Translation In Creative Literature

Journey of Translation from Source Language Text to Target Language Text: A Critical Study

Furrukh Faizan Mir Research Scholar, Department of English University of Kashmir, Hazratbal.

Abstract

The present paper is an attempt to trace the history of translation right from the time when writing was not introduced to the present day century where translation has become an inevitable activity. The paper further critically teases out the process of translation, establishing it as a critical, creative and cultural activity and not merely as a mechanical activity concerned with finding just lexical equivalents. Further, endeavour is made to bring out thoroughly the various difficulties faced while making translation in general

Translation of creative literature which finds its most authentic expression in poetry is even more problematic than other genres like novel, prose and short-story. It is because the language of creative literature, especially, that of poetry, has the quality of concretion, vividness and exuberance as opposed to the language of abstraction, generally found in various kinds of informative literature. Poetry incorporates emotional, psychological and imaginative experiences and not simply knowledge and information, and such experiences find voice in figures of speech such as metaphor, simile, images, symbols, etc. On top of that, poetry uses language dialectically not referentially as expressed in features like irony, paradox, conceit, etc. Together, these two things lead to infinite suggestiveness. Then, there is the quintessential quality of music in poetry that finds utterance in the phonetic sounds and matrix of

Likewise, in the verse by Mahmmud Gami the music created by the repetition of the initial (m) sound found in the words mari, mande and madanwaro is tough to maintain while rendering the verse into English. It is in wake of the above mentioned difficulties faced by the translators that we find different theories put forward to tackle them. There are three major names in the theory of translation namely, J.C. Catford, Eugene A. Nida and Peter Newmark. Catford (b. 1917) in his A Linguistic Theory of Translation (1965), defines translation as the substitution of source language text material by an comparable target language material. He defines translation as an equivalence relation. He (1965: 21) states that “the central problem of translation practice is that of finding TL translation equivalents. The core of translation theory is that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence”. Catford’s theory of translation is a theory of meaning. He thinks of meaning as the property of language, that is to say, a source language text has a source language meaning and a target language text has a target language meaning. His theory also brings out the distinction between translation and transference. He clearly states that source language texts are neither absolutely translatable nor absolutely untranslatable. Detailing the