Second Session of UGC SAP DRS-II Seminar cum Workshop Series on Translation Studies held
Aligarh : The Department of English organized a seminar cum workshop on Translation Studies on 3rd March, second in the series of workshops on “Translating cultural, literary and historical texts related to Uttar Pradesh and Aligarh”. It was organized in online mode.
Prof Shaheena Tarannum, the acting chairperson in her welcome address spoke on the significance of translation.
The Resource Person, Prof Panchanan Mohanty (Head of the Institute of Applied Sciences and Humanities, Department of English, GLA University, Mathura) elaborated the problems of translation. He said translation is always a challenging task especially in a country like India which is both multilingual and multicultural. He also discussed why it has become necessary to always translate our literature from native languages to English? Prof Mohanty pointed out that there is hardly any dictionary from Punjabi to Malayalam or Bangla to Gujarati and so on. He said that multilingualism is as important as biodiversity. Focusing on the importance of Indian oral culture, he lamented on its being almost nonexistent. Professor Mohanty emphasised on the necessity of training for the translators. He said that merely having the knowledge of two languages does not make one a good translator. The erudite scholar proposed a hypothesis – ‘no bilingual dictionary, no authentic translation’.
As a part of the workshop, Dr Saleha Zaini, (Consultant at Al-Barkaat Institution and a former Guest Faculty, Department of English ) in her presentation shared her English translation of Kamleshwar’s Hindi short story ‘Subah Ka Sapna’. She highlighted her problems in translating various Hindi words and phrases into English. Prof Panchanan Mohanty gave probable solutions, comments and suggestions on her translation.
Prof M Rizwan Khan, coordinator, UGC SAP DRS II , in his Presidential remark highlighted the major points of discussion in the entire session and offered his insights on translation while talking about the partial equivalence in synonyms which he compared with equivalence in translation. He encouraged the research scholars to acquire translation skills to use them in life. He requested Prof Panchanan Mohanty to provide suggestions on various papers on Translation Studies that the Department offers to its students.
The session was conducted jointly by Soniya Tufail Khan and Maria Shahid, Research Scholars, Department of English. The programme was well attended and a detailed question and answer session was also held.