Translation in India: History and Politics
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(2) 78. Translation in India: History and Politics. 1.. INTRODUCTION India is a truly multilingual country. The 2001 census had recorded 1652 languages, for example. There are 216 languages with more than ten thousand native speakers; Hindi has 337 million while Bangla 207 million speakers; official languages as of date are twenty-two. But this linguistic richness has always been a feature of the Indian society from the very beginning. Translation, therefore, has a long history in India as a means of communication between speakers of different languages. From the point of view of translation enterprise India is unique for a variety of reasons. In the early centuries of the Christian era, Buddhist texts were translated into Chinese and later into Tibetan. Apart from this northern connection, as attested by the Arab sources, there was considerable interaction between the Hindus and the pre-Islam Arabs, on the west. Not much direct evidence remains but it is acknowledged that Hindu mathematics, astronomy, and philosophy travelled to the west in this phase. Even after the advent of Islam, on Alberuni’s testimony, the relationship of give and take continued. From the eleventh century onwards, with the rise of modern Indian languages, Sanskrit technical/cultural texts began to be transferred to those languages (Assamese, Maharashtri, Kannada, Telugu, etc.) as a method of preserving those texts through diffusion. At the same time, translations began to be made into Persian. Zain-ul-Abedin (1420-1470), the enlightened ruler of Kashmir, established a translation bureau for bilateral renderings between Sanskrit and Persian. Dara Shikoh’s Persian translations of the Upanishads and Mulla Ahmad’s rendition of Mahabharata are among the major landmarks along this stream. In the seventeenth-eighteenth century, the great Sikh Guru, Guru Gobind Singh ji, set up a bureau and had a large number of Sanskrit texts translated into Panjabi. In the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the encounter with the west resulted in a complex, bidirectional, cultural-intellectual relationship. In the fields of science, engineering, and in new disciplines such as politics and economics, English became the donor language for translations into Indian languages. In the fields of philosophy, religion, linguistics and literary theory, Sanskrit renewed its role as a donor language for translations into English and other European languages. In fact in the nineteenth century, Europe discovered India as much as India discovered Europe and the mutual influence was perhaps equal. By 1820, all the major universities of Europe had chairs in Sanskrit and Sanskrit studies had come to enjoy immense prestige. As the century progressed, Sanskrit studies increasingly shaped the European mind. All the major European minds of the nineteenth century were either Sanskritists or, on their own. Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(3) Santosh K. Sareen. 79. admission, had been deeply involved in Indian thought - Humboldt, Fichte, Hegel, Goethe, Schopenhauer, Kant, Nietzsche, Schiller, Schelling, de Saussure, Roman Jakobson. The list is impressive. In 1839-40, Otto Bohtlingk brought out an edition of Panini’s Astadhyayi with German comment on rules and an index of technical terms with glosses. In 1841, N.L. Westergaard brought out an edition of the Dhatupatha (enumeration of Sanskrit verb roots) with Latin gloss and references. In 1858, Albrecht Weber published a German translation of the Vajasaneyi Pratisakhya. In 1862, W.D.Whitney brought out his translation into English of Atharvaveda Pratisakhya. In 1874, Lorenz Franz Kielhorn published a translation into English of Nagojibhatta’s Paribhasendusekhara. This example list, restricted to grammatical texts, is illustrative of Europe’s interest in Sanskrit technical literature. This engagement with Sanskrit Literature continues and authentic translations and data bases constitute major areas of research in European institutes of Indology. The act of translation, in the historically multilingual Indian situation, is a very complex act – purpose, situations, format/nature and effect or function differ widely. First of all, inter-translatability is a philosophical problem as it involves inter-cultural understanding, trans-cultural interpretation and trans-cultural evaluation. It also assumes a state of mind, a certain psychology of translation. There is in each act of translation, an attitude towards the source language and a certain assessment of the target language - it is recognition of the intellectual strength of the source and of a vacuum or gap in the target language/culture. All this means that a translation is preceded by a number of judgements which may or may not be right. We can envisage the following translation situations: classical language classical. modern language (in the same tradition/culture) modern language (of a different tradition/culture). from modern language modern. (in the same tradition/culture) modern language (of adifferent tradition/culture). The first case is rare, a theoretical possibility. There are instances of some Buddhists texts retranslated into Sanskrit in modern times. These are cases of translations within the same overall intellectual tradition – a kind of special case of renewal, one of the. Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(4) 80. Translation in India: History and Politics. three functional parameters of translations, diffusion and borrowing being the other two. Similarly, when a text is translated into a modern language in the same tradition, it is also to be considered as a case of renewal – the text becomes accessible once again in a widely spoken and used language. The code is re-coded and in the process is unfolded and reinterpreted to make it intelligible to a much larger readership. The code becomes pertinent – once again it begins to function as an explanatory construct for contemporary realities. Translations of classical texts of literary theory, philosophy and grammar such as Natyasastra, Mimamsasutra and Astadhyayi, among others, into modern Indian languages are some recent examples of renewal. When a text is translated into a modern language of another tradition / culture, it is a case of diffusion. Diffusion as a horizontal concept is a special case of renewal - a code not only gets activated, it also spreads beyond its earlier boundaries. The most recent example is the translation of Panini’s Astadhyayi (a seventh century B.C. linguistic grammar of Sanskrit) into German, French and English in the last quarter of the 19th century which made this proto-grammar available to a whole new world of European and Anglo-Saxon scholarship. In such intercultural transfers, the parameter of borrowing is also present. This is the most recent renewal of a text which in the history of Indian thought has been renewed again and again through various processes of abridgement, recension, reordering, and adaptation besides translation. Translation of a modern language text into another modern language in the same tradition / culture is also a case of diffusion while that into a modern language of another tradition is a case of diffusion and borrowing. In another sense, translation is not a homogeneous exercise. There is a translation - grid: 1. change of script alone; for example a Gurumukhi text rendered into Devanagari; 2. change of language with lexis unchanged or just adapted to the phonology of the target language; for example a Sanskrit text rendered into a modern Indian language with tatsama words (lexis unchanged) or tadbhava words (words adapted). This is true for example, of translations from Sanskrit into modern Indian languages. Are these ‘translations’ or ‘adaptations’? 3. change of language involving lexical and grammatical replacements, to a more or less degree. Degree of replacement is greater, greater the distance between languages; and distance is far greater if the languages belong to different language families. In recent times in India both the second and third kinds of translations have flourished. But, as we said above, transfers from Sanskrit into modern Indian languages are not really `translations’, because on an average, more than 85% of the vocabulary of modern Indian languages are Sanskritic in origin – in the north Indian languages, Panjabi,. Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(5) Santosh K. Sareen. 81. Bengali, Gujarati etc., the percentage is as high as 90. Even in Malayalam, belonging to a different family of languages, Dravidian, 81% of the vocabulary is of Sanskrit origin. Even in Tamil, which shows the least influence of Sanskrit, the percentage is 71. Significantly, the vocabulary of learning is common to all the Indian languages and is almost entirely of Sanskrit origin. The learned vocabulary has, in fact, percolated down and become a part of ordinary speech. In the process, the learned words have acquired various new meanings as extensions around their core meanings. These living words are an evidence of the intellectual continuity of the Indian civilization and of the fact that modern India is not in disjunction with its classical past. From the translation point of view, this continuity means that in the process of transfer, there is virtually no need for lexical replacement – all that the translator has to do is to `paraphrase’ the grammatical endings of Sanskrit. But while, in recent times, there have been numerous translations within Indian languages and from classical into modern Indian languages, the overwhelming trend has been of translations from European languages into modern Indian languages and these too chiefly from English. This is virtually a unidirectional flow – as the few translations that have been done into English (or, other European languages) are meant not for the European audiences but for the Indian readers. Apart from the self-evident problems of translating between such distant languages, there is in this process a characteristic oneway relationship, an implicit intellectual relationship, a recipient – donor relationship. In the last hundred years or so, the Indian languages have been placed in a recipient role with European languages, particularly English, as the donor. As we said above, there is in this an implicit recognition of the source language as the intellectual reservoir and of the relatively impoverished state of the target language. This could be just a state of mind nurtured by quite extraneous reasons in the translators who are, almost all of them, Indians. There are three presuppositions in this one-way traffic: that all the worthwhile things are being said by the speakers of other languages, that what is being said is worthwhile, and that we have nothing worthwhile to say in return. This state of mind is a part of the general attitude of uncritical subordination to the western ideas. It is sad that this kind of translation alone gets foregrounded in our discussions and makes its own contribution to that unfortunate state of mind. There is on the other hand another kind of translation activity– equally pervasive and for its intellectual merit and wide usefulness much more significant – that has a long history and has been going on in a big way in recent times as well but has not been taken note of very much, by chance or may be by design. We are talking of the translations of classical Sanskrit texts, technical as well as literary, into modern European languages mostly by European scholars and also by modern Indian scholars. We say by design Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(6) 82. Translation in India: History and Politics. because a focus on this alters the perception for we become the donor in that transaction. On account of its unparalleled storehouse of literature of learning, Sanskrit has always been a donor language for translations into Asian and European languages. One may expect from this that India must be a storehouse of translations from Sanskrit into Indian languages but with the British rule in India there began a subtle use by them of English as a powerful tool for combating national aspirations. English was used as a means to pursue the Anglo-Saxon way of thinking by the educated elite. Macaulay’s Minute which marked the culmination of early missionary activity found no intrinsic merit in Indian history, literature, culture or science and was convinced that Indian people could be educated only through the medium of English. This marked a significant deviation from the preoccupations of the missionaries. He wanted to create a class of persons “Indian in blood and colour but English in opinions, in morals and in intellect”. The aim of the group so educated was to act as interpreter between the rulers and the ruled as well as be responsible for rejuvenating and modernizing Indian languages and dialects. Thus without any substantial evidence, Indian languages and people were perceived as degenerate not only by the missionaries but also by the Anglicists in their debate with the Orientalists. In 1923, Raja Ram Mohan Roy wrote to Lord Amherst against the Sanskritic system of education and recommended the use of English in India. Lord Bentick’s approval of Macaulay’s Minute marked the end of the Orientalist-Anglicist controversy and for practical reasons created a demand for English education. As Gandhiji remarked: “Our love of the English language in preference to our own mother tongue has caused a deep chasm between the educated and politicallyminded classes and the masses.” Language thus also created a power hierarchy, in which those who mastered the dominant language became the elites of the society and thus constituted the dominant community. This meant that the literacy movement in India from the British/colonial times had a negative influence on the Indian languages while the so-called illiterates had a positive influence in that they helped preserve the Indian languages, which had their own individual identities and rich literary traditions even prior to the British coming on the scene. The British rule resulted in the creation of certain hierarchies among the languages since the British administration operated through Presidencies which comprised of more than one linguistic region. The Madras Presidency, for instance, comprised areas which included speakers of Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. With major Universities being established at Madras, Bombay and Calcutta lead to some polarization and inter-se dominant status conferred on certain languages like Tamil and Bengali, which anyway have been traditionally rich in their respective literatures. Fakir Mohan Senapati, the Oriya writer, held that “Bengalis had all the higher. Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(7) Santosh K. Sareen. 83. non-European posts in every single department in Orissa” (Paul St. Pierre). This kind of polarization emanating from the British structure of administration led to domination of some languages over others during the colonial period. It was an artificial divide that could not be sustained in the post-colonial period. Let us turn our attention now to the translation activities in the British period. Though Macaulay’s Minute and the Anglicists victory in the debate with the Orientalists marked an end to whatever translations were encouraged from English into regional languages, the translation activity around Sanskrit still continued as we noted earlier due to Sanskrit’s role as donor language. Furthermore, despite the multilingual character of the Indian communities, the masses which shared a common heritage were largely illiterate but deeply immersed in their respective oral cultures. They did not have to traverse further beyond the confines of their respective languages; almost all the languages had indigenous versions of classical epics such as Ramayana and Mahabharata. So even if the British support was lacking for translation between Indian languages, a situation that has not become much better in contemporary times despite much talk and felt need for such translations, the awareness created by the filter language, English, and the fall out of the freedom movement which brought Indians from all regions and corners of the country together, did generate considerable translation activity. The nationalist writings of Khandekar in Marathi and Bankim Chandra in Bengali became available to readers in their own native languages. Besides, the campaign to popularize science led to European textbooks being translated into Sanskrit, Bengali and other local languages. Translation during this period became part of a larger process of resistance to alien domination and a determining factor in the expression of cultural identity and the reassertion of the native self. The post-colonial scene brought new dimensions to the language and translation activities. A crucial decision in this regard was to create division of states on the basis of regional languages which kindled regional linguistic pride and acted as an impediment to any single language successfully supplanting English as the common national link language. The claim of Hindi to the status of primus inter pares arose from the fact that Hindi happened to be the language spoken and understood by an arithmetically larger number of people than any other single group speaking any other Indian language. Its variant Hindustani also happened to be the court language before the advent of the British Raj/ rule. But then the fact remained that the non-Hindi speaking population put together is a much greater number. In addition, the fact that Hindi speaking population was confined to a distinct geographic belt complicated matters for the pre-eminence of Hindi. Had the British promoted Hindi as the link language or as a viable alternative to Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(8) 84. Translation in India: History and Politics. English as the language of administration, the situation at the time of independence would have been different. It is also a moot point whether Hindi could have staked its claim had the British not changed the capital of the country from Kolkata (known as Calcutta then) to Delhi. The language situation in post-independence India was a tricky one; on the one hand, the lingering nationalist sentiments viewed English as anathema in that it had been the language of the colonizer, while on the other with the kindling of the regional linguistic pride resulting from the creation of linguistic states, the various non-Hindi speaking regions equated the adoption of Hindi as an imposition of one ethnic community over another. The ethnic origin of languages, for example, Dravidian versus Aryan, added fuel to fire. One of the solutions found to resolving the difficult language situation of the country was in the 1966 Education Commission Report which suggested adoption of the three-language formula. The spirit of the formula was that non-Hindi speaking states would introduce Hindi learning and teaching while the Hindi speaking states would encourage the teaching/learning of another regional language. The Central government encouraged the learning of Hindi so that the Centre’s official work could be carried out in Hindi as well where hitherto it was done in English alone. Special incentives were provided to those officials who took to the learning of Hindi. While, to begin with, for example, in some Southern States there was enthusiastic learning/teaching of Hindi, the absence of learning/teaching of another regional language in Hindi speaking states, led to a hardening of sentiments in states such as Tamil Nadu where Hindi speaking and knowing people refused to respond to those who spoke to them in Hindi while they responded if the other person spoke English. It was a parallel of the situation in France where a French national would refuse to respond to someone in English even if he knew the English language. I have encountered both the situations. (Ex.) The situation only has helped the continuance of English, the Constitution bestowing on it the status of an Associate Official language when the language issue came up for review fifteen years later since the continuance of English required to be reviewed after the initial fifteen year period. It was then at the end of the fifteen-year period decided by the Indian Parliament that unless all the States agree Hindi or any other language would not be made the national language, Hindi though was the only language staking claim to that status. English as a desired language of learning/teaching, more so in the urban areas, has gained prominence also as a consequence of the country’s economic growth and opening up of the economy globally. A pre-Independence agrarian economy changed into a multifaceted economy of industry, trade and commerce. Unprecedented migration Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(9) Santosh K. Sareen. 85. resulted, surpassing the barriers of language and distance. There has been a large spread of Universities, Institutes of Technology and Management and the doors very soon are likely to be opened to foreign Universities as well. This has taken the language attainment beyond the three-language formula – the mother tongue, the language of the region of domicile, and the two link languages of Hindi and English. Another myth that has been negated is that of the pre-eminence of any one language to economic dominance. I say this because Hindi happens to be the language of the economically less advanced region comprising the States of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Rajasthan. Also, to prevent English from becoming an impediment towards attaining entry into prestigious educational Institutions such as the I.I.T.’s, the compulsory English language qualifying examination for the entrance examination has been done away with. Another important factor that is worthy of note is the continual struggle of the economically/socially/culturally disadvantaged for their betterment. The Dalits and other backward classes today pose challenges to the entrenched hegemony of the socially forward classes. The languages of the Dalits are emerging with renewed vigour to bring out the subaltern into full bloom. The nuances of language, spoken and written, have always differed from caste to caste and stratum to stratum even within the confines of the same community and the same language. There is a common cause now emerging among Dalits and the backward classes across geographic, linguistic and other frontiers. This is bound to leave new impact on various languages, their dictions and specific nuances. There is a conscious effort to revisit the classics from a subaltern perspective. But the paradox remains in regard to the futility of limiting translation activity to the basic requirements of economics rather than culture. Culture remains a trans-historic unit of civilization, notwithstanding the successive onslaughts made towards harmonizing and bringing into existence a universal culture. Translation remains the most powerful tool for better understanding among cultures. Within post-colonial contexts translation can be looked upon as policy, as prioritization, as empowerment, as enrichment and as culture learning within post-colonial contexts. To turn our attention to the Indian situation again in the years after Independence or ‘new nationhood’ (Sujit Mukherjee), Indian literature in English translation has been published under various circumstances. There have been public as well as private enterprises. The Sahitya Akademi and the National Book Trust, both fully funded by the government of India and both with their headquarters in Delhi, are supporters of literary publications under the public enterprise. The Sahitya Akademi has been commissioning translations and getting them published from its inception. Thus to. Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(10) 86. Translation in India: History and Politics. begin with, major texts of Indian literature were commissioned for translation into other Indian languages. Later it added translation of classic texts of world literature into Indian languages. This is a tremendous task and as Sujit Mukherjee calculated, this means that if 22 titles are selected for translation, each would have to be translated into 21 other languages thus producing with simple arithmetic calculation 462 translated books. Of course this is not something the Sahitya Akademi has ever done and it is anybody’s guess if they will ever be able to do it. But that notwithstanding The Akademi has published a three-volume anthology of Modern Indian literature, covering the period 1800 to 1975. This project includes a two-volume anthology of Ancient Indian literature which presents material from the earliest times to 1100 A.D. then there is to be added another volume devoted to medieval Indian literature, though the word medieval has an overwhelming European connotation and perhaps a Hindi word like madhyakal may be better. As far as the National Book Trust (set up in 1957) is concerned, very often the texts that get chosen for translation are the ones that are not popular with readers; in other words, texts of wider readership are somehow not the ones selected for translation. Hence, the change that NBT was to bring about through its pricing, publication and translation has not happened. The moot point then is that what difference is there between a private publisher and a government-supported organization such as NBT which as one of its defined goals and objectives is required to promote bookconsciousness and nation building. The private enterprise has really grown in size in the last couple of decades, 70 years or so. A remarkable project here was the two-volume anthology of English translation of Indian writing, Women Writing in India, Vol. I: 600B.C. to the Present (1991), Vol. II: The 20th Century (1993), compiled and edited by Susie Tharu and K. Lalitha. The Feminist Press at the City University of New York published the book and OUP India produced an Indian edition from Delhi. This translation brings to the fore the long history of women writing in India for 2600 years, perhaps far longer than women in any other culture. Another notable work is of a private organization called Katha (since 1988). This project fosters and applauds translation, especially of short stories, both from Indian languages into English and from one Indian language into another. It gives annual awards to authors as well as their translators based on a formal competition and each year the prize winning stories in English translation are collected and published in a volume. Several such collections under the title Katha Prize Stories have been published. Among the big publishers Macmillan has under its project Modern Indian Novels in Translation published 40 to 50 English translations of ‘Modern Indian Novels in Translation’ this is an example of private vision and commercial effort. Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
(11) Santosh K. Sareen. 87. To conclude then, Indian translators into English have never had it so good. They used to be a neglected, even pitied lot, and often went unnamed in the translation, often not paid as well. We have had many problems but many solutions as well. The one important and constant factor inherited through the centuries is the fact that we have always translated. Language is one of our greatest wealths and translation enables us to continue to speak or write or read to each other. To voice again what may have been said in many other contexts, in such diversity is our security, durability and unity.. REFERENCES Bharata Natyasastra. Translated by a board of scholars. Delhi, Sri Satguru Publications. Otto Bohtlingk (tr.) 1839-40. Panini’s Eight Book Grammar [a traslation into German] S.M.Katre 1988 Panini’s Astadhyayi .Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass. Franz Kielhorn (ed.,tr.) 1960. The Paribhasendusekhara of Nagojibhatta (Second edition by K.V. Abhyankara of the original of 1868). Poona, Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. H.D.Ingalls (tr.) 1990. Dhvanyaloka-Locana. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass. K.Krisnamoorthy (tr.) 1974. Dhvanyaloka (of Anandavardhana). Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass. ______. (ed.,tr.) 1977. Vakroktijivita of Kuntaka. Dharwar, Karnataka University. P.U.Naganatha Sastri (ed.,tr.) 1927. Bhamaha’s Kavyalamkara. Tanjore, Wallace Printing House. Shamasastri (tr.) 1954. Bhamaha’s Kavyalamkara. Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass. S.C.Vasu (ed.,tr.) 1891. The Astadhyayi of Panini. Vols.1 and 2. Allahabad, Rpt.Delhi, Motilal Banarsidass. 1962, 1977, 1980. A. Weber (ed.,tr.) 1858. The Vajasaneyi Pratisakhya.[A German translation].Leipzig. Indische Studien. N.L.Westergaard (ed.,tr.) 1841. Sanskrit Dhatupatha.[A German translation].Bonn. Konig. W.D.Whitney (ed.,tr.)1862. The Atharva-veda Pratisakhya:Text, Translation and Notes. NewHaven. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 7:333-615. [Reprint: (=CSSt. 20) (Varanasi: Chowkhamba, 1962).] Santosh K. Sareen President of IASA (Indian Association for the Study of Australia). Professor and Chairperson at the Centre for English Studies, School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India.. Tradução & Comunicação: Revista Brasileira de Tradutores • Nº. 20, Ano 2010 • p. 77-87.
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