post-colonial_translation

The case of the Indian English novel 43
novelist is dealing with modes of thinking, manners of
observation, and instinctive responses of people whose awareness
has been conditioned by a language other than English.
(ibid.: 174)
She says that the Indian English writer has to deal with non-Englishspeaking
people in non-English-speaking contexts and ‘has to overcome
the difficulty of conveying through English the vast range of expressions
and observations whose natural vehicle is an Indian Language’ (ibid.:
173). The choices the writer has to make are those of a translator: ‘literal
translation is not always the answer because he has to make sure that
the translated idioms or images do not go against the grain of the English
language’ (ibid.: 173–4).
The writer has then to ensure that the English s/he writes conveys
the spirit of the Indian region s/he is depicting: ‘the quality of that
particular area, the characteristics of its speech, its typical responses
and its distinctive spirit’ (ibid.: 174). Thus each writer has to find her/
his own answers, style(s) and English. Braj Kachru, in his study of Indian
English, points out collocations which ‘are author-oriented and may
be present only in the works of creative Indian English writers who
write about typically Indian contexts’ (Kachru 1983: 76). He cautions
that these features may be text-specific rather than characteristic of
‘the total literary output of a writer . . . the style of Kanthapura cannot
be generalized as the style of Raja Rao’ (ibid.: 77). In other words the
writers do not write in an Indian English or even in their own English
but in an English intended to approximate the thought-structures and
speech patterns of their characters and not to betray the Indian text
and context by an easy assimilation into the linguistic and cultural
matrices of British English. Hence when Kachru himself uses a passage
from Kanthapura to illustrate the differences between ‘educated’ Indian
English and ‘“educated” native varieties of English’, claiming ‘that
Indian English has a tendency toward using complex noun and verb
phrases and rather long sentences’ (ibid.: 78), he cannot but be
immediately aware that this is Rao’s strategy to convey the rhythms of
spoken Kannada, a Kannada spoken by the narrator who is an old
woman. The passage he quotes is thus no example of Indian English,
‘educated’ or otherwise. Kachru admits that ‘[O]ne cannot generalize,
since R.K. Narayan’s style is the opposite of Raja Rao’s’ (ibid.). The
following passage which he cites from Kanthapura is not illustrative of
Raja Rao’s style as much as of his successful translation of the Kannada
speech of his narrator: