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Translation of Bhakti Poetry into English: A Case Study ofNarsinh Mehta 267Translation is inevitably interpretation of a text from onelanguage by the means of another and it is very difficult to render therichly suggestive plurivalency of signifiers in another language. Theformal properties of language and culture are usually `lost' intranslation. One has to abandon many times the whole structure of`signifier', and ideally replace another signifier to the signified inone language without changing it. Nevertheless, it is impossible tocompletely separate the signified from its signifier. The wholeproblematic of translation, it seems is the problematic of therelationship between the signifier and the signified, the form and the`meaning'. This theoretical problem strikes the translator with evenmore intensity when one is dealing with ambiguities andcontradictions in the source language text.From this detailed theoretical account, one can see that theactivity of translation of Bhakti poetry is an acute creative encounterand negotiation between two seemingly incompatible traditions,histories, and poetics. However, it becomes almost an existential andcultural imperative of a translator like me who has grown up in aparticular multi lingual and multi-cultural ethos. It is his profoundpersonal need to yoke together these seemingly incompatiblecultural domains. Translation becomes for me almost a yogic act, theact of yoking together of the duality and an act which embodies thepersonal quest for salvation in the post-colonial society.REFERENCESAhmad, Aijaz 1992 In Theory: Classes, Nations, LiteraturesBombay: Oxford University Press.Auden, W.H. 1962 Selected Essays London: Faber.