Assignment P 208

 The Role and Scope of  Translation Studies in the 21st Century

Name- Kishan Jadav

Assignment Paper - 208 comparative Literature & Translation studies

Roll no-10

Enrollment no-3069206420200008

Email id- jadavkishan55555@gmail.com

Batch-2020-22 (MA Sem-VI)

Submitted to- S. B. Gardi Department of English,

Maharaja Krishnakumarsinhji Bhavnagar University

Introduction

Translation Studies - Translation is a discipline in its own right: not merely a minor branch of comparative literary study, nor yet a specific area of linguistics but a vastly complex field with many far-reaching ramifications. Translation is perceived as an intrinsic part of the foreign language teaching process, it has rarely been studied for its own sake.

The 1980s was a decade of consolidation for the fledgling discipline known as Translation Studies. Having emerged onto the world stage in the late 1970s, the subject began to be taken seriously, and was no longer seen as an unscientific field of inquiry of secondary importance. Throughout the 1980s interest in the theory and practice of translation grew steadily. Then, in the 1990s, Translation Studies finally came into its own, for this proved to be the decade of its global expansion. Once perceived as a marginal activity, translation began to be seen as a fundamental act of human exchange. Today, interest in the field has never been stronger and the study of translation is taking place alongside an increase in its practice all over the world.

The electronic media explosion of the 1990s and its implications for the processes of globalization highlighted issues of intercultural communication. Not only has it become important to access more of the world through the information revolution, but it has become urgently important to understand more about one’s own point of departure. Globalization has its antithesis, as has been demonstrated by the world-wide renewal of interest in cultural origins and in exploring questions of identity. Translation has a crucial role to play in aiding understanding of an increasingly fragmentary world. The translator, as the Irish scholar Michael Cronin has pointed out, is also a traveler, someone engaged in a journey from one source to another. The twenty-first century surely promises to be the great age of travel, not only across space but also across time.1 Significantly, a major development in translation studies since the 1970s has been research into the history of translation, for an examination of how translation has helped shape our knowledge of the world in the past better equips us to shape our own futures.

Translation Studies is an emerging discipline of research and profession in the Twenty first century. It has emerged and flourished as a new field with a lot of ideas springing from anthropology, philosophy, literature, linguistics, literary studies, lexicology, semiotics, computer science and many other fields. Both written and spoken translations have played a crucial role in inter-human communication throughout history. The term “translation studies' ' was coined by the Amsterdam-based American scholar James S. Holmes in his paper “The name and nature of translation studies is considered as a foundational text for this discipline. The word translation itself derives from a Latin term meaning "to bring or carry across". The Ancient Greek term is 'metaphrasis' and this gives us the term 'metaphrase' as contrasted with 'paraphrase' This distinction has laid at the heart of the theory of translation throughout its history: Cicero and Horace employed it in Rome, Dryden continued to use it in the seventeenth century and it still exists today in the discussion around "fidelity versus transparency" or "formal equivalence versus dynamic equivalence". The first known translations are those of the Sumerian epic Gilgamesh into Asian languages from the second millennium BC. In India, later Buddhist monks translated Indian sutras into Chinese and Roman poets and adapted Greek texts The Bible.

The Nature Of Translation: 

The scope of translation is bright and beautiful in the coming years because it is the only medium where different people come to know different works. Today many people think that anyone who knows more than one language can become a translator or interpreter. But it is only a half-truth because a good translator must have good background knowledge of both languages, subject knowledge, social and cultural competence and apart from it he/ she need advanced language skills for the medium of communication.BasudebChakraborty says that a good translation shows “a spontaneous and creative process of journey of a theme and a meta theme from one linguistic framework to another”. Translation is a production process of conveying meaning and information underlying the source language into target language with the help of linguistic and cultural convenience.“The fact that we are able to produce equivalent in English for every word does not mean that we can give an adequate translation of the text. Translation implies that we have capacity to enter into the mind, the world, and the culture of the speakers or writers and we can express their thoughts in a manner that is not only parallel to the original, but also acceptable to the target language”. We need to be faithful and loyal to the original text while translating and it is necessary to focus more on ideas and concepts than the surface meaning of the text. The work of translation requires the theoretical knowledge and understanding of source text and translators bound to make a compact relationship between two different domains of knowledge.

Indian Perspectives: Medieval Examples 

India, a country of unity in diversity with multilingual and multicultural aspects has an aged old history where translation has been worked for a long time and still continues to play a pivotal role. It is very pertinent to talk about Indian perspectives on the translation of classic literature. Indian translation had not been in the limelight till the 19th Century. Throughout the middle ages, translation of Sanskrit‟s classics like the epics and puranas continued to be retold, adapted, subverted and translated without proper consideration about the formal equivalence. For instance, Kambana Tamil translator, took all freedom while translating Valmiki‟sRamayana The Role and Scope of Translation Studies in the 21st Century www.iosrjournals.org 2 | Page into Tamil version. He followed the Dravidian epic structure and modified the text according to the taste of readers. There are still some versions among these texts from Valmiki‟s Ramayana, TulsiDas‟RamCharitManas and folk Ramayana. Religious texts have played a great role in the history of translation. One of the oldest examples can be cited from the Old Testament of Bible into Greek in the 3rd century. Saint Jerome, the patron saint of translation, produced a Latin Bible in the 4th century AD which was preferred as a text for the Roman Catholic Church for many years to come. Translation of the Bible was and is a controversial question which emerges and re-emerge time to time and this sort of split in ideas creates a big gulf among Christianity due to the disparity prevailing in the versions of the Bible. Martin Luther King Jr. is being the „first European to propose that one translates satisfactorily only toward his own language‟ which statement still is true in modern translation theory.The Role of Translation in Literature is vital and pivotal because the importance and flavor of classic works can be reached to a number of readers by means of translation only. If Rabindranath Tagore‟s Gitanjali would not have been translated into English and W.B Yeats would not have written the preface of it. 

Translator Vs Interpreter 

In an age of globalization, technological advancement is cutting all boundaries and sections of society and making a global village and connected village. The emergence of the English language as an international language is a very powerful weapon where jobs for translators and interpreters are easy and available in countries like India, China, Japan, and others. Translation and interpretation are two closely related linguistics disciplines. On the surface level, the difference between translation and interpreting is only in the medium of expression: the translator interprets written text, while an interpreter translates orally. According to Prodip Dutta, a freelance translator: "Both interpreting and translation presuppose a certain love of language and deep knowledge of more than one tongue”. One must have strong command over at least two languages- the source language and the target language. Translation is an act of interpretation and recreation as well as generation of the meanings comes out the consequences of interpretations only. Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher says “there are no facts, only interpretations”. 

Translation And The Media

India is a country where translation is required especially, when one can talk about the importance of the media. The media is a tool for communication and for communication quality, human beings are different from animals. The media acts as a watchdog of the society for twenty-four hours and provides us updated news and what is happening in the world and around the world. Translation in the media plays a determining role because by the act of translation, translators translate a piece of news into another language and present it to the mass of people. The media molds and shapes the people‟s opinions and behavior, and politics of one‟s country as well. Today the relevance of media is essential especially in the democratic countries like India etcetera. That‟s why the pertinent translation is indispensable in the practice of the media in the present scenario.

Tools to aid translation 

We must remember that while tools do not maketh the man, a worker without his tools does very little work. A translator would therefore need access to certain materials like: 

•    Good monolingual/bilingual dictionaries 

•    Encyclopedias 

•    Thesaurus in both languages (SL & TL)

 •    Grammar books in both languages (SL & TL) 

•    Guides to usage 

ICT support can also be relied upon in terms of: 

•    Document production 

•    Information search and retrieval – locating background,  reference material, locating clients, understanding their culture and background 

•    On-line encyclopedias, dictionaries etc

•    Liaising with fellow translators 

•    Work production Translation Today 55 Kirti Kapur

However, one has to use all these tools with intelligence and caution. Despite being in the digital age, one cannot depend entirely on computers. A human interface is essential for good translations. Translation is not merely a technical skill, it is an art form, not subservient to the original. The translator thus has to be equipped with adequate preparation and creativity along with linguistic skills to be able to transcreate a text. Translation both as metaphor and practice plays a central role.

 Conclusion

Therefore, Translation is very necessary for democratization of knowledge, social harmony and peace, and ensuring human happiness in the new world integrated by technology and economy. In brief, the English language has become a backbone language so is the translation in the 21th century. As English is for all so „translation is for all‟.''To be a translator, knowing the two languages is not enough. A literary and creative bent of mind is essential.``MallikarjunPatil highlights the importance of translation and he points out that adaptation is a “still another mode of translation.” Today why Shakespeare is so famous and fabulous to us is because his works have been translated into regional languages. Shakespeare‟s messages have reached the masses of the people's translation. Many of his works have been adapted for films and TV shows. The translator serves as a mediator between cultures and systematizes and generalizes the process of translation. A group of individuals, professional translators, linguists, and literary scholars exchange their views on translation and its power to influence literary traditions and to shape cultural and economic identities.

Works Cited

Kapur, Kirti. “Role of Translation in the 21st Century.” Ntm, p. 12. Online, https://www.ntm.org.in/download/ttvol/Volume8/Articles/Article_2.pdf. Accessed 18 March 2022.

Sharma, Shivnath Kumar. “The Role and Scope of Translation Studies in the 21 Century.” IOSR, no. 2279-0837, p. 4. Online, https://www.iosrjournals.org/iosr-jhss/papers/Conf.TS/Volume-1/1.%2001-04.pdf. Accessed 18 March 2022.