Volume 10, Issue 1, 2016

The current paper explores the poetics and politics of ambivalent phenomenon of self-translation by the bilingual writers writing in Marathi and English in the light of semiotics of culture, a theoretical framework developed by the Tartu- Moscow School of cultural semiotics under the leadership of Yuri Lotman. The paper argues that while bilingualism and translation in broadest semiotic sense of the terms are intrinsic to any creative phenomenon and any communication according to Lotman, the Anglo-Bhasha self-translations of literary texts are distinctive historical products of the post-colonial ‘semiosphere’, hence caught up in the politics of identity, cultural asymmetry and cultural change. The Anglo-Bhasha bilingual writers situated on the boundary separating English and the Bhashas were critical agents in generating not only modernity but also providing ‘self-description’ of who we are culturally. They found themselves embodying this boundary within and without. In a sense, the act of self-translation is an act of what Lotman calls ‘auto-communication’ where though the addresser and the addressee of the communication is the same person; the act subtly transforms the personality of the subject. Self-translation as cultural phenomenon can be seen as involving not just bilingual individuals but the entire culture generating new information for itself, and restructuring its own personality. In the historical context of colonialism and its aftermath, this generation new information and restructuring of personality describes the phenomenon of modernity. As the bilingual writers were the upper caste elites generating ‘self-description’ of the semiosphere, this theorization may help us to understand how emergence of modernity and reformulation of identity in the nineteenth century was a form of self- translation not just by the individuals but by the entire culture. It was by no means derivative, but a creative one involving self-discovery and self reformulation by the culture in conversation with itself. The cultural semiotics perspective would shed further light on the creative or ‘incestuous’ processes of cultural change and modernity.
Keywords: Self-translation, postcolonialism, identity, modernity, cultural semiotics

An analogy between learned expertise and knowledge dissemination through translation is a pervasive and enduring feature of modern culture. The aim set to this paper is to replace the translation within the broader perspective of a macro-level dynamics, so as to exhibit its common relationships in Indian multilingualism scene. We start by recalling that translation does not seem in a vacuum, however, emerges in the long juggling affair at micro-level. Hence, the demand for translation must not be over-ruled. At the same time, translation contributes to the maintenance and development of linguistic diversity. Instinctively, this study makes a reticent attempt to tackle and observe how commonality of proverbial expressions can occur in the process of translation between Marathi and Odia. For this, we have randomly chosen a few proverbs to counter affinity on a think-aloud protocol. Finally, the results say that there is a tremendous amount of commonality between the languages and its culture.
Keywords: Proverb; Text-typology; Commonality, Equivalence; Word-for-word translation; Sense-for-sense translation; lingua-culture translation; parallel translation

Translation has been one of the instrumental factors in enriching the Nepali Polysystem from its inception. The translation of the Adhyatma Ramayana by Bhanu Bhakta Acharya helped to establish the literary culture in Nepali language. Since then Nepali literary culture has been borrowing various other genres, themes and aspects from English language. Regardless of these, translation has been looked down as a secondary process; hence the paper would explore the variegated translations from English into Nepali which has enriched the target culture. Therefore, the paper would provide the lists of translations which have been done in Nepali from English. The range of translation is limited to few genres: Poetry, Novels, Short Stories and Drama.
Keywords: Translation, Nepali Literature and History of Translation

In terms of the number of native speakers, Telugu (the official language of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana in the southern part of India) ranks third among Indian languages after Hindi and Bengali. This study of the literary trajectory of Telugu notes how translation was inscribed in the emergence of the Telugu language, created as it was out of a mixture of Sanskrit, tribal and Dravidian tongues. It examines the various stages of translation through which the Telugu language passed and the responses of its literary culture to translation not only from the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, but also from English canonical texts in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Keywords: Translation, Telugu literary history, canon formation, historical analysis, literary culture.

We address in this paper some theoretical and practical issues relating to generation, processing, and management of Parallel Translation Corpus (PTC) in Indian languages, which is under development in a consortium-mode project (ILCI-II)1 under the aegis of DeitY, Govt. of India. These issues are discussed here for the first time keeping in mind the ready application of PTC in various domains of linguistics including computational linguistics, Natural Language Processing, applied linguistics, lexicography, translation, language description, etc. In a normative manner, we define what is a PTC; describe the process of its construction; identify its features; exemplify the processes of text alignment in PTC; discuss the methods of text analysis; propose for restructuring of translational units; define the process of extraction of translational equivalents; propose for generation of bilingual lexical database and Term Bank from a structured PTC; and finally identify the areas where a PTC and information extracted from it may be utilized. Since construction of PTC in Indian languages is full of hurdles, we try to construct a roadmap with a focus on techniques and methodologies that may be applied for achieving the task. The issues are brought under focus to justify the present work that is trying to construct PTC for some Indian languages for future reference and application.
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Macaulay’s Education act of 1835 was contrived to create a section of Brown Sahibs to assist the British Empire born out of a culture in which Shakespeare was invincible. Since the foundation of the Calcutta Theatre in 1775, Bengal saw the rise of “bhadraloks” appreciating Shakespearean works and giving them their share of recognition. It further resulted into a creation of a number of indigenous texts which quite powerfully posited the Shakespearean texts into totally different socio-cultural contexts, at times remaining faithful to the plot while at times craftily diverting from it. One of such texts is Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s Bhranti Bilas (1869), which has a plot very close to that of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors and one might accurately consider it to be the first “translation” of Shakespeare into Bengali. Vidyasagar’s text finely deals with the plot keeping it almost the same but transforms its dramatic form into a story. Interestingly, this text is further adapted into a play in 1888 and into a commercial film in 1963 directed by Manu Sen.
The politics involved not only in the translation but also in the transformation of the genre has to be located within and beyond the two different literary texts and the film adaptation as well. This paper shall attempt to look into the factors that contributed into the celebration of such cross cultural and cross generic endeavours.
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The paper deals with a historical account of “Feminism in Malayalam literature”, a subject which has become highly relevant and was motivated to write after the aftermath of the “Nirbhaya case”, which has caught the attention not only in India, but the world over and has become still more relevant in the present context. A review of the literary studies and translation studies are discussed in this paper. Particularly when we discuss about Kamala Surayya/Kamala Das/Madhavikkutty`s works. In a limited paper like this, I had to bring in an overview of the situation of Feminism, the socio-cultural, historical accounts, apart from the literary aspects and also keeping the translation aspects to bear minimum.
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According to Venuti, symptomatic reading is a strategy in Translation Studies to understand how a translation consciously or unconsciously suppresses the ideological concerns in the source text. This method emerged as a reaction against the humanistic analysis of translation that dealt only with the semantic unity at the heart of the text to the point of exclusion of the ideological positions in the source text. Employing Venuti’s concept of symptomatic reading, this paper examines how Valson Thampu’s translation of Sarah Joseph’s Othappu turns out to be a violent rewriting of the source text.
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Translation has always embarked upon the task of conveying and communicating to a larger audience transcending the spatial and global dynamics of a particular language. My paper titled “Deciphering the “elite subaltern”: An Analysis of the Translated Life-Writings of Malayali Brahmin Women” explores the translated memoirs of Devaki Nilayamgode and Lalithambika Antherjanam. The proposed study intends to analyse the multiple linguistic and cultural nuances associated with the translation endeavour. It endeavours to examine the role of translation as a feminist empowerment tool in conveying the life histories of the women across culture.
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This paper looks at the performance of Mueller’s play Verkommenes Ufer, through the prism of its Hindi Translation to engage with the pertaining issues related to the field of theatre translation. It is interesting to go about the process of production of his play into Hindi within the context of current debates that are emerging in relation to the translation in the field of theatre. This is particularly relevant as the debates in the field of Theater Translation makes differentiation between the literary translation and the theatre translation on the pretext that a theatre translation is undertaken keeping in mind the hypothetical performance.
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Human communication is taken as an extension of self and culture. So does translation. Usually both are done through verbal medium – language; as it is comparatively easy to understand. But problem arises where the nonverbal or non-linguistic channels of communication are involved. The primary aim of this paper is to expand the notion of translation accommodating the nonverbal channels of communication not involving language in the traditional sense. Without diminishing the importance of spoken or written words I would like to contribute to a wider understanding of translation which would standout clearly in the background of translation in its totality. The paper will explore the communicative aspect in visual art with a special focus on the Warli tribal paintings. In the process it also seeks to link language to art and culture unfolding art as a creative communication.
Keywords: nonverbal, communication, language, art, painting

Each piece of translation is potential enough to convey the message of source text to its audience whether it is critical or creative. Translation transformed the lives of people in many nations. The history of translation declares that inscriptional inspirations to palm leaf practices, interpretations to interpretative communities, machine –human learning to soft talkie toddlers translation became an essential organ of human community. Historically speaking, the priorities and authorities catered labels of texts translations and translators. This paper focuses on the practicing translators and their specific needs.
Keywords: Translation, translator, role of translator, practical needs and essential steps

This paper will examine Vikram Seth’s, Three Chinese Poets and Beastly Tales From Here and There, two works of translation and analyze them as texts which enable us to redefine the idea of translation itself by reflecting on issues of translation and cosmopolitan aesthetics. These two texts show that when translation is undertaken by a creative writer the roles of a creative writer, translator and creator intertwine and produce interesting results. The primary focus will thus be to explore and enunciate the cosmopolitan and globalized aesthetics as reflected in the act of translation.
Keywords: Translation, Cosmopolitan Translation, Indian Writings In English.