broader areas of culture also helped to give the field a disciplinary autonomy, a point noted by Michael Cronin (“Double Take”, 229).Accrding to the disciplinary perspective,translation is not an ahistorical activity that takes place in isolation, but is engendered by historical and political reasons. The result was that translations were no longer seen as “free-floating aesthetic artefacts generated by ahistorical figures in a timeless synchronicity of language but as works produced by historical figures in diachronic time” (Cronin, “Double Take”, 229). Translations and the role they have played in the making of a literature, and  the questions of what gets translated and does not get translated into a particular language, are seen to point to literary as well as socio-political aspects of that language community. Translations thus assume a significance that transcends the linguistic or cultural boundaries.

But how did translation leave its linguistic territory? In this lecture we attempt to understand the evolution of translation studies and its present position in the world.