topics: |  translation | culture | postcolonial | philosophy

This is an ambitious work that looks at the concept of translation in a
broad historical sense, tracing its origins to the colonial era, and
showing how the very act of translation, even today, is permeated by the
colonial attempt of emphasizing a type of cultural superiority.

Fascinating premise:

	translation depends on the Western philosophical notions of reality,
	representation, and knowledge. Reality is seen as something
	unproblematic, "out there"; knowledge involves a representation of
	this reality; and representation provides direct, unmediated access
	to a transparent reality.

Much of it is of great interest in India, which provides most of
Niranjana's examples.  Through English education, which still legitimizes
ruling-class power in formerly colonized countries, the dominant
representations put into circulation by translation come to be seen as
"natural" and "real."

Some other examples deal with translations from Allama Prabhu (Kannada),
including Ramanujan's Speaking of Siva.

Translation : Origins in Colonialism

The main thesis is that translation originated in the attempt by the
colonial to justify the colonial enterprise itself by revealing a special
perspective of the native that only the colonial was able to perceive.
Niranjana hopes to highlight the "practice of translation that is then
employed for the purposes of colonial domination":

	Translation as a practice shapes, and takes shape within, the
	asymmetrical relations of power that operate under colonialism.  What
	is at stake here is the representation of the colonized, who need to
	be produced in such a manner as to justify colonial domination, and
	to beg for the English book by themselves. In the colonial context, a
	certain conceptual economy is created by the set of related questions
	that is the problematic of translation.

Excerpts

	The passion for English knowledge has penetrated the most obscure,
	and extended to the most remote parts of India.  The steam boats,
	passing up and down the Ganges, are boarded by native boys, begging,
	not for money, but for books. . .. Some gentlemen coming to Calcutta
	were astonished at the eagerness with which they were pressed for
	books by a troop of boys, who boarded the steamer from an obscure
	place, called Comercolly. A Plato was lying on the table, and one of
	the party asked a boy whether that would serve his purpose. "Oh yes,"
	he exclaimed, "give me any book; all I want is a book." The gentleman
	at last hit upon the expedient of cutting up an old Quarterly Review,
	and distributing the articles among them.
			- Charles Trevelyan,
			  On the Education of the People of India

In creating coherent and transparent texts and subjects, translation
participates - across a range of discourses - in the fixing of colonized
cultures, making them seem static and ~nchanging rather than historically
constructed.

Niranjana's goal is
	to explore the place of translation in contemporary Euro-American
	literary theory (using the name of this "discipline" in a broad
	sense) through a set of interrelated readings. I argue that the
	deployment of "translation" in the colonial and post-colonial
	contexts shows us a way of questioning some of the theoretical
	emphases of post-structuralism.

"The Indians would receive Liberty as a curse instead of a blessing, and would reject it as a vase of poison.." - William Jones

By 1918, European powers had colonized 85 percent of the earth's surface. Not until after World War I (referred to by some non-Western writers as the European Civil War) was the process of decolonization initiated. Of course, we cannot speak here of a swift or complete transition to a postcolonial society, for to do so would be to reduce the ruptured complexities of colonial history to insignificance. The term decolonization can refer only crudely to what has, in the language of national liberation struggles, been called the "transfer of power," usually from the reigning colonial power to an indigenous elite.

Although one cannot see as negligible the importance of the transfer, it
would be naive to believe it marks the "end" of domination, for the strength
of colonial discourse lies in its enormous flexibility. By colonial discourse
I mean the body of knowledge, modes of representation, strategies of power,
law, discipline, and so on, that are employed in the construction and
domination of "colonial subjects."

Translation as displacement

By now it should be apparent that I use the word translation not just to
indicate an interlingual process but to name an entire problematic.

It is a set of questions, perhaps a "field,"
charged with the force of all the terms used, even by the traditional
discourse on translation, to name the problem, to
translate translation.  [Is this sentence saying anything?]

Translatio (Latin) and metapherein (Greek) at once suggest movement,
disruption, displacement. So does Ubersetzung (German).  The thrust of
displacement is seen also in other Latin terms such as transponere,
transferre, reddere, vertere.  In my writing, translation refers to

(a) the problematic of translation that authorizes and is authorized by
    certain classical notions of representation and reality; and
(b) the problematic opened up by the post-structuralist critique of the
    earlier one, and that makes translation always the "more," or the
    supplement, in Derrida's sense.

My study of translation does not make any claim to solve the dilemmas of
translators. It does not propose yet another way of theorizing translation
to enable a more foolproof "method" of "narrowing the gap" between cultures
...  it seeks rather to think through this gap,. this difference, to
explore the positioning of the obsessions and desires of translation, an
thus to describe the economies within which the sign of translation
circulates.

My concern is to probe the absence, lack, or repression of an awareness of
asymmetry and historicity in several kinds of writing on translation.

Translation as part of the colonial discourse

That translation became part of the colonial discourse of Orientalism is
obvious from late-eighteenth-century British efforts to obtain information
about the people ruled by the merchants of the East India
Company. A. Maconochie, a scholar connected with the University of
Edinburgh, urged the British sovereign (in 1783 and again in 1788) to take
steps "as may be necessary for discovering, collecting and translating
whatever is extant of the ancient works of the Hindoos."  Maconochie hoped
that by these translations European astronomy, "antiquities," and other
sciences would be advanced...
[Quoted in Dharampal, The Beautiful Tree: Indigenous Indian Education
in the Eighteenth Century (New pelhi: Biblia Impex, 1983), p. 9]

William Jones

It became clear in the projects of William Jones, who arrived in India in
1783 to take his place on the bench of the Supreme Court in Calcutta - that
translation would serve "to domesticate the Orient and thereby turn it into
a province of European learning."
[21. Said, Orientalism, p. 78.]

As translator and scholar, Jones was responsible for the most influential
introduction of a textualized India to Europe.  Within three months of his
arrival, the Asiatic Society held its first meeting with Jones as president
and Warren Hastings, the governor-general, as patron. It was primarily
through the efforts of the members of the Asiatic SOciety, themselves
administrators and officials of the East India Company's Indian Government,
that translation would help" gather in" and "rope off" the Orient. 
[Said p.78]

In a letter, Jones, whose Persian translations and grammar of Persian had
already made him famous as an Orientalist before he came to India, declared
that his ambition was "to know India better than any other European ever
knew it.,,23 His translations are said to have been read by almost everyone
in the West who was literate in the nineteenth century.
[24. A. J. Arberry, Oriental Essays: Portraits of Seven Scholars (London:
George Allen & Unwin, 1960), p. 82. ]

His works were carefully studied by the writers of the age, especially the
Germans-Goethe, Herder, and others. When Jones's new writings reached
Europe, the shorter pieces were eagerly picked up and reprinted immediately
by different periodicals. His translation of Kalidasa's Sakuntala went
through successive reprints; Georg Forster's famous German translation of
the translation came out in 1791, after which the play was translated into
other European languages as well.

Evidence for Jones's lasting impact on generations of scholars writing
about India can be found even in the preface of the 1984 IndIan edition of
his discourses and essays, where the editor, Moni Bagchee, indicates that
Indians should "try to preserve accurately and interpret the national
heritage by treading the path chalked out by Sir William Jones."

The most significant nodes of Jones's work are
	(a) the need for translation by the European, since the natives are
	    unreliable interpreters of their own laws and culture;
	(b) the desire to be a lawgiver, to give the Indians their "own"
	    laws; and
	(c) the desire to "purify" Indian culture and speak on its behalf.

The complex interconnections between these obsessions feed into a larger
discourse of improvement and education that interpellates the colonial
subject.

William Jones : On Asiatic History

		["On Asiatic History, Civil and Natural," in Discourses and
		Essays, p. 99·]

In Jones's construction of the "Hindus," they appear as a submissive,
indolent nation unable to appreciate the fruits of freedom, desirous of
being ruled by an absolute power, and sunk deeply in the mythology of an
ancient religion. In a letter, he points out that the Hindus are "incapable
of civil liberty," for "few of them have an idea of it, and those, who
have, do not wish it"
[Letters of WJ, ed. Garland Cannon 1970 (LWJ), p. 712).

Jones, a good eighteenth-century liberal, deplores the "evil" but recognizes
the "necessity" of the Hindus' being "ruled by an absolute power."  His
"pain" is "much alleviated" by the fact that the natives are much "happier"
under the British than under their former rulers. In another letter, Jones
bids the Americans, whom he admired, not to be "like the deluded, besotted
Indians, among whom I live, who would receive Liberty as a curse instead of
a blessing, if it were possible to give it them, and would reject, as a
vase of poison, that, which, if they could taste and digest it, would be
the water of life" (p. 847).

Jones's disgust is continually mitigated by the necessity of British rule
and the "impossibility" of giving liberty to the Indians. He brings up
repeatedly the idea of "Orientals" being accustomed to a despotic rule. In
his tenth annual discourse to the Asiatic Society, he says that a reader of
"history" "could not but remark the constant effect of despotism in
benumbing and debasing all those faculties which distinguish men from the
herd that grazes; and to that cause he would impute the decided inferiority
of most Asiatic nations, ancient and modern."  

The idea of the "submissive" Indians, their inability to be free, and the
native laws that do not permit the question of liberty to be raised are
thus brought together in the concept of Asian despotism. Such a despotic
rule, continued by the British, can only fill the coffers of the East India
Company: "In these Indian territories, which providence has thrown into the
arms of Britain for their protection and welfare, the religion, manners,
and laws of the natives preclude even the idea of political freedom; but
. . . our country derives essential benefit from the diligence of a placid
and submissive people" (OAH, pp. 99-100).

Usurping the past for the present

The glorious past of India, according to Jones, is shrouded in
superstition, "marked and bedecked in the fantastic robes of mythology and
metaphor" (OAH, p. 100), but the now "degenerate" and "abased" Hindus were
once "eminent in various knowledge."

This notion of an Indian Golden Age seems to contradict Jones's insistence
on the unchanging nature of Hindu society: "By Indian I mean that whole
extent of the country in which the primitive religion and languages of the
hindus prevail at this day with more or less of their ancient purity" (TAD,
p. 6). He appears to avoid the contradiction, however, by distinguishing,
although tenuously, the "religion and languages," which have not changed,
from "arts," "government," and "knowledge," which have become debased
(pp. 7-8).

Jones's distinction seems to sustain the paradoxical movement of colonial
discourse in simultaneously "historicizing" (things have become debased) as
well as "naturalizing" (things have remained unchanged) the degradation of
the natives. We shall see the same movement in the historian James Mill,
although he dismisses Jones's notion of a previous Golden Age and posits
instead an unchanging state of barbarism.

The presentation of the Indians as "naturally" effeminate as well as
deceitful often goes hand in hand in Jones's work.  In an essay on Oriental
poetry, he describes the Persians as characterized by "that softness, and
love of pleasure, that indolence, and effeminacy, which have made them an
easy prey to all the western and northern swarms." Persian poetry is said
to greatly influence the Indians, who are "soft and voluptuous, but artful
and insincere."  [Translations from Oriental Languages (TOL): v.1:138;
v.2:358]

Jones's obsession with the insincerity and unreliability of the natives is
a trope that appears in his work-usually in relation to translation-as
early as the 1777 Grammar of the Persian Language, a copy of which was
sent by Samuel Johnson to Warren Hastings.  In his preface to the Grammar,
Jones stresses the need for East India Company officials to learn the
languages of Asia.  Speaking of the increasing interest in Persian (used as
a court language in India), he puts it down to the frustration of the
British administrators at receiving letters they could not read: "It was
found highly dangerous," says Jones, "to employ the natives as
interpreters, upon whose fidelity they could not depend." 

Language : A social science lect?

While the arguments are powerful, the writing is deliberately jargonical
and this language tends to obscure the main points being made.  The
ambition of the language, seeking a different register, or even a different
lect, specific to a cabal within social science, attempts to define a
territory for the social sciences by purposefully excluding the ordinary
reader.

All disciplines emphasize words in specialized senses, and these form
compact models that convey significant aspects of the discourse.  By that
token, such specialized usages would be legitimate.  However, here it seems
that even explainable extensions of normal words are stretched and applied
in deliberately provocative ways.  For example, words such as "contested"
(appearing twice in the second sentence of the book), "problematic of",
"siting X", etc., all seem as if they could have just as well been stated
in clearer English without losing much.  The very title, with the word
"siting" points to this trend. 

Consider for instance, the opening sentence:

	In a post-colonial context the problematic of translation becomes a
	significant site for raising questions of representation, power, and
	historicity.

I am not sure how the above improves on a plainer version such as:

	When viewed from a post-colonial context, translation studies become
	significant for questioning aspects of representation, power, and
	historicity.

Using jargon perhaps conveys something to the faithful, but surely whatever
usefulness it had is obscured in unnecessary verbal dust.