Abhinaba Chatterjee
Independent Research Scholar. ORCID ID: 0000-0003-4951-5753. Email: abhinaba0000@gmail.com
Volume 12, Number 5, 2020 I Full Text PDF
DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v12n5.rioc1s24n3
Abstract
In this paper, I attempt to show that deconstruction and its practices should not be read as intimations towards plurality or relativism in translation, but should rather be utilised as a powerful analytical tool, a way of reading and writing with heightened awareness. In order to arrive at this conclusion, I discuss différance and the play of the trace in the context of the cont(r)act between two texts that are in a relationship of translation. I further argue that plurality as contained in Derrida’s différance is not a directive, but that the translator has to be aware of the existence of plurality and to take into account that the reader also participates in and contributes to this plurality.This has caused the binary oppositions such as original/translation, literal/free, alienating/naturalizing, etc., to lose ground and give way to new conceptualizations. The cultural turn in translation studies in the first half of the 1990s is an outcome of this paradigm shift. Moreover, the relations between translation and ideology, power, and identities have begun to hold a significant place in translation theory. I argue that all literature is subject to ‘afterlife,’ a continual process of translation. From this starting point, I seek to answer two questions. Firstly, how texts demonstrate this continual translation; secondly, how texts should be read if they are understood as constantly within translation. To answer these questions, I will develop a model of textuality that holds afterlife as central, and a model of reading based on this concept of textuality.
Keywords: Translation, Deconstruction, After-life, Textuality