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New Delhi:
The absence of organised translation activity in literature and
academia has led to cultural and intellectual distancing in Indian
society, believes eminent historian Mushirul Hasan.
“This distancing has led to greater regionalisation and in some
cases appropriation of languages. The unity in diversity is lost -
and on a personal note, it has led to a gulf between my students and
me,” Hasan, a former Jamia Millia Islamia University
vice-chancellor, said Saturday.
The academic, who has authored more
than a dozen books and 200 papers, was speaking at the inaugural
session of a two-day seminar on “Translation and Inter-Cultural
Communication” organised by IGNOU’s School of Translation Studies
and Training at the Lalit Kala Akademi in the capital. The seminar
began Saturday.
“While adopting a standard two and
three language formula in eduction, literature and society, we have
not paid attention to building the country across cultural,
linguistic and intellectual divides. We need translations to connect
to the world and to our own society.”
He cited the translations undertaken
by the caliph Al Mamun and his father Al Mansur of the Abbasid
dynasty in ancient Baghdad, which later enriched Europe.
“The age of enlightenment in Europe
was all about knowing each other and the world. Translations played
an important role. But how much does our society know about
literature from Bengal and Kerala? We have had a lot of tokenism -
but show me someone who is seriously trying to popularise works in
languages. There is a saying in Islam - ‘My beloved’s language is
Turkish, but I don’t understand Turkish’,” Hasan said, stressing the
need for quality translation.
V.N. Rajasekharan Pillai, the
vice-chancellor of IGNOU, said the university’s translation school
was committed to “inter-language” translation. It offers
post-graduate diplomas in inter-languages and has an MA programme in
translation studies.
“Translation is important in
transmitting culture from one generation to another - and from
different cultures and language. A language is enriched by its
interaction with other language and culture.
Moreover, we live in a global
village,” Pillai said in his inaugural speech.
The university has just set up the
Tagore chair in the school of humanities to commemorate the 150th
birth anniversary of Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore this year,
the vice-chancellor said.
The chair, which is yet to find a
head, will play a key part in translating the works of the Nobel
Laureate, among other activities.
Guest of honour and chief speaker at
the special sessions on seminar, Indranath Choudhury, the former
director of the Sahitya Akademi and Nehru Centre in London, said
“credence should be given to different languages spoken across the
country”.
“Centrality is a dangerous thing for a
country like India because it tends to homogenise culture which in
India is extremely diverse.
Diversity is the essence of our life.
Hence, I would like to describe English and Hindi as filter
languages which can be used for better communication. Translation
conscience, as linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji once said, is an age
old phenomenon in India,” he told IANS.
Choudhury, who is chief editor of
Sahitya Akademi’s Encyclopaedia of India (revised version) and
another being brought out by the ministry of human resources, said,
“We are by nature polyglots (speakers of many languages) and a
person of Bengali origin, who speaks English or writes in English,
often translates from Bengali to English in his head naturally. It
is wrong to think of any language as superior or inferior,” the
language scholar said.
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