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Debendra K. DashDipti R. Pattanaik 59While fulfilling its social self, translational praxissimultaneously institutionalized a generalized way of looking attranslation as an act, a generalized approach to it although it has notbeen consciously theorized anywhere. Dash & Pattanik 2002 hintedat the absence of such a theory even in Sanskrit aesthetics. When theprocess of translation began in Oriya, it started mainly as aninstitution of subversion of the hegemony of the Brahmin caste andthe Sanskrit language. Towards the 16 th century, other activities likeannotation and explication were added while retaining thesubversive dimension of translation in response to specific societalneeds. The same societal needs also gave rise to actual literaltranslation in the 17 th and 18 th centuries. We have thus varieties ofthe translational process operating at the same time answering tospecific needs of the society. Moreover, Sanskrit as the source textand the source language gave way to other neighboring languagesgaining political and religious importance at various points of time.We need at this point to remind ourselves that the variety oftranslational strategies employed in the praxis have consolidated thenaturalness of the Oriya language for several reasons. First,translators, barring a couple of exceptions, belonged to the targetlanguage and were adept at using the language with some facility.Moreover, since the praxis was determined by the social need, therewas an instinctive desire to reach out to the colloquial character ofthe Oriya language without doing much violence to its naturalness.Translational praxis has rarely targeted the so-called creative writingperhaps due to an instinctive realization that translation should fill inthe gap in the knowledge base, rather than be a competing discourseof creative writing. Various creative art forms in Oriya language thusproliferated during this time, along with the translated texts. Manymajor writers who were great Sanskrit scholars themselves neverundertook to translate Sanskrit art forms, though they oftenincorporated stylistic features of those art forms.