On Translating a Tamil Poem -A.K. Ramanujan

This blog is a response to a task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad Sir. The syllabus of the Department of English, MKBU includes paper no.- 208 Comparative Literature and Translation studies which includes around 9 articles. We (students) are assigned a task of classroom presentation of assigned articles in a pair. In this blog we are supposed to write abstract, key points / arguments and concluding remarks on all two articles of Unit 3 of paper Comparative Literatures and Translation Studies. It also includes the recording of class presentations presented by respective students. Blogger and her partner have made a presentation on the third article, presentation and a video of a particular article is embedded (as per the task).

ARTICLE 1

“Translation and Literary History: An Indian View”

Ganesh Devy

[This article is taken from ‘Postcolonial Translation: Theory and Practice

(Ed. Susan Bassnett and Haish Trivedi)]

ARTICLE 2

On Translating a Tamil Poem

-A.K. Ramanujan

(From collected essays of A.K Ramanujan ed. Vijay Dharwadkar)

The article is divided into three parts and its trajectory moves from the history of Tamil Literature to its attempts of translation, problems of translation and also gives solutions for it.

Part I

Ramanujan begins his article with a question: How does one translate a poem from another time, another culture, another language? Over two thousand Tamil poems of different lengths, by over four hundred poets, arranged in nine anthologies, have survived through politics, wars, poverty, nature and all dangers. The subject of this paper is translation, the transport of poems from classical Tamil to modem English.

The chief difficulty of translation is its impossibility. Frost once even identified poetry as that which is lost in translation. Once we accept that as a premise of this art, we can proceed to practice it, or learn.

Ramanujan questions: How shall we divide up and translate this poem? What are the units of Translation?

He begins with sound. The sound system of Tamil is very different from English.

E.g.: Old Tamil has 6 nasal Consonants while English has 3.

Tamils have long and short vowels while English has diphthongs and glides. Etc

It is impossible to translate the phonology of one language into another even if it is a culturally related language. If we try and even partially succeed in mimicking the sounds we may lose everything else, the syntax, meanings, and the poem itself.

Further he talks about metre, as metre is a second-order organization of the sound system of a language. Tamil metre depends on the presence of long vowels and double consonants, and on closed and open syllables defined by such vowels and consonants.

For instance, in The first word of the above poem, annay, the first syllable is heavy because it is closed (an-), the second is heavy because it has a long vowel (-nay). English has a long tradition of end-rhymes-but Tamil has a long tradition of second syllable consonant-rhymes.

Looking at the Grammar briefly, Tamil has no copula verbs for equational sentences in the present tense, as in English, e.g., 'Tom is a teacher'; no degrees of adjectives as in English, e.g., 'sweet, sweeter, sweetest’;

no articles like 'a, an, the': and So on.

Tamil expresses the semantic equivalents of these grammatical devices by various other means. The lies and ambiguities of one language are not those of another.

No translation can be 'literal,' or 'word for word'. That is where the impossibility lies. The only possible translation is a 'free' one.

Remarkably, Tamil syntax is mostly left- branching. English syntax is, by and large, rightward. Even a date like 'the 19th of June, 1988,' when translated into Tamil, would look like '1988, June, 19.' The Tamil sentence is the mirror image of the English one and will also be true for English Languages. Postpositions instead of prepositions, adjectival clauses before nominal phrases, verbs at the end rather than in the middle of sentences.

What is everyday in one language must be translated by what is everyday in the 'target' language also, and what is eccentric must find equally eccentric equivalents. If Poetry is made out of, among other things, 'the best words in the best order', and the best orders of the two languages are the mirror images of each other, what is a translator to do?

The most obvious parts of language cited frequently for their utter untranslatability are the lexicon and the semantics of words. For lexicon are culture-specific. Terms for fauna, flora, caste distinctions, kinship systems, body parts, even the words that denote numbers, are culturally Loaded. Even when the elements of a system may be similar in two languages, like father. mother, brother, mother-in-law, etc. In kinship, the system of relations and the feelings traditionally encouraged other each relative are culturally sensitive and therefore part of the expressive repertoire of poets and novelists.

Add to this the entire poetic tradition, its rhetoric. the ordering of different[ genres with different Functions in the culture, which by its system of differences, distinguishes this particular poem.

The classical Tamil poetic tradition uses an entire taxonomy. A classification of reality, The five landscapes of the Tamil area, characterized by hills. seashores, agricultural areas, wastelands, and pastoral fields; each with its forms of life, both natural and cultural. trees, animals, tribes, customs. arts and instruments- all these become part of the symbolic code for the poetry. Every landscape, with all its contents, is associated with a mood or phase of love or war. The landscapes provide the signifiers. The five real landscapes of the Tamil country become, through this system, the interior landscapes of Tamil poetry. The five landscapes with all their contents signifying moods, and the themes and motifs of love and war.

Thus a language within a language becomes the second language of Tamil poetry. When one translates, one is translating not only Tamil, its phonology, grammar and semantics, but this entire intertextual web, this intricate yet lucid second language of landscapes which holds together natural forms with cultural ones in a code, a grammar, a rhetoric, and a poetics.

Part II

Ramanujan takes a closer look at the original of Kapilar's poem, Ainkurunuru 203, 'What She Said', and his translation, quoted earlier in this essay. The word annay (in spoken Tamil, ammo), literally 'mother', is a familiar term of address for any woman, here a 'girlfriend'. So he have translated it as 'friend', to make clear that the poem is not addressed to a mother (as some other poems are) but to a girl friend.

Note the long, crucial, left-branching phrase in Tamil: '. . . hisland's / [in- leaf-holes low /animals- having- drunk- / and]- leftover, muddied water’(in a piece-by-piece translation). In his English, it becomes 'the leftover water in his land, low in the water holes / covered with leaves and muddied by animals.' His phrase order in English tries to preserve the order and syntax of : themes, not of single words: (I) his land's waler, followed by (2) leaf– covered waterholes, and (3) muddied by animals.

The poem is a kurinci piece, about the lovers' first union, set in the hillside landscape. My title ('What she said to her girl friend, when she returned from the hills') summarizes the whole context (speaker, listener, occasion) from the old colophon that accompanies the poem. The progression is lost if we do not preserve the order of themes so naturally carried by the left-branching syntax of Tamil. More could be said about it from the point of view of the old commentaries.

The love poems get parodied, subverted and played with in comic poems about poems. In a few Centuries, both the love poems and the war poems provide models and motives for religious poems. God like Krsna the are both lovers and Warriors.

Thus any single poem is part of a set, a family of sets, a landscape, a genre. The intertextuality is concentric on a pattern of membership as well as neighborhoods of likenesses and unlikenesses. Somehow a translator has to translate each poem in ways that suggest these interest, dialogue and network.

Part III

If attempting a translation means attempting an impossibly intricate task, foredoomed to failure. what makes it possible at all'? At least four things-

1.Universals-

If there were no Universals in which languages participate and of which all particular languages were selections and combinations, no language learning, translation, comparative studies or cross-cultural understanding of even the most meager kind would be possible. if such universals did not exist we would have had to invent them

2.Interiorised contexts-

Poems interiorize the entire culture. Indeed we know the culture of the ancient Tamils only through a careful study of these poems. Later colophons and commentaries explore and explicate this knowledge carried by the poems setting them in context using them to make lexicons and charming the fauna and flora of landscape .

3. Systematicity-

Systematicity of such bodies of poetry, the way figures, genres, personae etc., intermesh in a master-code, is a great help in entering this intricate yet world of words. Even if one chooses not to translate all the poems, one chooses poems that cluster together, that illuminate one another so that allusions, contrasts and collective designs are suggested, of their world, re-presenting it. Here intertextuality is not the problem, but the solution .

4. Structural mimicry-

In translating poems the structures of individual poems, the unique figures they make out of all the given codes of their language, rhetoric and poetics, become the points of entry. The poetry and the significance reside in these figures and structures as much as in untranslatable verbal textures. So one attempts a structural mimicry, to translate relations, not items- not single words but phrases, sequences, sentences; not metrical units but rhythms; not morphology but syntactic patterns.

To translate is to 'metaphor', to 'carry across'. Translations are transpositions, re-enactments, interpretations. One can often convey a sense of the original rhythm, but not the language-bound metre: one can mimic levels of diction, but not the actual sound of the original words. Textures are harder to translate than structures, linear order more difficult than syntax, lines more difficult than larger patterns. Poetry is made at all these levels- and so is translation.

The translation must not only represent, but re-present, the original. loyalty. A translator is an 'artist on oath'. Sometimes one may succeed only in re-presenting a poem, not in closely representing it.

With the anecdote of Chinese emperor, Ramanujan say even if the representation in another language is not close enough, but still succeeds in 'carrying' the poem in some sense, we will have two poems instead of one.

Video recording of this article's presentation, presented by my classmates Himanshi Parmar and Nirav Amreliya

Presentation of the article by Himanshi Parmar and Nirav Amreliya

On Translating a Tamil Poem - A. K. Ramanujan.pptx from Nirav Amreliya

To watch the presentation of all the articles CLICK HERE

It is common to find it challenging to read original articles and summarize them. As a result, I have simplified this article through my understanding and with the help of ChatGPT. Simplifying articles is helpful in achieving a better and clearer understanding of the concept, which will make reading the original article easier. The main aim is to help students or readers understand the concept so that they can read the original article with ease. CLICK HERE FOR A LAYMANISED ARTICLE.

I hope this blog is useful.

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Presentation 14- Paper no.: 204- Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Reading of Gauri Shinde's Film 'English Vinglish'

This is my presentation on paper no. 204 Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Jheel- film studies paper 4.pptx from Jheel Barad

This is my video of presentation on paper no. 204 Contemporary Western Theories and Film Studies

Thank you for visiting I hope my this presentation and video recording are useful to you.

1984- George Orwell

Hello, this blog is in response to the assigned task by Dr, Dilip Barad Sir. This blog answers to the assigned question and deals with the major concern in Dystopian Social Science Fiction by George Orwell Nineteen Eighty Four.

NINETEEN EIGHTY- FOUR

In brief about the author and the text.

George Orwell is a pen name of Arthur Eric Bair. he was an English novelist, essayist, journalist and critic. His work is characterized by lucid prose, biting social criticism, total opposition to totalitarianism, and outspoken support of democratic socialism. Orwell produced literary criticism and poetry, fiction and polemical journalism.

Documentary on Orwell

He is famous for his works Animal Farm, 1984, The Road To Wigan Pier and Homage to Catalonia.

1984 is a Dystopian Social Science fiction novel and cautionary tale written by George Orwell, published on 8 June 1949. Thematically it concerns the consequences of totalitarianism, mass surveillance and repressive regimentation of people and behavior within society. The novel examines the role of truth and facts within politics and the way in which they are manipulated. The adjective Orwellian is popularized after this novel and along with many other words like double think, thought police, thought crime, newspeak and big brother have entered the English language. It is a futuristic novel which deals with real life ideas like surveillance, Totalitarianism and violation of freedom of expression.

What is dystopian fiction? Is '1984' a dystopian fiction?

Etymology, dys- bad (old greek) and Topia- Place (old Greek).

Dystopian Literature is a world in which everything is imperfect, and everything goes wrong. It shows nightmarish images about what might happen to the world in the near future. Usually the main theme of dystopian works are rebellion, oppression, revolutions, wars, overpopulation and disasters.

Dystopian literature concerns the issues of humanity and society and warns the people about their weakness. This literary technique is used to discuss reality and depict issues that might happen in the future. Thus its role is to educate and give awareness to the audience.

The protagonist in the dystopian literature often feels trapped and struggles to escape, they question the existence of social and political systems. They have an instinct of something being terribly wrong in the society they live in and through their perspective, they show the audience the negative aspects of the dystopian world.

Earliest dystopian work is Gulliver's travel, it's a blueprint for dystopian literature. Imagining a world where certain trends in contemporary society are taken to extremes, exposing their underlying flaws.

Dystopia are cautionary tales, not about particular government or technology but the very idea that humanity can be molded into ideal shape.

From the above discussion of Dystopian Literature we see that ‘1984’ completely satisfies all the characteristics of Dystopian fiction. So Yes, ‘1984’ is Dystopian literature; Dystopian social science fiction which also falls in the genre of science fiction and political fiction. ‘1984’ is a futuristic novel in which totalitarian society is oppressive and has created vast inequities. It demonstrates the negative outcome of man’s lust for power and control.

Society in ‘1984’ is always in fear of wars, government surveillance and political oppression of free speech. Totalitarian rule destroys the individuality and identity of one. It was written after war when fascism was rising in the Soviet Union and Germany, it draws a pessimistic picture of society's ability to avoid such disasters.

How Dystopian fiction works; it shows the past of the present society which helps us understand the difference created in the new society and reason for its decline. In this Novel too Winston finds his space and tries to remember the past . but he isn't able to, which can be read as the party's corruption on his emotional life. Party's oppression of the memory of people.

Dystopian novels portray fictional societies that are marked by traits, such as oppression or mass poverty, that cause feelings of fear for the reader. Orwell's 1984 is the perfect example of a dystopian novel, as these traits are present.

What according to you is the central theme of this novel?

‘1984’, Orwell's Futuristic Dystopian social science fiction novel brings to us the mentally, emotionally and physically oppressed world. With various themes:

• Totalitarianism
• Psychological manipulation
• Language as mind control/ use and abuse of language
• Technology
• Control of information and history
• Physical control
• Class system/ wealth of ruling class
• Resistance and revolution
• Political loyalty
• Independence and identity

In all these various themes the major theme which stunned me and we will discuss are Language and the newly introduced term Totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism:

The literal meaning of the word is a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial and requires complete subservience to the state, a form of government that attempts to assert total control over the lives of its citizens

Orwell, seems to be disturbed by the cruelties and oppression of communist's countries and seems that he is aware about how technology is helping the government to oppress and control people through monitoring.

Totalitarianism is the primary theme of the novels. 1984 a political novel, tries to warn the people from the extreme level of control and power possible under a truly totalitarian regime. In the novel we see that no one has ever seen Big Brother but still everyone has to keep following him. The name of the unknown Big Brother party not only controls social or seual life of people but controls their memory, thoughts, feelings and also over personal space (writing dairy). With the idea of looking for the welfare of the nation the complete surveillance over the people by party, not physically but mentally also. Even if they think against the party they were arrested under ‘thoughtcrime’. As a novel progresses we see that how the resistant character Winston, who is just trying to have ‘ownlife’ and some rational thinking is tortured and brainwashed by the party. The Party uses a number of techniques to control its citizens, each of which is an important theme of its own in the novel.

Language:

It is through language that we communicate with the world, define our identity, express our history and culture, learn, defend our human rights and participate in all aspects of society and it structures and limits the ideas that individuals are capable of formulating and expressing. Orwell in the novel imagines if the language is centralized by the agency. In the Novel we see that the party is bringing new words into existence through ‘newspeak. The aim of newspeak is: Don’t you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it.”

The Party is constantly refining and perfecting Newspeak, with the idea of a completely new language which will consist of nonnegative language through which the party can be criticized., no one will be capable of conceptualizing anything that might question the Party’s absolute power. O’Brien and Winston Smith are engaged in the Ministry of Truth to use and abuse language to rewrite history and distort facts for the public consumption. The oppressive. Controlling part is trying to make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because there would be no words with which to think them. If one does so, with an example of Winston Orwell show, they are tortured, brain washed and are made to love Big Brother.

The party is also changing history with the change of language because ‘one who controls the past controls the future’. Also today the NEP has decided to change the history syllabus in schools, trying to control the past. With an argument that students are taught about Mughals and not Hindu kings or rulers. Here authority with the use of positive language, is trying to spread hatred towards Mughals/ Muslims. This is how authority is trying to divide nations in the name of dharma. (personal interpretation)

When two languages mix it enriches the language but here the party is reducing the language because one cannot think without language and they aim to control people. They are eliminating negative words e.g. the opposite of good is not bad but ungood. Today similar things we find on social media where the words like Friend and Unfriend are used, Enemy is not used. Social media majorly spreads hatred but by not using negative words they try to show that they are positive and spread love.

In the novel we clearly see the control of language through its motto ‘ war is peace, slavery is freedom’. With the help of language they try to play with their minds.

What do you understand by the term 'Orwellian'?

The word Orwellian has come after the dystopian writing of George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty- Four’. Generally, when one is opposing British or Mughals they are considered to be nationalist and if one is questioning their own selected ruler/ authority they are considered anti- nationalist and that is where the idea of Orwellian Theory comes from.

The term is named after Writer George Orwell whose real name is Arthur Eric Blair. We generally find that this term is used for authoritarian government but this does not fully convey Orwell’s message. It risks what Orwell has tried to warn against; he's opposing a form of tyranny and is and is leading to fight against anti- democratic forces of both left and right wing.

In the Novel 1984, the Government of Oceania controls the speech of people in some ways. Moves and words are watched and there is threat for one who is stepping out the line. The words sed there like War is peace, freedom is slavery are not to convey the message but to undermine it. Oceania’s government is creating a new dictionary ‘Newspeak’ by eliminating the words from the English language and giving a new dialect of limited simple concrete doubts.. It lacks the words which would encourage critical thinking or questioning. Even the privacy of thought is not provided, even if anyone presents his own perception in dreams,keeps a diary or love affair he is found guilty of thoughtcrime and is punished till his brain is washed.

So, Orwell urged us to protect our language because it is our only ability to think and communicate clearly and it is what stands between us and totalitarian society. Words have the power to shape thought.

Thus, Orwellian is not everything that is authoritarian, mass surveillance and intrusive government. It is all about manipulative and deceptive use of language.

Write in brief about 'Newspeak' - and refer to Orwell & Pinter's essays.

Definition of newspeak

propagandistic language marked by euphemism, circumlocution, and the inversion of customary meanings, "designed to diminish the range of thought," in the novel 1984 by George Orwell.

The Oceania government in 1984 was trying to control the language to control the mind. They started making a new dictionary by eliminating the words from the English language with the main idea of reducing the language, complex or negative words. So the people who ever get a chance resist; they leave no language which can help to communicate or express their feelings against Big Brother or criticize or question against. As said in Orwell's essay POLITICS AND THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ‘if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.’ If there is no language there is no negative thought. In the essay Orwell criticizes standard English, with its perceived dying metaphors, pretentious diction, and high-flown rhetoric, which he would later satirize in the meaningless words of doublespeak, the product of unclear reasoning.

The basic idea of Newspeak was to reduce the unnecessary words. In Newspeak, English root words function as both nouns and verbs, which reduce the vocabulary available for the speaker to communicate meaning. For example, think is both a noun and a verb, thus, the word thought is not functionally required to communicate the concepts of thought in Newspeak and therefore is not in the Newspeak vocabulary. The opposite of good is bad but bad is unnecessary and it is written as ‘ungood’ and the degrees of good are ‘plus good’ , ‘double plus good’. CLICK HERE for grammar of newspeak. Through his creation and explanation of Newspeak, Orwell warns the reader that a government that creates the language and mandates how it is used can control the minds of its citizens.

Also Social media plays a vital role in the use of such language. It uses the language add friend and unfriend they don't use the word enemy. Through this they try to show how they spread love and not hatred, while we the algorithms of social media play a major role in spreading hatred.

In contemporary time no one makes the newspeak the the use of words by authorities in speeches, newspaper is done in such a way that it settles in the minds of people and unconsciously they tend to do so. And slogans work powerfully in this process.

Today, the game of words is played a lot around Kashmir files. It indicates that every Indian should watch Kashmir files being an Indian. And the conversations are done in a way to show a movie from only one point of view, that is hatred towards Muslims or terrorists. Movie is a art and it must open for all types of interpretations, no one can force to interpret in a specific way. The Authorities seems to be trying to control over the minds of public through Kashmir Files.

Playing with words, back in 2012 came the idea of ‘chowkidar’-  ‘mein chowkidar’ which gives a hidden meaning that you are ‘chor’ - enemies and I will take care that you can't steal anything. Public is chor and authority is chowkidar.

Thank you for visiting . I hope you liked reading this blog and it helped you for better understanding . any queries or doubt comment below.

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