AMU Faculty Member Delivers Talk on ‘Issues in Translation’
Aligarh : “Translation is an act to break linguistic and cultural confinement. All the languages are not same in their structures that is why to find translation equivalence of one language in another is not an easy task, similarly to translate cultural specific terms is a challenging job for a translator”, stated Prof MJ Warsi, Chairman, Department of Linguistics, Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), while delivering an invited talk on “Issues in Translation” at an special event of ‘Maithili Sahitya Sansthan’, Patna, organised to celebrate the “Maithili Diwas”.
Prof Warsi’s translations of the award winning novel “Bhamti” by Usha Kiran Khan in Urdu, and “Dakhma” by Baig Ehsas in Maithili were released during the event.
In his lecture Prof Warsi said, ‘translation is a complex process, and to translate from one language to another and also from one culture to another is always not as easy as it seems to be. Translation fails when we are unable to find translation equivalence of source language in target language’.
Elaborating further he said “linguistic as well as cultural differences are found among languages. Linguistic structures that are found in one language may not be found in another. In the same manner cultural and ritual practices that are part of one culture may not be a part of another one that results in some kind of untranslatability”.
“When it is a matter of language the resulting untranslatability is termed as Linguistic Untranslatability while when we are dealing with culture the untranslatability that occurs, is known as Cultural Untranslatability” added Prof Warsi.
He said linguistic untranslatability occurs due to linguistic differences between source language and target language, or lack of correspondence between two languages. It occurs due to ambiguity, polysemy etc.
“On the other hand, Cultural Untranslatability occurs when situational features are conventionally relevant in source language and are completely absent in target language” stressed Prof Warsi, elaborating that people of every society have their own way of living, they use a specific language, have some distinguished characteristics of behaviour that identify them as member of a particular social group. A translator cannot translate the cultural context and if cultural contexts are ignored or misinterpreted by the translator, ‘translation shifts’ might occur and source language text may be misunderstood by its recipients.
Explaining with examples Prof Warsi pointed out, in English, brothers and sisters on father’s side as well as on mother’s side will be translated as same i.e. ‘cousin’, which cannot be considered the exact translation for Hindi; i.e. Khalere Bhai, Mumere Bhai, Chachere Bhai, Phupere Bhai etc.
During the event, Prof. Shiv Kumar Mishra welcomed the guests and Bhairab Lal Das, Secretary, ‘Maithili Sahitya Sansthan’ proposed vote of thanks.