Creativity In Translation

Preeti Barua

We must all recognize translation as a central literary activity. In the process of ferrying literary texts across cultural and linguistic barriers, translation widens the scope of our literary appreciation. Everyone has an innate desire to be free from the shackles of time and space. The human mind is always eager to embark on an outward journey, It wants to travel far and wide, though hills and deserts in order to know the universe and meet kindred minds. This desire is nothing but an attempt to break loose from all kinds of bonds.

In real life, sadly enough, it is not easy to experience such freedom. Does it mean that the majority of men and women have no means of coming into contact with the outside world, of being in communion with the other? They have fortunately found out that, books provide a way out of this predicament : They have discovered the joy of reading books. For a good reader, spacial, temporal, personal barriers do not exist. By traveling through books, he sees the beauty and variety of the world, comes into contact with myriad minds, and discovers the inexhaustible wealth of the human heart.

India is a vast land of great variety. Approach to and philosophy of life change from one area to other. It is our age old tradition that keeps all Indians together. Languages and religious practices may differ, but there is one common unifying thread binding all of us together. Though Indian literature is produced in difference languages, it is one liteature written for all of our. The reading of ancient Scriptures has changed the mindset of many of us. Similarly, through translation, modern Indian literature has touched and shaped the minds of millions of readers. It is well-nigh impossible to learn all the Indian languages, but translation has to a large extent removed this obstacle. Indian ideas have spread all over the globe via English and other foreign languages. So it is no longer possible, in the Indian context at least, to look down upon translation as a marginal literary activity.

Sahitya Akademi, National Book trust and many other organizations have come up with a number of grand translation projects. The translation of "Narayana Pendse's Rathachakra"., a unique and unusual work, is a part of this exercise. Inspired by the modern sensibility, a number of Marathi novelists have come out of the middle-class milieu in order to depict the life of the down trodden sections and, in the process, they have brought the reader face to face with realities of human agony and suffering. The pitiable condition of the rural women is one of the pet themes. The protagonist of Rathachakra is such a woman coming from the rual Konkan area of Maharashtra. Coming as she does from a once-rich class of the locality, she is now facing all the hazards of a poverty-stricken life, caused primarily by her escapist husband who left the house as a sanyasi, imspoing the burden of raising their four childeren on her. Pitched in an unequal battle against providence and poverty, this youngest daughter-in-law of the family suffers, but harbours the ambition of raising her two sons into great men. With this aim in view, she goes on fighting aginst the heaviest of odds, finally taking the bold step of leaving her husband's place. The story goes on to depict the excellent academic performance of one of the sons inspite of the odds, the disinterest shown by his relatives in this achievement - the writer is successful in presenting a graphic account of this phase in the herioine's life with all its anguish and suffering. No body, not even her own son, is prepared to acknowledge the mother's sacrifices and courage. Everyone thinks that the turn around in their fortunes is brought about by the sanyasi father. She feels that she has fulfilled her duty as a mother and loses the urge for living, even attempting suicide. Within this narrative content - described in broad outline here - Pendse is able to depict the typical Indian image of a woman. Significantly enough, the protagonist of the novel does not even bear a proper name; she is moe a type than an individual. Pendse's work impressses on us the need for the reassessment of the Indian family values, and in his artistic vision, the pain and suffering associated with Konkani life leads to an acute awareness of the pitiable condition of millions of women across the country.

Translation is both an art and a craft; It fosters critical and creative thinking during the process of re-creating works from one language into another. Tanslators need to learn how to reconstruct through the process of interpretation, the complex interactions inherent in a literary text, giving form to their interpretations of a text in the new language. Further, scholarship is a prerequisite for literary translation, for the translator must be thoroughly familiar with the language in question. Sometimes, literary translation provides new knowledge of a different culture and especially of one aspect of that culture - its literature - to the target audience. The translator also needs a creative and flexible methodology. the literary translator needs to make decisions of the same nature as those of any creative writer; lexical, syantctic, grammatical and stylistic choices.

The end result of such translation would surely be a creative process by itself.