|
|
Translation and the Construction of Identity: Abstracts
Date: 12-14 August 2004
Venue: Sookmyung Women's University, Seoul, Korea
Harish Trivedi
I seek to argue in this paper that the ways in which identity is (trans)formed
through translation themselves undergo a disabling transformation in a
postcolonial situation, and that the construction of linguistic and cultural
identity is, therefore, a radically different process in a postcolonial society.
Traditionally, among autonomous nations, translation has constituted an
enriching mode of reception, tolerance and pluralism but, in a colonial
situation, it becomes an instrument of unequal power-play and of forcible
super-imposition, which then go far beyond the acceptable parameters of fertile
cross-cultural hybridity such as translation is known to facilitate.
Plenary Session
The Culture of Translation and Postcolonial Identity
University of Delhi, India
I propose to substantiate this argument through focusing on three widely
disjunct and contrastive phases in the history of the activity of translation in
India. In the precolonial phase, up to about 1600 A.D., a stage of mutually
assimilative and accommodative gradation existed between the various indigenous
Indian languages which virtually obviated the necessity for explicit
translation. In the colonial phase, there emerged, in contrast, a resistant
contestatory situation involving an indigenous master-language (Sanskrit)
vis-a-vis the colonial master-language (English) as alternative source language
for translation. And in the postcolonial phase, we have witnessed a permeation
of Indian languages by English through a process of indirect and insidious
translation, both in the high literary domain (in poetry and fiction) as well as
in the popular and mundane sphere (the print and the audio-visual media).
The far from cheering conclusion of my argument is that postcolonialism has
proved to be far too brutal a global force to let survive that democratic
camaraderie in the republic of languages which alone can guarantee the
continuing good health of translation, especially as a constitutive element of
distinct and grounded identity. Judging by the experience of India, the
postcolonial has served to make of translation a subservient and servile field,
if not to threaten to erase, ultimately, the very possibility of translation.
© IATIS 2003