Translation

The Rhetorical Uneasiness: A Study of Rebecca Whittington’s Translation of Jibanananda Das’s Malloban

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Sampriti Bhattacharyya1* , Mallika Ghosh Sarbadhikary2
 1,2Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Engineering Science and Technology, Shibpur. *Corresponding author.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 16, Issue 2, 2024. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n2.15g
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Abstract

This paper aims to explore the translation of socio-cultural and rhetorical nuances of language between Bangla and English with a case of the translation of Jibanananda Das’s 1973 novel Malloban by Rebecca Whittington in 2022. The act of translating such a rich and culturally nuanced text poses substantial challenges, as it involves the delicate balance of preserving the essence of the source text while making it accessible to a new linguistic and cultural context. In the process, the translator, whose native language is American English, is led to straddle domestication and exoticism, thus creating linguistic, semiotic, and syntactic variations in her rendition of the source language text. This paper attempts to assess the fidelity of the translation to the original work while scrutinizing the translator’s choices in capturing the intricate wordplay, colloquial expressions, metaphors, and narrative subtleties that are hallmarks of Jibanananda Das’s writing. This paper also examines the instances where the translation may inadvertently alter or dilute the original text’s impact and the implications of such alterations for readers of the translated work. Furthermore, this study delves into the emotional and cognitive dimensions of bilingual reading.

Keywords: Translation, Jibanananda, Whittington, Equivalence, challenges, domestication, foreignization, dynamic, reception.

Conflicts of Interest: The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
Funding: No funding was received for this research.
Article History:Received: 21 February 2024. Revised: 05 June 2024. Accepted: 06 June 2024. First published: 07 June 2024.
Copyright: © 2024 by the author/s.
License: License Aesthetix Media Services, India. Distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
Published by: Aesthetix Media Services, India
Citation: Bhattacharyya, S. & Sarbadhikary, M. G. (2024). The Rhetorical Uneasiness: A Study of Rebecca Whittington’s Translation of Jibanananda Das’s Malloban. Rupkatha Journal 16:2. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v16n2.15g

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Pop Song Translations by Rolando Tinio as Script and Subversion of the Marcos Regime

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[wp-svg-icons icon=”user” wrap=”i”] Niccolo Rocamora Vitug [wp-svg-icons icon=”envelop” wrap=”i”]  

Faculty at the University of Santo Tomas and PhD Scholar at the College of Music, University of the Philippines, Quezon City, Philippines.

Rupkatha Journal, Vol. 14, Issue 1, January-March, 2022, Pages 1–21. https://doi.org/10.21659/rupkatha.v14n1.17

Abstract received:  10 Feb 2021 | Complete article received: 13 June 2021 | Revised article received: 14 Aug 2021 | Accepted: 6 Sept 2021 | First Published: 5 February 2022

(This article is published under the Themed Issue Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Literary and Cultural Studies)
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Pop Song Translations by Rolando Tinio as Script and Subversion of the Marcos Regime

Abstract

Philippine National Artist for Theater and Literature Rolando Tinio was well-known for his translations. Though attention is rightfully given to the theatrical works he translated into Filipino, he is also known to have translated songs. One of the enduring sets of song translations that he made are recorded in the album “Celeste,” rendered by the singer and actress Celeste Legaspi. This album was released in 1976, not long after the establishment of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP). Then First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos had an interest in the arts, looking at it as something to uphold because it served a function in the vision of the Marcos regime. What I seek to problematize is how the song translations followed a script—in line with the ideas of music theorist Nicholas Cook—based on the said vision. Such a script, according to Michel Foucault, might be the locus of both obedience and subversion. The identification of this script will be done by a reading of a representative pop song translation by Tinio, in the context of other materials that elucidate the script of the time—from the former first couple and one who held a key position in their regime. The reading will be supported by a reading of Tinio’s last translation work, that of Nick Joaquin’s A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino, which was turned into a musical entitled Ang Larawan.

Keywords: music as script, translation, pop songs, Rolando Tinio, Teatro Pilipino, Marcos regime.

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Translation as Strategic Foreignization: A Study of the Politics of Translation in Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography

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Dr. Liju Jacob Kuriakose

Assistant Professor, Department of Language and Literature at Alliance University, Bangalore. Email:liju.kuriakose@alliance.edu.in. https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7726-0554

 Volume 13, Number 4, 2021 I Full-Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v13n4.07

Abstract

The study draws upon Lawrence Venuti’s concept of foreignization as a strategic tool employed in the translation of CK Janu’s Mother Forest: An Unfinished Autobiography. The translation works to mould an ethnic autobiography and represent a subaltern subject through explicit signifiers of subalternity, masqueraded as an attempt to “retain the flavour of Janu’s intonation and the sing-song nature of her speech in translation”. As a mode of representation, this study identifies the text as catering to a transnational publishing industry and the global academic marketplace, transforming the cultural value of an ethnic subaltern text into what Graham Huggan describes as “tawdry ethnic goods” in the late capitalist supermarket.

Keywords: Translation, Strategic Foreignization, Autobiography, Ethnic Goods

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Integrating Translation in Classroom: Facilitating Language Skills

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T. Asha Priya1 & B. Jayasridevi2

1Associate Professor, Department of English/SCD, SNS College of Engineering. Email: ashapriya2001@gmail.com

2Assistant Lecturer, Department of English/SCD, SNS College of Engineering

 Volume 10, Number 1, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n1.13

Received September 27, 2017; Revised December 11, 2017; Accepted December 30, 2017; Published February 04, 2018.

 Abstract

This paper aims at studying the effectiveness of using Grammar Translation method to teach English as a Second Language and formulating recommendations to use this method. It was observed that translation as a method when applied to language teaching practice induced a deeper insight into achieving the desired outcome of teaching. The drawback felt in this particular analysis was because of multi-lingual and diversified classrooms (students with gender and intellectual differences). Translation was not given importance to in second or foreign language classrooms all these years because it was deliberated to be misleading and restraining, discouraging students from thinking in terms of the foreign language. Translation was misinterpreted as one of the many deficient teaching methodologies of olden times. However, in the last few decades, there has been an increasing interest in translation practice in ESL classrooms. Translation, an educational instrument when it is incorporated into the language teaching practice with learning activities, (reading, listening, writing, and vocabulary development) fulfils the purpose of teaching a language. Translation activities like two sides of a coin make students communicate from the Source Language to the Target Language and vice versa. The exercise of translation encourages students to discern the differences in structure and vocabulary, to strengthen their grammatical competence and comprehending ability, to shape their own way of thinking and to correct common mistakes that could otherwise go about unnoticed, thereby helping them to enhance their reading and writing skills, during the process of translation. Translation skills if used properly by students can lead to better understanding and learning of L1.

Keywords: Integrated teaching, ESL classrooms, translation, teaching-learning process, language skills

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Entwining the Omenala and Samskara: an Indo-Nigerian Ethnographic Study of Buchi Emecheta’s Fiction

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A. Karthika Unnithan1 & Harini Jayaraman2

1Research Scholar, Department of English, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India. Email: alakkad.karthy@gmail.com

2Professor, Department of English, Amrita School of Engineering, Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Coimbatore, Tamilnadu, India

 Volume 10, Number 1, 2018 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v10n1.06

Received September 27, 2017; Revised December 11, 2017; Accepted December 30, 2017; Published February 04, 2018.

Abstract

Omenala is the Igbo word for the traditional religious practices and cultural beliefs of the Igbo people of southern Nigeria whereas Samskara is the Indian word for the cultural and traditional customs of India. The chosen topic for the study is the writings of a Nigerian author, Buchi Emecheta, since her novels reflect her Igbo heritage and represent Nigeria, more specifically Igbo society and who has also lived in her own indigenous culture and in London as well. The task at hand is an attempt at conducting an ethnographic study on the indigenous Igbo culture as seen in a few select novels of the author, simultaneously comparing it with the cultural features of India. The study also attempts to discuss the presence of cross-cultural practices as seen in the contemporary Nigerian society. The scope of study is restricted to only three of her works viz., Joys of Motherhood, Bride Price, and The Slave Girl. The basis of arguments in the study has been taken from Katherine Fishburn’s interactive reading that demands reading across cultures and also reading our own selves. She, in her book Reading Buchi Emecheta: Cross-cultural conversations, mentions that to initiate a cross-cultural conversation with a novel, involves a give-and-take, “where I question it, and it questions me.” (Pref.X). Fishburn further points out that “Though it is possible that we may never fully understand these alien practices, we may learn more of ourselves from our very inability to understand” (xiii). Based on this, a cultural study of Nigeria is taken upon in this paper while looking through the eyes of an Indian reader constantly comparing one with the other.

Keywords:  Cultural-study, ethnographic-reading, Igbos, translation, Nigerian writings, amalgamation.

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“Eugene Onegin” in the English-speaking Linguacultural Space

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N. M. Nesterova & Y. K. Popova

Perm National Research Polytechnic University, Russia. Email: zemfiera_9@mail.ru

    Volume 9, Number 4, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n4.09

Received October 31, 2017; Revised November 25, 2017; Accepted November 30, 2017; Published December 09, 2017.

Abstract

The article is devoted to the study of the way in which A.S. Pushkin’s verse novel “Eugene Onegin” is presented in the modern English-speaking linguacultural space. The most famous English-language verse translations by C. Johnston, J. Falen, D. Hofstadter and S. Mitchell, V. Nabokov’s prose-rhythmized translation and R. Clarke’s prose translation, have been chosen as research materials. In addition to literary (interlingual) translations, the British-American adaptation of the film “Eugene Onegin” directed by Martha Fiennes and the translation of this film into the Russian language became the material for the analysis. The analysis of this film allowed identifying the specifics of three types of translation of Pushkin’s text – intralinguistic, interlingual and inter-semiotic ones. As a result of the conducted study, the authors have come to the conclusion that nowadays the place of the Russian poet and his main work in the English-speaking linguacultural space is becoming more and more noticeable and significant, while the novel “Eugene Onegin” acquires a status of a “powerful text”, which forms the intertextual space around itself.

Keywords: translation, translatability (untranslatability), inter-semiotic translation, domestication, foreignization, stylization.

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The Liminal in a Diptych: A Study of Roots and the Ruminant in Bob Dylan and Kabir Suman

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Amlan Baisya1 & Dibyakusum Ray2

1Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Silchar. Orcid: 0000-0002-5966-1108. Email: amlanb.1999@gmail.com

2Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, NIT Silchar. Orcid id: 0000-0002-9537-3277. Email: dibyakusum776@gmail.com

Volume 9, Number 1, 2017 I Full Text PDF

DOI: 10.21659/rupkatha.v9n1.s05

Received March 4, 2017; Revised on June 2, Accepted June 12, 2017; Published June 15, 2017.

Abstract:

This paper compares two certain sections in the musical career of Bob Dylan and Kabir Suman to look at a possible ideological heredity–1963-65 | 1993-97– these two timelines had established Dylan and Suman in their iconic status. My argument is that there is a liminal tradition– in four separate lyrics by the two composers– that transcends their geo-temporal boundaries. Dylan’s four songs—“Blowin’ in the Wind”, “Tambourine Man”, “Farewell Angelina”, “All I Really Want to Do” have been spiritually translated by Suman in the early to  mid 90s, when he was most productive musically. These songs, amongst others, not only established Suman as an avant garde musician but also seamlessly merged with his own vision of anti-establishment and non-belonging. Dylan was writing against the imperialist capital, Suman was writing against the parliamentary Left—they both assert the same bohemianism before proceeding towards iconic stasis. Dylan, after the 60s turns towards safer, politically inert aesthetics; Suman partially removes himself from music in favor of a fledgling political career. The bohemianism or the perennial non-conformity ends for both. What is the significance of this phase? How liminal are the lyrics divided by language, time and society?

Keywords: Bob Dylan, Kabir Suman, Liminal, Roots, the Other, Translation

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Book Received and Reviewed: Chouboli and Other Stories (Vols. I & II)

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Vijaydan Detha

Translated by Christi a Merrill with Kailash Kabir

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Publisher: Katha, in collaboration with Fordham University  Press, New York 2010, New Delhi ISBN 978-81-89934-42-2Pages 184 Price:  ` 1500.00

Review by Tarun Tapas Mukherjee

Bhatter College, Paschim Medinipur, India Keep Reading

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The Essentials of Indianness: Tolerance and Sacrifice in Indian Partition Fiction in English and in English Translation

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Basudeb Chakraborti, University of Kalyani

Abstract

Indian Partition fiction, on the one hand, records man’s bestiality and savagery and on the other, attests to the fact that man is essentially sincere, committed to upholding humanity to survive and sustain itself.  The paper contends to examine the fundamental goodness of some characters, which the Indian tradition underlines. By analyzing certain characters from Chaman Nahal’s Azadi, Khuswant Singh’s Train to Pakistan, Bapsi Sidhwa’s Ice-Candy-Man, Bhisham Sahni’s Tamas, Saadat Hasan Manto’s short stories and two Indian films, Mr. and Mrs. Iyar, directed by Aparna Sen and Meghe Dhaka Tara by Ritwik Ghatak, the writer tries to bring home the truth that frenzy of insanity is not final and amidst the pall of darkness and threats of insanity, there is a ray of hope. Keep Reading

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