Talk given in the book release function held on 14 March 2020 at Southfield College, Darjeeling in the context of Sharda Chhetri’s Colours of Kanchenjungha.
This talk is not of a chronological, disciplinary or even narrative kind, though it includes the both. It is rather an exploration, as I conceive of it, translation in our times in the Anglo-Indian publication in the postcolonial times. In other words, it is about translation and its signification in the contemporary world. Basically, it is on semiosis of translation. Hence, I have titled it as Translation Among the Signs of Our Time.
Yet, I do not intend to offer another, newer conceptualisation about translation, but to examine translation within the continental semiotic tradition. In the postwar context of World literature, Third World literature, Comparative literature, translation occupies an important area of literature both as a genre and as a profession. To a larger extent, it a response to specific kinds of pressures by appropriating particular kinds of texts, and the pressures are literary, cultural, political and to the large extent forging unity within the Commonwealth. Here, it is important to remember translation into English rather than into the other languages or coloniser’s language occupies greater importance and significance in case of literary texts, unlike the Bible translated into the colonised languages.
I find it more difficult to speak on translation when I know that translation can be conceived in various ways. It is not merely the transfer of text from a source language (SL) to a target language (TL) with maximum equivalences, but also involves explanation, explication, adaptation, paraphrasing, association, interpretation, appropriation, as well as aesthetics and stylistic concerns. With so many variables as constraints to operate, the translator needs to grasp the sense and the spirit of the author as well as amuse the reader. Rather than dwelling into the normal course of terminologies or a general framework on translation, I would like to begin on literary translation in the following strands:
1. Literary translation is an odd art. It takes someone’s work and tries to make his/her own. In other words translation is a derivative. Yet, translation is an art because translator does the same as the author.
2. Literary translator is a musician. The translator takes someone else’s composition and perform it in his/her special way. Hence, no two translations of a single text may be the same.
3. Literary translator is a critique. The translator reads the text closely, and critique it. But unlike the critique, the translator provides equivalents than “open the loose ends.”
In short, translation is a very demanding, intellectual and artistic process with mental, textual, cultural, linguistic, social, political contexts to operate. At the same time, other than art and craft, there are market forces too behind the translation.
Human beings are meaning makers, therefore, homo significans. In our desire to make meaning, we create and interpret signs. As Peirce said, “we only think in signs.” Language is a system of signs in a community. Hence, Saussure famously said that language is a social fact. Further, in the functionalist approach, Jakobson identified six functions of language; and one of the unmentioned functions, which I call it to be the seventh function of language, is “to rejuvenate.” History exemplifies it whether it was 1963 in Bangladesh regarding Bangla language or it was 2017 regarding Nepali here in Darjeeling.
Similarly, this “rejuvenation” function can be seen in the case of translation too. Translation “rejuvenates” text, and beyond, bringing writer, culture, linguistic community into the forefont. Colours of Kanchenjungha (henceforth, CoK) does the same by bringing Nepali literature into the global arena. The stories translated are texts, and texts are composed of signs. Each sign, in the Saussurean semiotics, is a bipartite unit of signifier (the physical agent it speech, graphs of writing, etc.) and signified i.e. what it signifies.
In the context of language, each sign is unique and collectively forms language of a community. On the other hand, true social nature of community and their signs is communication, which changes according to the situation. In a sense, a sign has many senses though it may have only one reference. For example Kanchenjungha refers to a peak, it has other senses of holy, beauty, etc. Hence, a sign has more than one meaning - heteroglossia. Beyond its referential, denotative meaning, as Hjemslev suggested, sign has also connotative meaning. Grounding on this aspect of semiosis, Barthes conceives that connotative meaning is ideologically governed by media. He famously analyses simple everyday things like pasta, fashion, etc. and shows how “myth” - a higher order of signification is created. For example, one can think of green tea in the present time – with its baggage of contemporary social value. It means different things to different people. Such sign is vague and unspecified signified. Semiotically, such in an empty signifier - a signifier with no definite signified.
Now, I would like to move into how meaning and signification is constituted. Baudrillard, a poststructuralist, says that meaning is brought by system of signs — meaning and signification are both understandable in terms of how a particular sign interrelate.
Modern societies are based on production and consumption. One can vividly find it in translation. It is production as well as meant for consumption. The postmodern societies are organised around the signs which in turn forms a new social order. Accordingly, identities are created and related. Again the CoK aptly fits into this — a product meant for consumption. As a literary product is a sign and associates with a social order of reader, etc., and creates a natural interrelationship with the author and translator, translator and text, translated text and reader, and a reader and another reader. Hence, between reader, society, culture, etc. If observed carefully, the reader will forget who are the original thirty writers of these short stories translated are. By the act of translation, we move from the “Nepali” to “English” — from original to translated.
Since the translation is available, many may not read the original text in Nepali. It is also true that many did not intend to read it before as well as after the translation. This is true with the Nepali knowing, Nepali literature loving, translated-into-English reading identities. Nepali is not the only case, it is true with most of the ‘diminishing’ languages. The translated becomes original, real for many. As we speak through Baudrillard, the translated English text is “hyperreal” where the original Nepali text is “real.” The hyperreal is more real than the real. Paradoxically, CoK is more real than these different stories by the different writers published somewhere and sometime. In other words, CoK is a faithful copy; at the same time it is without original and evades the reality. It represents not only mediated experience, but also supplies ideology. In short, it provides a literary identity to the thirty Nepali short stories in the Anglo-Americian postwar tradition in the Anglo-Indian publication in the postcolonial scenario, and provides a never dimension of our identity locally, globally and eternally. Finally, CoK is undoubtedly a floating signifier – truly colourful as majestic as the Kanchenjungha.
PS. Thanks to Nawraj Chhetri for typing.
