post-colonial_translation
Share Embed Flag
Download ePaper

post-colonial_translation

post-colonial_translation post-colonial_translation

brodrgz
12.01.2015 Views

The case of the Indian English novel 47 use is alike a lived practice, coercive, and a means of choice’ (Tonkin 1993: 188). The choice of one language variety over another as much as of one language over another ‘signals social meanings to listeners and readers’. Hence it is important to examine ‘acts and choices: on shifts between different languages, between a standard and non-standard dialect or a mixture of all these, according to the social situation’ (ibid.). Tonkin adds that ‘many shades of social meaning’ can be conveyed by people ‘by their choice of sound, word or grammar, and it is common for them to code-switch, that is move from one variety to another, even in the course of a sentence’ (ibid.: 188–9). Code-mixing and code-switching are both communicative strategies and can have various motivations. Code-switching, for example, may be used to reveal to the listener the regional identity of the speaker, thus enabling the speaker to establish kinship if the listener belongs to the same region. Code-switching can also be used to reveal class and religion. Conversely, code-switching can also be resorted to in order to conceal the speaker’s region, class or religion. Thus code-switching may be used in a conversation to establish affinity with one or more persons while excluding others who do not belong to this linguistic or class or religious group. Code-mixing plays a similar role and often marks the context of the conversation. Codemixing in English while speaking an Indian language, for example, may mark a professional or academic context. Code-mixing in a ‘neutral’ language like English will reveal rather than conceal region, class, religion, caste and gender. It may alert us to a local register or may define a concept or term, keeping alive the Indian nuances. A bilingual writer of English (and this category includes almost all Indian writers in English) walks this tightrope of choices carefully and consciously. Further, the contexts of these Indian English writers are often multilingual and multicultural; certainly the dominant culture around them is not British or Western. Hence even when there may be nothing unintelligible or seemingly translated in a piece of Indian English writing, a reader from a different culture may have difficulty in fully understanding or interpreting the text. Using examples from Nayantara Sahgal, R.K. Narayan and Bharti Mukherjee, Yamuna Kachru demonstrates how they are fully interpretable only in the context of conventions of a community that uses kinship terms as instruments of politeness, has a belief system that accommodates astrology as relevant to human endeavours, has an institution of arranged marriage, and

48 G.J.V. Prasad sharply demarcates the spheres of domestic activities of each spouse in a marriage. A reader unfamiliar with these contextual factors will either misinterpret or have difficulty in interpreting the examples . . . (Kachru 1992: 45) Braj Kachru makes a similar statement about a Harikatha passage in Raja Rao’s Kanthapura when he says that it is not the narrative technique or collocational relationships ‘but the historical and cultural presuppositions [that] are different than what has been traditionally the “expected” historical and cultural milieu for English literature’ (Kachru 1989: 160). It is not only the non-Indian reader who will have to reorient him/herself to read this text, even the North Indian reader will have to do so. The linguistic skills of the writer are used to locate the novel: location is carried out in the language itself. The historical and cultural milieu in which the text is thus positioned will have to be read and understood for the reader to be able to interpret the text fully, as in any translation. Hence the need for Indian English writers including Rushdie to signal the Indian-ness, the otherness, of their texts in the language itself. The ways in which they accomplish this task will be studied in the next section of this chapter, taking for analysis one passage from each of two Indian English novels. II The language employed by Indian English writers, the strategies they use to convey Indian realities in the English language, can be illustrated and studied by choosing at random passages from two novels separated by nearly fifty years. The first is from Raja Rao’s Kanthapura: ‘Ah, well,’ she said, ‘if you want to know, I shall go straight to Narsamma herself and find it out’; and straight she went, her sari falling down her shaven head, and she walked fast, and when she came to Moorthy’s house she planted herself straight before his mother and cried, ‘Narsamma, I have come to ask you something. You know you said you did not want my daughter for your son. I am glad of it now and I say to myself, thank heavens I didn’t tie my daughter to the neck of a pariah-mixer. Ah, well! I have horoscopes now from Bangalore and Mysore – with real B.A.s and M.A.s, and you will see a decent Assistant Commissioner take my daughter in marriage. But what I have come for is this:

48 G.J.V. Prasad<br />

sharply demarcates the spheres of domestic activities of each<br />

spouse in a marriage. A reader unfamiliar with these contextual<br />

factors will either misinterpret or have difficulty in interpreting<br />

the examples . . .<br />

(Kachru 1992: 45)<br />

Braj Kachru makes a similar statement about a Harikatha passage in<br />

Raja Rao’s Kanthapura when he says that it is not the narrative technique<br />

or collocational relationships ‘but the historical and cultural<br />

presuppositions [that] are different than what has been traditionally<br />

the “expected” historical and cultural milieu for English literature’<br />

(Kachru 1989: 160). It is not only the non-Indian reader who will have<br />

to reorient him/herself to read this text, even the North Indian reader<br />

will have to do so. The linguistic skills of the writer are used to locate<br />

the novel: location is carried out in the language itself. The historical<br />

and cultural milieu in which the text is thus positioned will have to be<br />

read and understood for the reader to be able to interpret the text fully,<br />

as in any <strong>translation</strong>. Hence the need for Indian English writers including<br />

Rushdie to signal the Indian-ness, the otherness, of their texts in the<br />

language itself. The ways in which they accomplish this task will be<br />

studied in the next section of this chapter, taking for analysis one passage<br />

from each of two Indian English novels.<br />

II<br />

The language employed by Indian English writers, the strategies they<br />

use to convey Indian realities in the English language, can be illustrated<br />

and studied by choosing at random passages from two novels separated<br />

by nearly fifty years. The first is from Raja Rao’s Kanthapura:<br />

‘Ah, well,’ she said, ‘if you want to know, I shall go straight to<br />

Narsamma herself and find it out’; and straight she went, her sari<br />

falling down her shaven head, and she walked fast, and when she<br />

came to Moorthy’s house she planted herself straight before his<br />

mother and cried, ‘Narsamma, I have come to ask you something.<br />

You know you said you did not want my daughter for your son. I<br />

am glad of it now and I say to myself, thank heavens I didn’t tie<br />

my daughter to the neck of a pariah-mixer. Ah, well! I have<br />

horoscopes now from Bangalore and Mysore – with real B.A.s<br />

and M.A.s, and you will see a decent Assistant Commissioner<br />

take my daughter in marriage. But what I have come for is this:

logo

products

Resources

Company

Terms of service
Privacy policy
Cookie policy
Cookie settings
Imprint
Change language
Made with love in Switzerland
© 2024 Yumpu.com all rights reserved

Hooray! Your file is uploaded and ready to be published.

Saved successfully!

Ooh no, something went wrong!