post-colonial_translation

The case of the Indian English novel 51
strength of this abuse is of course culturally and geographically
generated and located.
An example of collocational deviation in this extract is the
expression Venkamma uses when she thanks the ‘heavens I didn’t
tie my daughter to the neck of a pariah-mixer’. The British reader
may not expect to find a woman tied to the neck of anyone. This is a
common expression which conveys a sense of burden – much like a
mill-stone – in many Indian languages and is especially used to refer
to matrimonial relationship. The torrent of abuse that Venkamma
promises as a ‘blessing-ceremony’ also derives from a non-British
culture and linguistic system. (In the same novel you have references
to ‘hair-cutting ceremony’ and ‘rice-eating ceremony’.) Venkamma’s
‘bad tongue’ is another calque where there is a cultural deviation
rather than a formal one, it belongs to the same culture that has
notions of the ‘evil eye’ and the ‘bad gaze’. There is also cultural
significance in the fact that she does not stand ‘in front of’ Rangamma
but ‘straight before’ her. This is a literal translation from Kannada
and is used to construct the Kannadaness of the text, the context
and the narrator’s speech.
Thus this passage illustrates Raja Rao’s successful attempt to create
a culturally dependent speech style and narrative structure. The
grandmother-narrator’s oral story-telling is reflected in this written
passage with its long sentences and abrupt shifts to direct speech. As
Raja Rao points out in the foreword, ‘we [Indians] tell one interminable
tale. Episode follows episode, and when our thoughts stop our breath
stops, and we move on to another thought’ (Rao 1971: 6). This is the
style of story-telling he has followed in the novel; it reads almost like a
transcript of a series of recordings rather than a piece of creative writing.
The second passage (again randomly chosen) is from Salman
Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children:
Padma’s story (given in her own words, and read back to her for
eye-rolling, high-wailing, mammary-thumping confirmation):
‘It was my own foolish pride and vanity, Saleem baba, from
which cause I did run from you, although the job here is good,
and you so much needing a looker-after! But in a short time only
I was dying to return.
‘So then I thought, how to go back to this man, who will not
love me and only does some foolish writery (Forgive, Saleem
baba, but I must tell it truly. And love, to us women, is the greatest
thing of all.)