“Translation and literary history an indian view- - ganesh devy
1. “Translation and Literary History:
An Indian View"
- Ganesh Devy
From: Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (Eds.)
Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi
Comparative Literature & Translation Studies
4. ● Ganesh Devi is one who is looking for Indian languages.
● Namvar Singh
● Kapil Kapoor
● A. K. Singh
5. ● This article is about the importance of translation in transmitting
literary movements across linguistic borders.
● In this article Ganesh Devi begins with Christian metaphysics and
ends with the Indian metaphysics.
● Various acts of translation include the origins of literary movements
and literary traditions. Translations are widely regarded as
unoriginal, and the aesthetics of translation have received little
attention.
7. ● According to J. Hillis Miller ‘ Translation is the wandering
existence of a text in a perpetual exile’.
● Christian myth of the Fall, exile and wandering.
● Christian Myth : Post- Babel crisis
● In Western metaphysics translation is an exile, a fall from the
origin; and the mythical exile is a metaphoric translation, a post-
Babel crisis.
● No critic has taken any well-defined position about the exact
placement of translations in literary history.
9. ● Roman Jakobson in his essay on the linguistics of translation
proposed a threefold classification of translations:
(a) those from one verbal order to another verbal order within the same
language system
(a) those from one language system to another language system, and
(a) those from a verbal order to another system of signs
(Jakobson,1959, pp. 232– 9).
❖ Roman Jakobson..…
10. ● In A Linguistic Theory of Translation, J.C.Catford gives a
comprehensive declaration of theoretical formulation regarding the
linguistics of translation, in which he attempts to distinguish several
linguistic levels of translation.
● Because translation is a linguistic act, any theory of translation must
originate from linguistics, according to his main premise: 'Translation
is a linguistic operation: the process of replacing a text in one
language for a text in another; hence, any theory of translation must
rest on a theory of language - a general linguistic theory.'
❖ J.C.Catford…
12. ● Various domains of humanistic knowledge were divided into three
categories in Europe during the nineteenth century:
1. Comparative studies for Europe,
2. Orientalism for the Orient,
3. Anthropology for the rest of the world
● Following Sir William Jones' 'discovery' of Sanskrit, historical
linguistics in Europe became increasingly reliant on Orientalism.
13. ❖ The Problems in Translation Study
● The translation problem is not just a linguistic problem. It is an
aesthetic and ideological problem with an important bearing on the
question of literary history.
● Literary translation is not just a replication of a text in another verbal
system of signs. It is a replication of an ordered sub-system of signs
within a given language in another corresponding ordered sub-system
of signs within a related language.
15. ● Comparative literature means that there are regions of significance that are
shared across two related languages, as well as areas of significance that can
never be shared.
● When the soul passes from one body to another, it does not lose any of its
essential significance. Indian philosophies of the relationship between form
and essence, structure and significance are guided by this metaphysics.
● The true test is the writer’s capacity to transform, to translate, to restate, to
revitalize the original. And in that sense Indian literary traditions are
essentially traditions of translation.
17. ● Catford, J. C. A Linguistic Theory of Translation: An Essay in Applied
Linguistics. Oxford University Press, 1965.
● Devy, G. N. “Literary History and Translation: An Indian View.” Traduction
Et Post-Colonialisme En Inde — Translation and Postcolonialism: India, vol.
42, no. 2, 2002, pp. 395–406., https://doi.org/10.7202/002560
● Jakobson, Roman. "On Linguistic Aspects of Translation". On Translation,
edited by Reuben Arthur Brower, Cambridge, MA and London, England:
Harvard University Press, 2013, pp. 232-239.
https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674731615.c1
