Reading Translation As Resistance

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 40 Number 1 Article 12 November 2020 Translating Loss – Reading Translation as Resistance Huzaifa Pandit University of Kashmir, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Pandit, Huzaifa. 2020. Translating Loss – Reading Translation as Resistance. HIMALAYA 40(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol40/iss1/12 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Research Article is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Translating Loss – Reading Translation as Resistance Huzaifa Pandit The act of translation is not a linear and static subjugation and occupation – militarily and process but a circulatory and dynamic process politically. In such a scenario, translation that permits an enriching negotiation of can serve as an invaluable tool to illustrate meaning. One of the ways in which a text can be the subjectivities produced under confict. translated is by trusting that its meaning can be Through an explanation of the mechanisms of employed outside the local contexts in which translations of two poems, Nasir Kazmi’s ghazal it was produced, and employed to comment on (a poem in Urdu writen in rhyming couplets): contexts far removed from it in time and space. Kuch tau ehsaas-e-ziyaan tha pehlay and Saaqi Faruqi’s (کچھ تو ِاحساس زیاں تھا پہلے) This trusting then allows for the translated texts to intervene in the negotiations between nazm (a poem in Urdu which is writen on a poly-systems, as marginal poly-systems seek single subject and employs both rhymed, blank a more pronounced space in the literary and and free verse) Khali boray main Zakhmi Billa I propose to .(خالی بورے میں زخمی ِبﻻ) cultural networks in a particular space. This negotiation would constitute the restitution demonstrate that the latent possibilities of meaning which is the key to a successful and potentialities in the source text can be translation. By an analysis of translations, and adequately employed to enrich the Kashmiri a close reading of the translated poems, this English literary poly-system. paper proposes to illustrate this strategy as Keywords: translation, resistance, Urdu poetry, trauma, involved in the production of resistance poetry Kashmir, protest in Kashmir. Resistance poetry can be conceived of as a poetry produced to oppose and archive subjectivity produced under conditions of 92 | HIMALAYA Fall 2020 We found the country of language tradition to which Kashmiri poetic tradition belongs. Even How great was the desolation before! as Kashmir has a rich poetic tradition, its translational -Nasir Kazmi tradition is underdeveloped. It is hard to pinpoint the exact reasons for this. While some blame must necessarily Introduction be accrued by the systematic and strategic disempower- ment of its cultural and political institutions, Kashmiri The act of translation has been envisioned in various was introduced as a compulsory subject at primary school ways throughout history. The continuity of the necessity level only in 2008 owing to a long history of colonization, it of translation as the only means to overcome linguistic also follows from the self-contained nature of the literary barriers has meant that the processes of translation have culture which has largely resisted external influences till been perpetually debated. The term translation itself recently. Although a few translations like Maxim Gorky’s has been the subject of much debate and does not lend Mother by A. M. Lone, Prem Chand’s Godan by Roshan, easily to one fixed meaning. Translation could “refer to Tagore’s Chokher Bali by Professor P.N. Pushp, and M.K. the general subject field, the product (the text that has Gandhi’s “My Experiments with Truth” by Radio Kashmir been translated) or the process (the act of producing the have been undertaken, (Bhat 2016: 8), no critical writing or translation otherwise known as translating)” (Munday commentary on the ethics, methodology and practices of 2001: 4-5). However, the common definition of translation translation exists, at least not in the public domain. Even involves the translator “changing an original written text a work most recent as Neerja Matoo’s The Mystic and the (Source Text) in the original verbal language (the source Lyric - Four Women Poets from Kashmir (2019), based on the language or SL) into a written text (Target Text or TT) in a translation of the selected works of the woman poets Lal different verbal language (The Target Language)” (ibid: 5). Ded, Habba Khatoon, Rupa Bhavani, and Arnimal, is silent In the realm of literature, this debate over meanings and on the issue of the modes and practice of translation. In processes has been particularly vigorous as translation an earlier interview, however, when asked specifically here deals with transmission of the metaphoric and about her practice, she asserted the translator must have symbolic meanings. The debate has ranged between a close a feel for both languages, so as to make translation an reproduction of the original in the translated language effortless exercise (Matoo 2018). Besides, she proposes to retain the impression of foreignness to an attitude of absolute fidelity to the text: “I don’t take liberties with the creative infidelity with the host text i.e. from translation text. Some people have a different theory that you have to transcreation. Naturally, this has led to a shift in the to be creative while translating but I think you have to way the translated texts are viewed. While earlier, the be very humble and all you can do is try to be faithful to translated text was privileged over the translation, tran- what the writer is trying to say” (Matoo 2018). Rehman screation demands a certain autonomy of the translated Rahi, the Kashmiri poet and academician of renown, text. This shift calls into question the notions of equiv- makes a fleeting allusion to the translational process in an alence and function. Lawrence Venuti, the translation interview, asserting the impossibility of equivalence, and theorist points out that there is no complete agreement therefore highlighting the agency of translator: on the exact contours of the term ‘equivalence’. It has If you look for the meaning of a word in dictionary, been associated variously with ‘accuracy,’ ‘adequacy’, you will have the definition there but without the ‘correctness,’ ‘correspondence,’ ‘fidelity’, or ‘identity’. In emotional meaning and without its cultural back- all its variable associations, the term refers to the manner ground. In the dictionary you will find equivalents, in which the translation connects to the foreign text. He but emotionally and culturally words are differ- refers to function as the latent potential in the translated ent. For example, in Kashmiri when someone sees text to produce diverse effects ranging from communi- a young girl and says, “yeha che katej heish bolaan cating information to producing a response comparable Now try translating this Kashmiri expression into to the one produced in its own culture by the foreign text English. Will you say ‘she speaks like a swallow!’ Or (Venuti 2000: 4). will you say in Urdu — “yae ababeel ke tarah boltee The debate surrounding translation especially the question hai”! So it completely distorts the meaning and it of equivalence, and transference of potential acquires a even becomes derogatory” (Rahi 2014). richer and more complex nuance in case of non-western In absence of any exhaustive paradigm of translation in traditions like the Indian translation tradition. The same Kashmir, the translator must rely, therefore, on other complexity is a feature of the larger South-Asian literary paradigms to locate his practice. A cue can be taken from HIMALAYA Volume 40, Number 1 | 93 the post-colonial translational paradigm, which examines translation as “a way not only of thinking but of being translation as a site of contestation—where questions and acting in the world” on a “few cosmopolitan ideals: a of historicity, and articulations of power are articulated concern for freedom, openness to and tolerance of others, and performed. In her seminal book, ‘Siting Translation’, and a respect for difference”, Nayar views translation as Tejaswani Niranjana points out that translation provides a vehicle of “micro-cosmopolitanism” that diversifies and a context “of contesting and contested stories attempting complicates smaller political units (ibid). to account for, to recount, the asymmetry and inequality Such translation calls in effect for creation of narrative of relations between peoples, races and languages” communities, which will harness the power of translation (Niranjana 1992: 1). She offers a model of translation to transcend limitations of the language, but also bring an that refutes the conceptual economy of colonial reality audience to a textual event that especially accommodates assumed to be unmediated, transparent, and unproblem- contestations of communal identity and action. In spaces atic, while translation is imagined as a semantic vehicle constituted from violence,

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