Translation and Modernity. By T Vijayendra

By Dilip -

September 30 is celebrated as World Translation Day every year. Translators are unsung heroes and heroines of communication. Even while enjoying translations of great works in foreign languages, we rarely notice the names of the translators and it is rarer still, if we do register the names, for us to be interested in or try to know anything about them. So it is a good idea to celebrate at least one day in a year as Translation Day and understand importance of translation in literature, particularly for a developing country.

The father of modern Chinese literature, Lu Xun, in his famous essay, 'Waiting for a Genius', describes the work of a translator as creating the soil which can nurture a new audience for great literature. He was writing in the early part of the twentieth century and building grounds for the birth of modern literature. He himself, most of his life, translated and helped young authors. Many great modern authors of our sub continent began their literary career by translating.

Translators are doing a great service to their mother tongue. They are creating an appreciation of great literature among their own people and thus paving ground–building soil–for the birth of new and modern literature in their languages. Simply put, translation means expressing what is said in one language in another. Is it possible? Yes, as Chomsky put it, there is a universal translatability of any language into any other language in the world. Then why do some people say that this cannot be translated or this is a bad translation?...

https://www.frontierweekly.com/articles/vol-53/53-22-25/53-22-25-Translation%20and%20Modernity.html

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