Devidutta Das

Assistant Professor, BVRIT Hyderabad College of Engineering for Women, Hyderabad, India

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Abstract:

Translation is the process of transmission of message from one language to the other. The translated text conveys the intention of the original author without changing its meaning. In this regard the translated text might occupy a subordinate position. But is the translated text an ancillary text without any originality of its own?  Thayse Leal Lima in her article ‘Translation and World Literature’ opines that “translation of creative texts will always be a ‘re-creation’, or a parallel autonomous yet reciprocal creation.” This paper will discuss in what ways translation gives a renewed identity to the translated text with reference to Basanti, a unique Odia novel written by nine authors and translated to English by Dr. Himansu S. Mohapatra and Paul St. Pierre. Keeping Basanti in focus, this paper will also analyse how the translations of regional literature have moved away from the Eurocentric light and carved out a niche for themselves. Even though translation aims at a “transparent presentation” of the original text, the translated text holds a place of its own because of its reachability and bringing the esoteric customs and tradition of a regional group to the global stage.

Introduction

Translation is the act of converting a text from one language to the other without changing its meaning. It is the “transference of meaning, the exemplification of thoughts and emotions from a source language (SL) to a target language (TL)… a transition between two languages”^.  (Ganguly). Translation is a dynamic field which connects different cultures, languages, and people. As Jhumpa Lahari says “It is a movement between languages, cultures and ultimately meaning”. Translation has shrunk the world into a global village with the diffusion of literature across countries. In India, the translation landscape has been there since antiquity. M. Asaduddin in his paper ‘Translation and Indian Literature: Some Reflections’ presents Amitav Ghosh’s reflection on how translation of stories, in this case Panchatantra, has travelled from one country to the other and one language to the other. Asaduddin quotes Amitav Ghosh:

…the Panchatantra is reckoned by some to be second only to the Bible in the extent of its global diffusion. Compiled in India early in the first millennium, it passed into Arabic through a sixth century Persian translation…The stories were handed on to the Slavic languages through Greek, then from Hebrew to Latin, a version in the latter appearing in 1270. Through Latin they passed into German and Italian…

These above lines manifest how translation has been embedded in our cultural, social, and linguistic system since a very long time. Though translation has been present in all countries and languages, this paper studies translation through lens of a unique Odia novel Basanti and how translated novels have carved out a place for themselves in the literary world.

A unique novel

Basanti is a unique novel written by nine authors during the Sabuja Yuga of Odia literature. Sabuja in Odia means green in colour. It is akin to the age of Romanticism of the western world where the writer’s celebrated life, beauty and experimented with the literary forms. These writers were influenced by the western socio-political movements like Russian Revolution and feminism. They created a dream like world for the readers where women voiced their opinion, even fought for their own rights. The literary experimentation of collaborative writing had also gripped the writers’ attention in Bengal and Odisha. S. Deepika in her review of the book Basanti writes about this experimental nerve in the writers of Sabuja Age where “experimental enterprise of ‘collaborative writing’ caught the fancy of young writers from both Bengal and Odisha around this point of time in history. The period witnessed a string of collaborative novels like Baroyari (12 authors), Bhager Puja (16 authors) and Chatuskona (4 authors), which initiated a new artistic practice of collective imagining in Bangla literature”. The books written by writers of this age spoke of literary experimentation with focus on “hidden micro-difficulties faced by the other authors” (Anushmita Mohanty). Basanti, written by Annada Shankar Ray, Baishnab Charan Das, Harihar Mahapatra, Kalindi Charan Panigrahi, Muralidhar Mahanti, Prativa Devi, Sarala Devi, Sarat Chandra Mukherjee and Suprava Devi, was published as a book in 1931. It was published in a serialized form in Utkala Deepika from May 1924 to November 1926. The unique feature is that even though it is written by nine different authors (which can be referred to as ‘collective composition method’) the difference in the writing styles is hardly discernible. The styles merge into a seamless flow without any break in the tone of the story. This experimentation was a conscious influence of the Western thought and style hence we can find a certain kind of heroism present in the protagonist Basanti.

                Since, Basanti is a product of the Sabuja Age, it drifts away from the nationalistic fervour and dabbles with feministic approach. It breaks away from its precursors and engages in the emancipation of New Age Woman who stands up for her rights on the face of insurmountable problems. Mohapatra rightly mentions in the introduction of the book that “In Odia fictional literature Basanti is the first ever woman character to have boldly staked a claim to emancipation of women”.  This novel is a shining example of how Sabuja writers made it an important point to break the stereotype and portray a woman who is bold enough to break the orthodox shackles and emerge as a strong modern woman. Basanti is an embodiment of the ‘New Woman’ who can read and write, voices her opinion, marries for love, befriends a Christian girl and is advanced in her thinking. She is unapologetically independent. Life’s buffetings do not break her. Basanti comes across as a learned individual whose radical thoughts were strongly influenced by the books she reads. She champions for women’s education, plans to start a school and opposes the oppressive treatment meted out to her in law’s place. In the face of opposition, severe taunts, and discouragements she continues her reading and writing.

Basanti, a translation or transcreation

Transcreation is a combination of the word ‘translation’ and ‘creation’. It “describes the process in which content is adapted from one language to another while making sure that the intention, the original style and tone of a message are preserved. This can often only be achieved by tailoring the message to the cultural background of the target audience” (ehlion). Transcreation takes into account mastery over language, knowledge of cultural background and understanding the mood and wishes of the target audience. Translators, on the other hand, work very closely with the source text and aim at conveying the meaning. They necessarily do not attune the translated text according to the target audience.

In the pre-colonial Odisha, Sanskrit language dominated the scene. Odia literary figures like Sarala Das, Jagannath Das and Balaram Das ‘transcreated’ the Sanskrit canonical texts and made it available to the layman. At that time Sanskrit was an elite language, which was not easily accessible to the common man. These writers took liberty in changing the texts to situate it in the then socio-political scenario though the names of the characters and the important events of the plot were retained. Such ‘transcreated’ texts had a place of their own in the literary universe and they were not direct translations of the source texts instead they were heavily influenced by the source text.

The translated book Basanti can loosely fall into the brackets of the transcreation. The reason behind the affirmation is that like the texts which were transcreations this novel is ‘creative piece of writing.’ The novel was written in episodic form over a period of two years. The translators Mohapatra and Pierre have a done fine job in weaving the individual pieces into a book. This translation is seamless without any change of style or tone akin to that of the source text. It can very well claim a place of its own in the world of literature as it can enjoy a “literary status of its own.”

Break from the Euro-centric focus

 From the very beginning English translations of Indian texts were aimed at the Anglophonic audience. So, keeping in mind the expectations of the audience each and every word were translated to English. Over the years translations in India has retained the source words to make the translation closer to the source text. As Harish Trivedi, in one of his articles has put it that translation of a literary text became “a transaction not between two languages … but rather a more complex negotiation between two cultures”. Today, translation has moved away from the Eurocentric influence to become more culture inclusive. Tyagraj Thakur in his review of Basanti mentions about how the retention of the Odia words that it helps to “inflect the English writing with the cultural nuances of the Odia original.” The expressions like “Asadha,” “Bohu Saantani”, “Boula”, “Nuabou”, “in the month of Aswin”, “Sahitya Samaj” bring out the real essence of Odisha. The cultural negotiation between the target language and the source language is duly balanced by the translators. These techniques help the emergence of the novel as a strong literary piece which does not necessarily come under the overpowering tutelage of English.

Conclusion

Basanti was a hidden treasure unearthed by Mohapatra and St Pierre. This reiterates Jhumpa Lahiri’s claim that translation is “a wonderful, dynamic encounter between two languages, two texts, two writers. It entails a doubling, a renewal” (115). It keeps the ‘Odia’ness alive. Apart from its place in the translation studies, Basanti’s uniqueness lies in being one of the earliest novels to speak about women’s emancipation and rights in an era where these subjects were relegated to the background and not considered worthy enough to be debated upon. Basanti has opened up a discussion on the place of women in the 1930s and redirected attention towards the long forgotten “collaborative writing”.

References:

Asaduddin, Mohd. “Translation and Indian Literature: Some Reflections.” (2012).

Deepika, S. “A novel of thresholds”.HIMAL. May 22, 2019. https://www.himalmag.com/a-novel-of-thresholds-basanti-odiya-deepika-2019/

Ganguly, Sonali. (2020). “An Overview of Translation Practice in Odisha: From Transcreation to Translation”. transLogos Translation Studies Journal. 3/1. 46-69. 10.29228/transLogos.21.

Lima, Thayse Leal. (2017) “Translation and World Literature: The Perspective of the ‘Ex-Centric’”, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 26:3, 461-481, DOI: 10.1080/13569325.2017.1351335

Mohanty, Anushmita , https://map.sahapedia.org/search/article/The%20Political%20Role%20of%20Twentieth-Century%20Odia%20Literature/11372

Niranjana, Tejaswini. “Translation, Colonialism and Rise of English.” Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 25, no. 15, 1990, pp. 773–79. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4396163. Accessed 16 Mar. 2023.

Rendall, Steven. "The Translator’s Task, Walter Benjamin (Translation)." TTR, volume 10, number 2, 2e semestre 1997, p. 151–165. https://doi.org/10.7202/037302ar

Samantaray, Natabara, and Jatindra K. Nayak. “History of the Progressive Literary Movement in Odisha.” Indian Literature, vol. 59, no. 3 (287), 2015, pp. 166–76. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44478700. Accessed 16 Mar. 2023.

Thakur, Tyagraj. “Basanti’: A classic but experimental Odia novel from the 1920s is reinvented in English translation”. https://www.academia.edu/39499462/. Jun 08, 2019

https://iwp.uiowa.edu/91st/vol4-num1/translating-culture-vs-cultural-translation

https://sist.sathyabama.ac.in/sist_coursematerial/uploads/SHS5013.

https://ehlion.com/magazine/transcreation/