Lost in Translation

Along with the concept of equivalence is the notion of loss and gain in translation. Implicit in most of translation theories is the assumption that something is lost when you carry across a text from one language into another. There is always the possibility of miscommunication in the act of communication that is translation; if the receiver goes slightly askew in the decoding, the chances are that the message will not be carried across correctly. Certain elements can be added or left out. In fact, Robert Frost’s famous definition of poetry is notable: “Poetry is what gets lost in translation”. The basis of Frost’s statement is  the concept of the creative originality of the poet who creates a work where the meaning lurks somewhere beneath the surface of words. The translator, it is assumed, cannot ever hope to capture the ‘meaning’ of the original SL which tends to fall through the gaps of the TL. Overenthusiastic translators can also inadvertently pad up the text by adding more to it than is necessary with the result that the translation might have more allusions in it than was originally thought of.

The problem of loss and gain is again due to the cultural dissimilarity between two linguistic groups. Something that is very common in a particular community might be rare in another. It is said that the language of the Eskimos has more than one hundred words to describe ‘snow’. These subtle distinctions they make between various types of snow cannot be brought out in a single Hindi word. The reverse is also applicable. For instance, the word ‘godhuli’ in Hindi cannot be translated with the help of a single English word. It needs to be explained as the ‘hour at which the cattle return home causing the dust to rise by their hooves’. There is of course the word ‘dusk’ but that becomes only an approximation; what is lost here is the suggestion of Indian village life where dusk is the holy time when cattle return home and lamps are lit. Here there is loss in translation.