Day 1 - National Workshop On Translating Gujarati Literature into English: Practices and Approaches

Hello Readers,

This time my curiosity lead me to……….

                                     

  National Workshop

 On

Translating Gujarati Literature into English: Practices and Approaches

Organized by Gujarat Sahitya Academy and UGC DRS 2, Department of English, Faculty of Arts, The Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara.

Though the workshop was for 2 days before a week all the participants were given some Pre-workshop task of translating some prose and poems from Gujarati into English. The rough drafts had to be brought by the participants in the workshop.

Day 1 – 22nd March 2018

·       Inaugural Session -

The workshop began with an inaugural session at 10.00 am. Prof.Hitesh Raviya (I/c Head, Department of English) welcomed all the guests and the Participants. Then Prof.Sachin Ketkar (Coordinator, UGC SAP DRS 2, Department of English) gave an introduction to the workshop. The main aim of this workshop was not only to study the process of translation but also to reread and analyze translation.

The workshop was inaugurated by Dr Ajaysinh Chauhan (Registrar, Gujarat Sahitya Academy, Gandhinagar) and Prof.Lajwanti Chatani (I/c Dean, Faculty of Arts).

Lajwanti Ma’am has a wonderful command of language and subjects. It was a pleasure to listen to her.

·       Keynote Address –

Prof.Avadhesh Kumar Singh was the keynote speaker of the workshop.

He brought to light the problems related to translation and documentation of translation. Here are some brief points of this keynote lecture.

If any student, teacher or researcher remains confined to a particular certain area that is academic suicide. So all of them need to discover new areas rather than limiting to a box.

According to Sir, what we lack in Gujarat is not a translation but discussions and criticism of translation. The issue is that how many translations we know.  A possible account of Historiography of translation is not known.

The basic need we have is documentation of the translations as much as possible and as soon as possible. We just have little history of our Literature.

Can we think of Western Civilization without translation of Greek and Latin texts?

We the teachers of English who has Gujarati as a First Language should take the initiative. As a language of speaking, work is done but as a language of thought, work is to be done.

Sir also said that there is no particular theory of translation. The theories are borrowed from other disciplines.  Emotive use of language should be taken into account while translating not the literal language. Discourse said and unsaid taken in view is the basic unit of translation.

This way Sir created an astonishing atmosphere to enter the world of translation.

At last, he said that we should not waste time in discussing the process of translation but we should practice it.

The Keynote lecture was then followed by three sessions.

·       Session 1 –

The first session was an interesting and interacting session where the participants presented their rough drafts of translations. In this session, participants had to share their translation work on a short story ‘GruhPravesh’ written by Suresh Joshi.

The subject experts - Prof.E.V.Ramakrishnan, Dr Santosh Dash and Prof. Rakesh Desai shared their important views about the activity.

As per them, Translation is a choice-making process as to how you interpret for your readers. The translator engages with the texts. The tone is important. One should capture the tone.

In translation, interpretation becomes more important than equivalence and you have to choose among the interpretations.

After the reading of the translations done by the participants, we discussed the already existing translations of this short story done by the author himself and Digish Mehta.

·       Session 2 –

Session 2 was by the subject experts talk about Researching Indian Literature in English Translation: Approaches and Methods.

Prof.Krishnan said that Translation demands years of devotion. So never expect to come out best on the first attempt. It should be promoted so that it goes beyond borders. We also need a critical study of translation so that it can have a scope of improvement.

He also ponders upon the question of whether the translation is good or bad. Sir said that Translations can be better but not final or perfect.

Instead of looking from a linguistic point, we should see how translation is done in form of subculture, place, time, space, ambience and cultural mobility.

While Prof.Dash said that this process is endless. We cannot cover everything. Something that is left out while trying our best is how we can appreciate others. He also said that there is a general norm that our sources are rich and we don’t need to translate. That is an escapist attitude towards translation.

 All the translation is regarding contextuality.

Prof.Dipanita Dutta said that translation is not about crossing only the language boundaries but many more boundaries. Mainly mental boundaries. She has translated many books from Bengali into English.

For translation, it is necessary to have command over more than two languages.

·       Session 3 –

Again this session was an interactive session where the participants discussed the rough drafts of the poem of Ravji Patel.

One of the participants Ms Neela Pandya gave a very good interpretation and gave a new insight to look at this poem.

We also discussed the already existing translation of the poem done by Deepak Mehta and Pradip.N.Khandwalla.

The amazing day ended with a new task for the next day.  When the day began Prof.A.K.Singh Sir had said that workshops are always fruitful to attend rather than Conferences or Seminars because here you can learn and can implement also what you learnt. Sir is absolutely right!!!!

The first day was also followed by dinner which I, unfortunately, couldn't join.