Mamta Kalia

Language
TRANSLATION: A QUEST
OF POSTNATIONALISM
Minu Manjari
“KOS-KOS pe pani badle, Das kos pe bani”
[The quality of water changes at every mile and that of language
at every ten miles.]
This saying common throughout the Hindi belt presupposes two
things about ‘bani’ which are worth noting .
a) it concedes to language the state of flux and fluidity as water.
b) the diversity of language is as natural as the occurrence of
water.
In presence of such taken for grantedness it is hardly possibly
that we think of translation consciously as theory or practical
or anything even while translating. Doesn’t everybody use two
or three or more than three languages every day? Is there anything
to be put “in theory” in this ?
It is as Sujeet Mukherjee says:-
“………. We have been practicing translation for so many yearsso
many centuries in fact that we forgot to stop and theorize.
But odd things did happen in the colonial period which
must be affecting our postcolonial outlook on translation without
us realizing it, and this needs to be studied ………….”
Several issues can pile up here in a mini Bower of Babel fashion–
First of all what do we mean by translation? Linguistic transfer?
What are the other issues that this transfer entails? What “Odd
April-June 2010 :: 149