post-colonial_translation

Srikantaiah and Kannada translation 167
were given up. According to Havanur, the modern Kannada short
poem came into being around 1838 through the invocation poems
translated by the Christian missionaries.
Another stimulus to modern Kannada literature came with the need
to provide textbooks in Kannada for younger children. Many
translated poems, specifically designed to provide an idiom familiar
to the spoken language, were included in these textbooks. In 1873,
the First Book of Kannada Poetry, containing poems like ‘Advice to
Young Girls’, ‘Glory to Victoria’ and ‘Monkey’s Game’, was
published. This poetry was to be free of the bombast of traditional
Sanskrit poetry, while aiming at simplicity and clearness compatible
with the spoken dialect. S.G. Narasimhacharya published a collection
of simple poems for children, as well as Aesop’s Fables. 10 These
translations were not particularly accomplished from an aesthetic
point of view; they were important, rather, for their role in creating a
new readership for Kannada.
By the end of the nineteenth century, under the influence of English
literature, and following the Bengali and Marathi examples, new
genres featuring the personal experience of the writer were introduced
into Kannada literature: lyric poetry, the travelogue, the diary, the
biography, the novel. Many of the new writers came from journalism
(Havanur, 1974). But it was only with the work of BMS in 1921 that
the lyric as a form really took hold in Kannada.
The work of BMS, largely recognized as the most fully
accomplished creative use of translation at this time, is to be seen,
therefore, against the backdrop of a period intensely interested in
translation as a way of coming to terms with British influence and in
altering the canonical forms of Kannada literature. 11 The generalized
interest in issues of translation, and the seriousness with which these
issues were treated, can be observed in a remarkable treatise published
in English in Mysore in 1910. The Art of Translation: A Critical Study
by R. Raghunath Rao, BA is an admirably perceptive study of
translation ethics and technique, prepared for university students in
Mysore and Bangalore. Apart from the clear and forthright tone of
the essay, and its sharp and well-documented critique of translations
of Shakuntala by B.L. Rice (and to some extent of Monier Williams),
what is most striking about Rao’s views is his awareness that
translation adequacy must be judged in the light of the evolving
dynamics between cultures. The degree of success of cultural
transmission depends on the political and cultural forces operating
at that moment.