Allen Tate has once observed, "Translation is for ever impossible and for ever necessary." Down the centuries there have been unending debates about loyalty to and freedom from the original in a translation—`formal equivalence' vs. `dynamic equivalence.' Whether a translation should read like a translation or like an original is still debated passionately. But it is possible to surmise that one should pursue the middle path agreeing on "maximum readability and feasible fidelity." The other problem relates to the carrying across of cultural specifics from the Source Language (SL) to the Target Language (TL). Terms, which have no equivalents in the TL, the author argues, may be transferred and expressions may even be literally translated so that optimum feel and flavor of the native culture can be re-created. He has cited the practice of Raja Rao in his path-breaking novel Kanthapura, in which he boldly translated Kannada expressions as well as transferred certain terms. The author devoted the second section of the paper to the problems he faced in his translation of short stories, classical poetry, a novel and a classical epic from Telugu into English and the tentative solutions he could arrive at. The author hopes that, despite the multiplicity of problems and the lack of encouragement and recognition, the tribe of translators will increase and contribute to the much-needed cultural synthesis in the world torn apart by fissiparous forces.

Translation has always been a tantalizing literary activity. It has been observed by Allen Tate that, "Translation is for ever impossible and for ever necessary". There is a term in the Italian language, traducer, which means both a translator and a traitor, and the activity is often considered the great betrayal. But for the much-needed cultural and emotional synthesis in a country like India torn by linguistic and regional fissiparous pulls, translation assumes paramount significance. Among the three streams/waves of Indian writing—the Anglo Indian, the Indo-Anglian (or `Indian Writing in English': Prof. K R Srinivasa Iyengar's preferred terminology) and Indo-English Literature (Prof. V K Gokak's term)—the last one seems to be gaining ascendancy in the literary hierarchy in recent times. The only Nobel Prize to be won by an `Indian' writer happens to relate to this wave: Tagore's Gitanjali, which is a translation into English from the original Bengali. Without exaggeration, it can be stated that it is in the rich and vibrant literatures of the regional languages of India that one can find the real soul of the country. And to discover or unravel that soul translation is a necessary activity.

The term translation is derived from the Latin term translatio (to carry across). It is kin to the Greek terms—`Metaphrase' and `Paraphrase'—which indicate the major problems a translator faces. `Metaphrase' refers to literal, verbatim (verbum pro verbo: word-to-word) translation, while `Paraphrase' (later used by Dryden) refers to "saying in other words." The need for equivalence between the text in the Source Language (SL) and the final version in the Target Language (TL) is admitted but the problematic, should it be merely `formal equivalence' or `dynamic equivalence', the terms used by Eugene Nida, has been debated for long. For long there has been an implicit view of master-servant relationship between the writer and the translator, who cannot afford to be creative. The 19^th century British poet D G Rossetti observed that the work of a translator involved "self-denial and repression of his own creative impulses" (Newmark, 1995). But it has not been so with gifted translators. Edward Fitzgerald, who gave us the immortal rendering of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, was among the first who took liberties with the original in his creative translation. He declared, "It is an amusement to me to take what liberties I like with the Persians, who, I think, were not poets enough to frighten me from such excursions" (Newmark, 1995). And the end product is an eminently readable fluent rendering. But one wonders still, is it a translation from the Persian original or what Dryden called a `Parallel Text'.

English Studies Journal, Translation, Cultural Specifics, Source Language, SL, Target Language, TL, Traducer, Gitanjali, Indo-English Literature, The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayam, Anusrijana, Udbhavamurty, The Mahabharata, The Ramayana.