As a practicing
poet, critic and translator, I feel that though these are distinct activities,
all of them have elements of creativity, critical thinking and intercultural
aspects common to them. These elements of course vary in proportion. Creative
writing involves critical labour, as Eliot pointed out. Critical writings involve
creativity of reading and creativity of presentation. Both these activities
have intercultural dimensions. Translation involves a high degree of
creativity, critical sense and intercultural awareness, probably more than the
other two activities. However, this does not mean that they are indistinct or
homogenous activities. I think of them, in Wittgensteinian way, as being
different ‘language games’ with only a faint ‘family resemblance’ to one
another.
As a translator
of Gujarati literature, I have translated short stories of noted writers like
Nazir Mansuri and Mona Patrawalla and poetry of Narsinh Mehta apart from the
contemporary poets like Mangal Rathod, Rajesh Pandya, Rajendra Patel and Jaidev
Shukla. I have translated a good amount of contemporary Marathi poetry.
However, my
experience of translating critical prose is fairly limited. Thanks to persuasion
of Prof Rakesh Desai, I translated two articles on Narmad by Bhagwatikumar
Sharma and Gulabdas Broker. I have also translated an essay by Ashok Vajpai
into Marathi titled ‘Kavita Main Kya Hota hai’. In short I have some experience
of translating both the kinds of texts: creative and critical texts.
Whether
translation of critical prose differs substantially from creative writing
ultimately depends upon whether you conceive of critical writing as being
distinct from creative one. What I have to say here is in no way new or
original. In fact, for many who are not conversant with the implications of
literary theories, what I say may sound obvious. However, the postmodern theory
has radically questioned what we have taken for granted or taken for obvious
and hence, I have framed this discussion around the theoretically assumptions
of poststructuralist theory.
In the present
paper, I argue that the abstract postmodernist and poststructuralist theories
of literature which seek to erase the distinction between the literary and the
non-literary or critical are of little use to me as a translator working with
concrete texts. It is ironical how often the poststructuralist theoreticians
who celebrate contradiction and difference are only too willing to erase the
distinction between the artistic and the non-artistic. This impulse probably
owes something to the postmodern condition which has played a crucial role in
establishment of poststructuralist theory.
The formalist
view of literary text as self-referential and autonomous, and the
poststructuralist view texts as essentially intertextual seem theoretically
irreconcilable. One is left in a theoretical aporia as the literary text seems to be paradoxically both: a self referential and autonomous
order, AND an intextual entity.
However, I
believe that this paradoxical and self-contradictory nature of the literary
texts sets it apart from the non-literary
ones. This means though the literary
texts are intertextual, they are primarily self-referential and
self-sufficient. They are primarily about themselves. On the other hand
critical texts are primarily about other texts. This is other way of saying what
is traditionally believed of the difference between literature and criticism:
literature is ‘autotelic’ and autonomous, criticism is parasitic, depending on
literary texts for sustenance.
However, though
the distinction is theoretically a contentious one, it is still a useful one
empirically. At least, in the context of
the texts I have translated.
Consider, for
instance a passage from Mona Patrawalla short story ‘The Clasps’:
It was not yet midnight; even then the village was
dead silent. In the dark and cold Margshirsh
night, the village stood as if, frozen, amid the dense sag, mahuda and bamboo forest. On the
Valsad-Billimora highway, trucks laden with timber stolen from the outskirts of
the village droned occasionally, honking and quaking the whole village. After
they were gone and there was the immense silence again. Plains surrounded the
village and then the Sahyadri valleys and mountains enfolded it. These hills seemed to embrace the village
full of small mud huts with their roofs of paddy straw. Bamboo groves
surrounded the entire village as if they were ubiquitous bhungara cacti. It was a large village. Soon after nightfall, the
village guards would light and hang up the lanterns on the poles. Then the
whole village fell silent. If one had not
seen the lanterns hanging or bells ringing behind the chippa carts bound to the hatwada,
he would be terrified to death at the sight of lone lantern approaching in the
night. Besides, there was the crematory near the river Kavery behind the
village. Many people lost their lives by drowning in the depths of this river.
So the horror of ghosts, spirits or chudels
would make the villagers peer into the darkness. The needle of suspicion, however, would all
the time point towards Kanta, the witch.
In spite of
intertextual allusions to things like Margashirsh and stories of ghosts, the
passage is designed to create a self sufficient world in which the narrative
occurs. The primary purpose of such a passage is to evoke an aesthetic response
to a sinister and dark world of Kanta.
On the other
hand consider a critical text on Narmad by Bhagwatikumar Sharma:
The disposition for social reformation and for
combating social evils of the age was so deeply ingrained and powerful in the
poet Narmad that he could not remain content with literary compositions, essays
and lectures. Hence it was inevitable that he would enter the field of
journalism. In fact, it would have been surprising had Narmad not turned out to
be a journalist.
The germs of journalistic temperament are extensively
found in Narmad’s nature, in his activities and in his prose style. He was by
nature a person of ‘Josso’- the irrepressible spirit. He was by innate nature
given to opposing social evils and to promoting social reforms. He was often
impulsive, impatient, decisive and completely unafraid. These are considered to
be essential qualifications of a true journalist and so these traits molded the
journalist in him.
Though there is
a narrative side to this discourse, the intention is not to create a seemingly
autonomous world as can been found in the earlier discourse.
Even when there
is quaint sort of archaic rhetoric in Gulabdas Broker’s essay ‘Narmad: The
Renaissance Man’, the rhetoric is not exactly ‘poetic’:
Narmad was undoubtedly a poet. He might not have
polished much of his writing, but even then he was a poet. There wasn’t much
possibility of doing so in those times. Though many of his poems are definitely
uncouth, there can be no denying the fact that he was a poet.
He was a dauntless man- though he may have been
conceited at times, and often he might have fought the battles which were not
his, yet one cannot deny the fact that whenever time came to fight, he was not
the one to run away.
Though he might not be much of a scholar in the true
sense of the word, but he was unquestionably a complete connoisseur of
knowledge. As he was working with scarce resources of his times, it was
difficult to do sound scholarly work in the up-coming field of literary
studies. Yet whatever work that he did,
like preparing the dictionary, writing about prosody, studying the folklore, researching the old poetry,
reflecting upon history and so on, it was not possible to do these things
without deep interest, passion and understanding of these subjects.
One notices that
the literary and the critical are two distinctive discourses, differing in the
form, content and function from each other and can be marked by distinct
rhetorical strategies. The translator has to be aware of the distinct nature of
rhetoricity of two kinds of discourses. The literary texts are far more
artistically complex and self-sufficient than the critical ones. In Jakobson’s
terminology (1960), the critical discourses privilege the ‘referential
function’ of language while the poetic use of language focuses on ‘the message
for its own sake’.
Having said this
let me add that there are many kinds of creative texts and there are many kinds
of critical texts and translator has to be aware of these differences within
the categories. There is no need to point out that translating a Ulysses or Finnegan’s’ Wake is more difficult than translating Jane Austen or
Thomas Hardy, or that translating Harold Bloom or Jacques Derrida would be
obviously more difficult than translating Gulabdas Broker or Bhagwatikumar
Sharma. The strategies and devices of the translator also vary from text to
text.
My personal
belief is that the translators of literary texts have to be creative writers in
the first place. Though this may sound dogmatic, very often, the translator who
has no experience of creative writing has no idea why and how literary devices
are employed and what is the significance of those devices. The non-literary
translator may not need to know how symbolism, archetypal patterns, or
metaphors function in poetry or how narrative techniques of flashback or foreshadowing function in fictional work or
what is the significance of such devices in the totality of the literary text.
However, such a knowledge is prerequisite for the literary translators. Hence,
one can expect a bilingual short story writer to translate short story more
effectively than the translator who has no experience in writing short stories.
One can expect a bilingual poet to be a better translator of poetry than a
person who has no experience of writing poetry.
This means a
literary translator ought to have literary competence, that is, not just the
knowledge of literary devices, their function and significance in the totality
of a text but also the knowledge of how
to use them in an appropriate ways. After all, he is writing a new short
story, novel or a poem. It implies that the literary translator ought to be
much more than a critic.
The theoretical
question whether the literary and the non-literary discourses and consequently
the literary and the non-literary translation are essentially different can be
conceived of in a Wittgensteinian way. The literary and the critical discourses
may not be ‘essentially’ different from each other, but are two different
‘language games’. The similarity within the categories of the literary and the
non-literary can be explained in the terms of ‘family resemblances’
(Wittgenstein, 1958:31) rather than essences.
If literary and
non-literary translations are two different language games, it means that there
is an element of dexterity and skill involved in playing those games and some
players are more skilled than others.
REFERENCES
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical
Investigation. Trans. GEM Anscombe, 2nd ed, Oxford
Roman Jakobson Closing statements:
Linguistics and Poetics, Style in language, T.A. Sebeok, New-York, 1960.
T.A. Sebeok. Style in language, New-York, 1960.
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