Translation Studies in India: A Brief Overview

Translation studies in India is an evolving discipline.  Historically, it was only in mid-nineteenth century that the translation became a significant intellectual issue in India when the question of ‘imagining a nation’ became problematic with the realization of multilingual and multiethnic nature of Indian society. While the idea of nation as a linguistic and cultural unit based on the Eurocentric model started appearing clearly inadequate, translation started to appear as an urgent cultural necessity for nationalistic, indologicial and orientalist projects. The earliest writings on translation in India emerged during this period of the rise of print capitalism and Vishnu Shastri Chiploonkar’s Nibandhmala in Marathi in 1874 can be seen as one of the earliest attempts to intellectually confront the issue of translation. 

 Practitioners and thinkers of this period like Romesh Chander Dutt, and Sri Aurobindo reflected on translation from nationalistic, indological and orientalistic perspectives. The source language, needless to say, was largely Sanskrit and the target language was very often English.

It was only in post- independence period, that the dissatisfaction with the nationalistic, indological and orientalist idea of culture and nation made Indian intellectuals to search for alternative models of theorizing and reflecting on nation and civilization. The questions of regional and linguistic identities became prominent during the processes of linguistic reorganization of states. The questions of caste and gender identities and the movements against discrimination and injustice started gaining ground. In such a context, the idea of nation as an elitist upper caste, upper class and patriarchal construct started being vigorously interrogated. The little magazine movements challenging the predominant formalist and idealist poetics also started questioning the political underpinnings of the established literary culture. It was against this politics of interrogation and revision that the questions of translation started being posed. The major practitioners and scholars of this period like AK Ramanujan, Dilip Chitre, Sujit Mukherjee among many others approach the questions of translation in the context of this shift from nationalist, orientalist elitist framework to more regional/ local and demotic outlook towards culture and nation. This shift is clearly noticeable in their choice of source languages and texts which are very often from the marginalized oral, folk and ‘native’ traditions or from bhashas instead of Sanskrit. Their reflections on translation also reveal these re-visionary attitudes.

However, most of the thinking about translation practiced by academics in this period not just in India was around the ‘problems’ of translation very often in a normative way and limiting itself to viewing translation as a process. Internationally, the shift from this normative, process-oriented and hierarchic view of translation to more descriptive, product-based, ideological and subversive view of translation emerged only with the rise of ‘translation studies’ as a discipline in the nineteen seventies.

The late nineteen eighties and nineties was an exciting period for the discipline of translation studies in India. Seminal writings like GN Devy, In Another Tongue: Essays on Indian English Literature (1993), Sujit Mukherjee’s Translation as Discovery and Other Essays on Indian Literature in English Translation (1994), Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context  (1995)  and invaluable anthologies like  Promod Talgeri, and Verma.  S.B.  eds. Literature in Translation from Cultural Transference to Metonymic Displacement (1988),   AK Singh ed. Translation: Its theory and Practice (1996) , Dingwaney,  Anuradha and Carol Maier.(eds.)  Between Languages and Cultures: Translation and Cross-Cultural Texts (1996)  S.Ramakrishna ed. Translation and Multilingualism.  PostColonial Contexts (1997), Tutun Mukherjee ed. Translation: From Periphery to Centrestage (1998) and Susan Bassnett and Trivedi eds. Post Colonial Translation: Theory and Practice. (1999) burst upon the scene. Most of these writing build upon the reflections and practice of translator-scholars like A. K. Ramanujan. These writings are not only informed by the ‘ cultural’ turn in translation studies but also draw heavily upon theorization of postcolonial studies, gender studies, Dalit studies and post structuralism.

With the twenty-first century, globalization permeated nook and corner of Indian society forcing people to seriously rethink the questions of nation, cultural identities, languages and civilization. The explosive growth of digital technology in form of the internet, cellphones and social media in the beginning of the twenty first century has altered the way people communicate and process information and knowledge. The economic reforms from the nineteen nineties of liberalization and privatization intertwined with the processes of globalization producing a new urbanized middle-class and a distinctive landscape dominated by multi-storied complexes, mega-malls and proliferation of multiple types of automobiles. The economic growth was not without its catastrophic implications. The rise of religious fanaticism, terrorism, alarming development of farmers committing suicide and environmental disasters accompanied by growing criminalization and corruption of public life raised new questions before Indian society. The politics of electoral democracy in the post-Mandal period when there was a reconfiguration of politics of caste and reservations has undergone substantial shift. The questions of very existence of Indian languages, marginal identities, ethnic minorities, and natural environment have become more acute than ever. At this juncture it will be fruitful to think of how translators and translation scholars engage with these new questions. It will be interesting to find out how translation studies scholars extensively and intensively deliberate upon the complex emergent issues like:

·         Translation in India and the Digital Revolution

·         Translation and the Fate of Indian Languages

·         Translation and the question of Literary Historiography of post-Independence Indian Literatures

·         Politics of Translation between the Bhashas

·         Teaching Translation Studies in Indian Universities

·         Poetics and Politics of Translation of translating marginal literary discourses like the Dalit literatures, the Adivasi literatures and LGBT writings into English and into Bhasha

·         Politics and Mechanics of Film and TV Adaptation and subtitling into Indian Languages

• Translation and Corpora Linguistics in India

Read More about Translation Studies Elsewhere on My Blog by clicking HERE
 Read my blog on using Semiotics of Culture as a Theoretical Framework for studying Indian literatures and cultures.

Inventing the Third Nation: A Brief History of Marathi Poetry of Past Hundred Years

Yesterday, I read my paper titled' Re-imagining the Nation in the Post Global Period:The Case of Post-Nineties Marathi Poetry' at the National Workshop on Literary Historiography organized by the UGC-DRS-I SAP Program and the Department of English, Faculty of Arts, The MS University of Baroda. 

I began my talk by commenting on how academia and intellectuals of this country are obsessed with the desire for mourning for 'dying languages' and cultures and are blind to new languages and cultures being BORN everywhere around them. My talk was about these 'birth' of new languages and cultures. The English which I was using in the seminar hall, I said, was a newly born language and not the older one by the same name which was born on the British isles one thousand years ago. The birth of new languages, like the language of Manya Joshi or Sanjeev Khandekar, is the focus of my talk, I said.

Using Benedict Anderson's theorization of nation as an imagined political community, I looked at how the nationhood was constructed in the Marathi poetry of the twentieth and the twenty first century.

I talked about how the invention of modern nation was possible in India in the nineteenth century due to colonial modernity , especially the rise of print-capitalism and colonial education system. This nation, as we know, was an orientalist construct which was elitist, upper caste,Brahminical, and masculine. It was based on the view of culture which was High Textual. This paradigm was radically questioned from within by Jyotiba Phule (1827-1890) and Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948) in their distinctive ways. The impact of the print capitalism and the western education on Marathi language gave birth to new kind of Marathi which did not exist earlier. The birth of a new nation was actually a birth of a new language.

Marathi poetry of this period, as characterized by the poetry of Keshavsuta (1866-1905)and Balakavi (1890-1918)is reformist, idealist, and influenced by the Anglo American romanticism. The exception to this paradigm was the poetry of Bahinabai Chaoudhary (1807-1882), an illiterate genius whose brilliant works were unavailable to the 'community' as they were orally composed, and hence outside of the print-capitalism of literary culture of the time. 

The second discontinuity in imagining nation was after independence. This 'post-colonial nation' was a critique of the colonial nation. The attempts were made to democratize and open up the colonial nation. This was a 'demotic' re-imagining of the colonial nation which attempted to democratize both modernity and literary culture. The efforts to democratize modernity and literary culture resulted in the rise of 'little magazine movements'. These vision of culture and modernity which these magazines embodied was democratic, pluralist and anti-establishment. 

The avant-garde poetry of B.S. Mardhekar (1909-1956)is situated at the cusp of these two imaginings of nations and heralds a paradigm shift in Marathi poetry. His poems express despair resulting from World War II, growing industrialization, urbanization and erosion of traditional values. They mark a departure from the earlier practice of poetry and opens up possibilities for expression which did not exist earlier. Mardhekar’s attempt to integrate the non-conformist aspects of Bhakti poetics and native traditions with international modernist aesthetics is a significant characteristic of the post-colonial cultural tendencies. From 1955 to 1975, poetry which expressed this dissenting vision of life, culture and nationhood pervaded the little magazines. (Right: Pic of Maradhekar)

The ‘little magazines’ like ‘Shabda’, ‘Vacha’, and ‘Asmitadarsha’ had a distinct anti-Establishment outlook. Complex, experimental and challenging poetry of Arun Kolatkar (1932-2004), Dilip Chitre (1938-2009), Vasant Dahake (1942- ) and Namdeo Dhasal (1949- ) emerged from the movement. Their works bear a distinct influence of the international modernist and postmodernist poetry. The Dalit poetry or ‘the poetry of the oppressed’, influenced by the radically reformist philosophy of Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (1891-1956) and Jyotiba Phule (1827-1890), exploded on the scene in the same period. The poets like Dhasal straddled both avant-garde and the Dalit poetics. Feminism also started making its presence felt in this period. Malika Amar Sheikh (1957- ) writes vigorous poetry which combines feminism with other dissenting political ideologies. In the eighties, the tribal poets like Bhujang Meshram (1958-2007) started writing poetry which combined their quest for tribal identity with protest against the exploitative social system and the poets like Arun Kale (1952-2008) continued the tradition of Dalit poetry.

This alternative way of imagining a nation was also an alternative way of using language and so the language of post-colonial Marathi poetry was more inclusive, demotic and radical. This birth of new languages and new languages of literature is correlated to the birth of the new idea of nation.

The third shift in the way we imagine ourselves, I argued, takes place in the nineties, largely due to economic reforms, globalization and revolution in media. While the colonial nation was constructed by introduction of print-capitalism, national imagination today is shaped by satellite television ( news, soaps and reality shows), the Internet, cell phone revolution and the overwhelming power of market. The context of post-cold war geopolitics is a significant context to this construction of nation.

This new construction of nation can be theoretically analyzed in multiple ways. For instance, one can fruitfully combine Anderson’s theorization of nation as an imagined community with Howard Rheingold’s theorization of ‘virtual communities’ ( 1991/2000).A virtual community is a social network of individuals who interact through specific media, potentially crossing geographical and political boundaries in order to pursue mutual interests or goals. One of the most pervasive types of virtual community includes social networking services, which consist of various online communities. Following Toffler, one can also think of this new imagining of nation as the ‘Third Wave’ nation.

Following Raymond Williams (1977), I think we can in the year 2011 also think of the first construction of the nation as ‘archaic’, the post-colonial nation as ‘residual’ and the third post-nineties ‘nation’ as `emergent’. The critique of this 'global nation' ( an oxymoron)is only possible on globalized platforms. This contradiction- that globalization can be critiqued only on globalized platform-is the crucial aspect of globalization.

Marathi poetry of this period reflects this emergent nation in multiple ways. Poetic idiom was transformed in the nineties due to the social and cultural crises caused by these processes of globalization, technological revolution, and economic reforms. New little magazines like ‘Shabadvedh’ (1989-2009), ‘Abhidhanantar’ (1992-2009) played an important role by providing a platform for new voices to emerge.

Saleel Wagh’s satirical poetry mocking at the globalized urban culture and corporate world, Manya Joshi’s effort to convert the chaos of contemporary metropolitan culture into cacophonic music, Hemant Divate’s asphyxiation of living in a sham urban upper middle class, Sanjeev Khandekar’s prosaic caricature of disfigured human self in the world transformed by scientific-technological forces and the forces of global capitalism can be considered as a few representative poets of this period. The Dalit poetry of Arun Kale and Mahendra Bhavre rethink the Dalit politics and poetics in the context of the globalized world. The works of these poets also appear mostly in the new little magazines of this period. 

These poets I argued are inventing the language of Marathi poetry because the new Marathis are being born outside the academic world which is simply engaged in mourning the death of Marathi.

The discussions that followed my presentations were equally interesting. Deeptha asked me if the events like Babri Mosque demolition can be understood within this new idea of nation. I replied that the communalism of the late eighties and the nineties was not the same as the communalism of partition era. Even the  Naxal movement of the nineties and first decade of the twenty first century are not same. The altered context is what I was emphasizing. The altered context, I could not respond due to the lack of time, was the rise of 'new capitalism' of the nineties. There were questions about 'heterogeneous times', about multiple time frames inside globalization. I responded by drawing the attention to Raymond Williams' terms I mentioned in the talk. He talks about how the archaic, the residual and the emergent exist simultaneously in a single moment.

WORKS I CITED IN MY TALK:

Anderson, Benedict R. O'G. (1991). Imagined communities: reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Revised and extended. ed.). London: Verso. pp. 224.

Rheingold, H. (2000). The Virtual Community: Homesteading on the Electronic Frontier. London: MIT Press.

Toffler, Alvin. The Third Wave. Bantam Books, 1981

Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977, pp 121-6 

The Challenge called Dilip Chitre

This morning I received the sad news from Hemant that Dilip Dada is no more. With passing away of Dilip Chitre (1938-2009), an era of  Marathi poetry and literature comes to an end. He was one of the greatest poets in Marathi and one of the best Indian poets. He was a fantastic translator, critic and fiction writer. He was always a brave rebel, an immensely creative personality and uncompromising critical intelligence. He kickstarted the `Little Magazine Movement' in Maharashtra with his little magazine`Shabda' in the mid fifties. He remained a great influence and inspiration for hundreds of younger poets like me. He did so many blurbs for young unknown poets like me in Marathi. He was always `dada' an elder brother, and never a father figure. He never imposed himself or his ideas on people. His greatness lay in his attitude in treating everyone as equal. It was this spirit that permeates and pervades his work as an artist.

My encounters with Dilip Chitre have always been exciting and provocative. It was always an illuminating experience to listen to his long speeches full of very original insights. I met him for the first time during  Abhidhanantar's decennial celebration where he read his poetry. I consulted him for his advice on publication of my first Marathi collection. He recommended the name of  Hemant Divate.  I met Chitre again in May 2003 and had a long session on Marathi historiography with him. His critical inputs while making of the Live Update Anthology were precious. He liked my selection of poems and was critical about many things.

One day in 2004,  he called me up and had a long telephonic conversation with me.I remember his remarks about his possible death during that conversation. I said we need people like you to be with us. He said, and very typically, that we need Shakespeare and Tukaram too but then it is not in our hands. He liked my translations and poetry, he said and I should not harbour self doubts. He said, with his tongue very much in his cheek, that we, Maharashtrians in general and particularly me should remember Shivaji and shed feelings of  inferiority. He remarked that my strength was that I worked with four languages: Marathi, English, Hindi and Gujarati. He also said that Ashwini's poems are better than mine. In one of my later visits, he gave me a profound insight regarding poetry and modernity: modernity and creativity lies in the spaces between words of your phrase. It is in this turn of phrase, he said, that contemporary creativity lies.

I also had the honour of working with him on New Quest and it was again a very interesting phase. We had our differences and he probably saw me as an obstinate animal  with inferiority complex, but he was always sympathetic and warm and treated me at par with himself. He loved Amogh and thought may be Amogh would be able to show way to his poor wayward father.

When the fatal cancer was detected some time back, Chitre fought back bravely and we thought for the moment that he would survive it as he has survived some of the most difficult times. We knew he was a fierce fighter. He was forever young in spirit. The way he took to the latest technology is simply amazing. When people of his age, felt that cellphone was a gadget from a different planet, used only by aliens, he networked energetically on the social networking sites like Orkut and Facebook. He had 1118 friends on Facebook at the age of 71, which would give a 17 year old net newbie all sorts of complexes.

The most difficult period for me, was when he lost his son and I did not know what to say and how to speak to him. It was one of the most shocking things for us and I felt me and Ashwini were too young to `console' someone like Chitre's who were not only very elder to us but also were people we looked up to.His wife, Viju tai is, for me an equally admirable woman; very warm and loving and very supportive.She stood by Dilip in most difficult of times and he always treated her as his equal.  I pray to god to give her strength to bear this great loss.

He once compared death with sharpshooter who claimed his close friend Arun Kolatkar, his son and people close to him in quick succession. The Sharpshooter has claimed Chitre too. His poetry in English and Marathi since its very beginning, reflect an obsessive preoccupation with images death and self-mutilation, making it dark and disturbing. The Sharp Shooter has put an end to this agony at last.

I think Dilip dada's one of the most important contribution to Marathi poetry and even the Indian poetry is his remarkable invention of `indigenous modernity' , which is simultaneously cosmopolitan and rooted, profoundly democratic and uncompromisingly artistic, deeply influenced by greatest international poetry and singularly situated in the democratic and pluralistic indigenous tradition of bhasha poetry. He saw that what unites powerful poetry of the post-Eliotian American poetry like the Beat Generation and Confessional poets with the extremely different , but equally powerful tradition of the Bhakti poetry as exemplified in Tukaram, was a certain existential -spiritual self-awareness, which is neither completely western nor completely peculiar to Marathi. What he says about ` Sahitya ani Atmabhaan', or ` Literature and Self Awareness' in the book by the same name in Marathi is perhaps best guide to his practice. His critical outlook, likewise, embodied these values.He could perceive the seamless interconnection between the deeply progressive and pluralist dimension of his tradition with the universal human dimension of the international and western modernity. Hence his poetry will be something of an outsider to people brought up only on the westernized aesthetics or only on the native ones.

Like Tukaram and probably Ginsberg , he made no distinction between living and writing. When we enter his poetry, we have to pick up the challenge of facing the man, his life and his agonies. We who cant even face our own darkness will find it difficult to face the looming personality of the man himself staring at you from his words. His poetry, hence, will never be populist or popular as it offers no false respite and reassurances. His poetry is not peppered with humour to people who want to have a bit of fun. His poetry is dark, serious and unbearable and in order to read Chitre, you have to read him on his own terms and not according to your demands. He is not a `demand-supply' man. It is this challenging non-conformity which makes his poetry not becoming people's favourite.

Chitre was never a conformist in life. He never gave into the Brahminical middle class mindset that pervaded Marathi poetry and certain right-winged attitudes to Indian culture. His earliest short story, ` Kesaal KaleBhore Pillu' ( A Dark Hairy Pup) dealing with clandestine sexual relation between a servant and his mistress,  enraged the well-known Marathi writer Atre so much that he publicly declared his desire to flog Chitre. When  the American scholar James Laine acknowledged him in his controversial book on Shivaji, the Government decided much to Chitre's anger to offer him `police protection'. He vocally protested against the vandalization of the Bhandarkar Institute, communal riots in Gujarat and all forms of  bigotry everywhere. His vision of culture admitted no such narrow and intolerant actions.

They don't make people like him these days. Dilip Chitre is no more physically with us and to say that he will be with us in form of his ` akshar deha'- `the body of letters', would be a cliche. However, Dilip Dada will live  not in the books but in the words and in the language of later poets. His presence will be felt even more acutely now. He was a challenge when he was alive, he now becomes an unsurmountable challenge. I will always miss his deep voice, typical Puneri cap,his cigar, his pungent sarcasm, and razor sharp critical vision. I will miss his warmth and love. As Harold Bloom points out that the poet becomes all the more alive once he dies. Once he dies it is impossible to kill him. Now they wont be able to kill him. Now nothing can kill him.

Four Generations of Chitres: Dilip's father PA Chitre, a noted Marathi editor, Aashay Chitre, Dilip's son with his son Yogul and Dilip Chitre.

War Veterens and the Epehebes

Dilip Chitre, the grand old man of Indian Poetry, is bringing out a big fat collection of poems in English on Friday. The collection is awesome and superbly brought out by Poetrywala. After Arun Kolatkar's mind blowing Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpa Satra, Chitre's 'As Is, Where Is' is a landmark work in Indian Poetry in English. Chitre has brought out three collections of his 'collected works' running into more than seven hundred pages, he has also translated hundreds of pages from Marathi and has translated some seminal poets from all over the world into Marathi. I wonder if our generation will ever be able to reach this quantity and quality. It not only requires total dedication to art, but also immense passion and fire in the soul. This fire and passion and this dedication is missing in our generation. We also lack wide ranging scholarship that these people possess. Most of my contemporaries are myopic and their understanding of literature is very crude and gross. Their scholarship is zero. These War Veterans and their works are Himalayan obstacles and it will be an Herculean ordeal for our poetic strength to cross these ranges. I am going to Mumbai, the day after tomorrow for the book release function and hoping to meet my dear friends. Do I have enough RDX in my soul to better and on a bigger scale then these people? Time alone will tell. The small bulk of poetry I have written is a product of extremely intense, dark and passionate moments of my life. It is, I believe, like those moments which produced it. What is the place of my poetry in Marathi literary tradition? What is its place in the International arena of poetry? I wish I knew. Till then, dig dig deeper into my soul, my grave digger, and talk to the skull of Yorick you find......

Reading About Arun Kolatkar

Read Dilip Chitre's blog on remembering his friend Arun Kolatkar. Memoirs of Dilip Chitre would be a fascinating idea and I wait eagerly for newer entries on these blogs. Chitre and Kolatkar together defined their generation and had an immense impact on later Marathi poetry. However, we dont know much about their lives and so Chitre on Kolatkar promises excitement. Kolatkar died a year ago on this very day.