Translation Studies

 Article :1

History in Translation

Abstract:

The article examines positive or uto-pian response to the post colonial condition developed by Tejaswini Niranjana in situating translation her attempt to harness translation in the service of decolonization it traces a postcolonial myth moving from Pre coloniality through recent colonial past and current post coloniality to an imagined future state of decolonization or der to contrast nationalist version of that myth with their emphasis or purity of  precolonial and decolonize states to postcolonial version which insist that all for states are mixed.

This article divided in three part in the first part she talks about situating translation 

SITUATING TRANSLATION

In a postcolonial context the problem of translation becomes a significant site for raising question of representation power and historicity. The context is one of contesting  and contested stories attempting to account for, to recount the asymmetry and inequality of relationship between peoples , races and languages.

one such site is translation. translation as a practice shapes, and take shapes within  the asymmetrical  relationship of power that operate under colonialism. Translation depends on the western philosophical notion of reality, representation and knowledge. Reality is seen as something unproblematic out there knowledge involves a representation of these reality and representation provides direct unmediated access to a transparent reality. 

Simultaneously, translation in the colonial contest produces and supports conceptual economy that works into the discourse of western philosophy to function as a philosopheme (a basic unit of philosphical conceptuality). As Jacques Derrida suggests, the concepts of metaphysics are not bound by or produced by solely within the field of philosophy, translation brings into being overarching concepts of reality and representation. 

The Hegelian conception of history that translation helps bring into being endorses a teleological hieararchical model of civilizations based on the coming consciousness of spirit and event for which the non-western cultures are unsuited or unprepared. 

Here the concern of Tejaswini is to explore the place of translation in contemptory Euro-American literary theory through a set of inter-related readings.

In second chapter, she examines hoe translation works in the traditional discourse of translation studies and in ethnographic writing. In 3,4 and 5 chapter she focuses on the work of Paul de man, Jacques Derrida and Walter Benjamin. In the final chapter she discusses about uses of post-structuralism in post-colonial phase.

TRANSLATION AS AN INTERPELLATION

A.Maconochie a scholar connected with the university of Edinburgh, urged the british soverign t take steps as maybe necessary for discovering, collecting and translating whatever is extant of the ancient works of hindoos. William Jones, who arrived in India in 1783 to take his place on the bench of supreme court in Calcutta-that translation would serve to domesticate the orient and thereby turn it into a province of European learning.

As translator and scholar, Jones was responsible for the most influential introduction of a textualized India to Europe. Jones, whose persian translations and grammar of persian had already made him famous as an orientalist.

Here, Tejaswini's main concern in examining the texts of Jones is not necessarily to compare his translation of Shakuntala or Manu's dharmashastra with so-called originals. What she proposes to do is to examine the outwork of Jones's translation- the prefaces, the annual discourses to the asiatic society, his charges to the grand jury at Calcutta, his laters and oriental poems- to show how how contributes to a historicist telelogical model of civilization that coupled with a notion of translation presupposing transparency of representation. 

The most significant notes of Jones's works are

A) The need for  translation by the European, since the natives are unreliable interpreters of their own loss and culture.

B) The desire to be law giver, to give the Indians their own laws.

C)  The desire to purify Indian culture and speak on its behalf.

By Indian Tejaswini means that whole extent of the country in which religion and languages of hinuds prevail at this day with more or less of their ancient purity.

Before coming to India, Jones had formulated solution for the problem of translation of Indian law. Writing to Lord Cornwallis in 1788, he mentions once again the deceiving native lawyers and in reliability of their opinions.

William Jones and christian missionaries like the Serampore Baptist William Carey and William Ward. The later were among the first to translate Indian religious texts into European languages. Often these were works they had themselves textualize by preparing standard version based on classical western notion of unity and  coherance.

Mill declares that to ascertain the true state of the hindus in the scale of civilization is of the greatest practical importance for the British.The critique of historicism may help us formulate a complex notion of historicity which would include the effective history.

THE QUESTION OF HISTORY

In a recent essay Fredric Jameson's the political unconsciousness, Samuel Weber charges Jameson with using gesture of capitalising history to address the challenge of post-structuralists thought. M.H.Abram and others now read like the disparing cries of traditional literary historians intent on preserving their notion of tradition, continuity and historical context  against the onslaught of a violent, disreputive. 

If the former polimicize against history as phallogocentrism, the later argue that is an untrancendable horizion. neither specify whether the history in the question refers to a mode of writing history or to past itself.

here the concern of tejaswini is not to elaborate on the battle of history now being staged in Euro-American theory but to ask series of question from strategically partial perspective that of an emergent post-colonial practice willing to profit from inside of post-structuralism  while the same time demanding ways of writings history in order to make sense of how subjectification operates.

she takes historicity to mean although not unproblematically or effective history or that part of past or that is still operative in present. here the concern of author being with "local" practices. she indicates earlier post-colonials have good reasons to be suspicious of teleological historicism Derrida rightly characterized as a manifestation of western metaphysics. history is a process without telos or subject of repudiation  of master narratives.

Aluthsser  is an absent cause that it is like Jacques Lacan's real  inaccessible to use concept of textual form. the notion  that history  can be apprehended only its effect. 

 

For the second article click here