Fifty Years of the Song of the Road: A ‘Good’ Translation or a ‘Successful’ One?
What is a translation – a product or a process? For us, who are in the field of academics and who try to engage often with the activity called translation, it is a process. But for the reader, it is a product and products can either be good or bad. Yet, when we were taught Translation Studies as part of our curriculum at the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University, we were told that there is nothing called a ‘good’ translation or a ‘bad’ translation, translations can only be either successful or unsuccessful. Translations have a sociology of their own, more so in case of Indian texts being translated into English and/or other foreign languages. One may be reminded of Andre Lefevere’s ‘Introduction’ to Translation/History/Culture: A Source Book which says, “translations are made by people who do not need them for people who cannot read the originals.” It complies with the age-old Italian concept of posing the traduttore (translator) as a traditore (traitor). The imposition of one language and culture considered to be ‘superior’ on an ‘inferior’ one is an old colonial practice. How do we, then, determine the ‘success’ of a translation? One sure-shot way of determining lies in the reception and survival of the text.
