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Sachin KetkarProfessor

Department of EnglishFaculty of Arts

The Maharaja Sayajirao University of BarodaVadodara

ROUGH DRAFT NOT TO BE CITED

Towards ‘Translational Turn’ in Cultural Studies

A Cultural Semiotics Approach to the History of Literary

Translation in Marathi

Abstract

The paper proposes the methodological framework of culturalsemiotics as developed by the Tartu-Moscow school of semiotics forwriting history of translation in Marathi. This ‘cultural semiotics’framework sees the entire cultural space or ‘the semiosphere’,instead of individual isolated languages, as the generator ofmeaning. According to this theory, translation (from one semioticsystem into another- across boundaries and asymmetries) is theprincipal mechanism of meaning generation of a given semiosphere. Asit demonstrates that the mechanism that produces the image of thepast in the present by translating the texts from the past intocontemporary language and simultaneously transferring it to the pastis also a dialogic –translational mechanism, it becomes possible forus to see that tradition ( cultural memory) and modernity( generation of new information) are not oppositional categories butmutually shaping processes generated by the dialogic mechanism oftranslation inherent in all cultural spaces in every period ofhistory. These two processes are also critical to our understandingof cultural history and cultural identity. The paper brieflyoutlines major figures, texts and moments in the history oftranslation in Marathi starting with Dnyaneshwara’s Bhaavartha Deepikain the thirteenth century till Vilas Sarang’s reflections on thepoetics and politics of self –translation in the last half of the

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twentieth century to demonstrate the efficacy of cultural semioticsframework in constructing such a history.

Keywords: Translation Studies, Cultural Studies, Cultural

Semiotics, Translation in Marathi

“Marathi literature is so heavily influenced by the other literatures that it is notsufficiently influenced by other literature.” BS Mardhekar in 1941(quoted by

Hatkanglekar).

“I translate myself therefore I am”. Vilas Sarang on Self Translation/auto-translation

“Translation is a primary mechanism of consciousness”, Yuri Lotman Universe of theMind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture (1990).

As one embarks upon a project like the history of translation

in Marathi one has to engage with the question of having at

least working definitions of categories terms like

translation, history, historiography, of terms like Marathi

and India.

Many scholars in the study week have expressed the need for

intersemiotic, intersystemic, intercontextual , intermedial

conceptualizing /understanding of translation instead of

considering it merely as as ‘transfer’ of verbal information

from one natural language into another. Many scholars have

also expressed the need to avoid reductive periodization model

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based exclusively either on the idea of discontinuity or the

model based exclusively on cultural continuity. In fact Prof

Satyanath suggested looking at the East European models and

Prof.Dasgupta suggested looking at models of cultural history

that conceive of culture as chaotic and complex systems. Prof

Kapil Kapoor suggested looking at ‘ renewal mechanisms’ in

Indian knowledge systems and make a distinction between

compositional/crystallized forms of language and more

open/dynamic/demotic and fluid form of language. Making a case

for an Indian theory of translation GN Devy had argued that

the western theories of translation are based on mono-lingual

orientation of linguistics and the metaphysics which shape

these ideas about translation see translation as wandering in

post-Babelian and post lapserian exile , hence we need a

theory of translation which theorizes ‘ translation

consciousness’ which characterizes Indian self. In

yesterday's’ presentation he postulated conceptualization of

‘translation time’, ‘translation space’, the question of

cultural memory and identity. He also suggested the use of

cybernetics in understanding translation.

Most of these suggestions can be easily accommodated in the

soviet school of cultural studies known as the Tartu Moscow

school of cultural semiotics which developed a fully fledged

theory of culture under the leadership of Yuri Lotman (1922-

1993) from the late nineteen sixties. Apart from drawing upon

the Euro American developments in semiotics they also drew

upon the soviet schools of semiotics like Jakobson and the

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Prague Circle and the Bakhtinschool of semiotics. They also

incorporated developments in information theory, cybernetics,

biology, complexity, chaos and system thinking into semiotics.

Lotman and Uspensky define culture as’ non-hereditary memory’

which impose a set of constraints and conventions and whose

function is to generate ‘structuredness’ for a community, that

is to generate classificatory cognitive grids which allow the

participants to understand and speak about the world or

modelling the world. Natural languages are the primary

modelling systems and other semiotic systems modelled on

natural languages like myths, religions, arts, rituals,

sciences are secondary modelling systems.

Moving away from the mono-lingual orientation of Saussurean

semiotics and linguistics, cultural semiotics or semiotics of

culture is built on the axiom that no single isolated semiotic

system including natural language can be functional in itself.

It always relies other semiotic systems for generation of

meaning. Not just that in order for a semiotic system to be

functional it has to immersed in a synchronic space made up of

heterogeneous semiotic systems and spaces. Such semiotic space

is called ‘the semiosphere’. Thus the entire cultural space or

‘the semiosphere’, instead of individual isolated languages,

functions as the generator of meaning.

Fundamental characteristics of the semiosphere according to

Lotman are internal heterogeneity, asymmetry and boundaries ,

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that is, the semiosphere is always bounded space dividing

‘us/I /we’ from ‘ them/you/they’, having internal

heterogeneity and it is always asymmetrical which means the

semiosphere has a center and a periphery. According to this

theory, translation (from one semiotic system into another-

across boundaries and asymmetries) is the principal mechanism

of meaning generation of a given semiosphere.

The core of the asymmetrical and boundaried semiosphere is

made up of metalanguages of self description. The self

description is always a notional one and does not reflect

semiospheric heterogeneity accurately. Lotman also discusses

cultural functional of auto-communication, i.e. communication

where the addressor and the addressee is one and the same.

Lotman argues that if a person’s self is seen as being

constituted by a social and historical codes,

autocommunication involves subtle shifts in these codes bring

about subtle self transformation.Community’s self description

can be understood as self communication of the community.

The cultural semiotics framework models the dynamics of

culture by avoiding the ideas of history as either as a

history of discontinuity or exclusively as a history of

continuity. This framework sees cultural dynamics as chaotic,

complex and hybrid where change occurs unevenly in various

languages and spaces of the semiosphere. The change occurs

either ‘explosively’ in abrupt, discreet and unanticipated way

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or in a continuous gradual way. The semiosphere model is a

scaleable one like the idea of biosphere, that is, it can be

analyzed as a semiotic mechanism underlying a single

communicative act e.g. I speaking to you in this room or can

be applied to ‘Marathi semiosphere’ or to an ‘ Indian

semiosphere’ or even a planetary semiosphere.

As this theory demonstrates , the mechanism that produces the

image of the past in the present by translating the texts from

the past into contemporary language and simultaneously

transferring it to the past is also a dialogic –translational

mechanism, it becomes possible for us to see that tradition

( cultural memory) and modernity ( generation of new

information) are not oppositional categories but mutually

shaping processes generated by the dialogic mechanism of

translation inherent in all cultural spaces in every period of

history. These two processes are also critical to our

understanding of history and cultural identity.

Historians, according to Lotman, are condemned to deal with

texts which are already made of narrativized, interpreted and

selectively organized information, in short ‘translations’ of

what had happened . Historiography, according to this

framework, would be itself a translational activity, an

activity of translating the texts from past into the

conceptual metalanguages of present moment and thus subtly

reconstructing the past in the present for the future, in

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short a programmatic and ideological activity. It becomes

possible to see a historian as translator. From cultural

semiotic perspective all historiography is historiography of

translation and historiography as translation. This

formulation allows us to pose the question : why do we need

history of translation in India now? What sort of image of

past do we want to construct by translating our cultural

archive into the languages of present? What sort of cultural

memory do want constitute? If historiography of Indian culture

in terms of history of translation can be seen as a project of

self-description seeking to reconstitute cultural memory and

consequently who we are as Indians , and our identity in the

context of forces of globalization seeking to impose a

homogenous , dehistoricized,global culture on the planetary

cultural diversity on the one hand and the forces of cultural

nationalism seeking to enforce the idea of homogenous,

ahistorical, Hindu nationalistic idea of culture on cultural

and civilizational diversity on the subcontinent, our project

of foregrounding our ‘translational self’’ would be having a

contestatory and subversive political dimension.

Lotman’s view of culture as a bounded space dividing people

into ‘us’ and ‘them’ can shed light on how the Mahanubhava

sect’s decision to encrypt their texts into a specially

invented script called ‘sakala’ was an attempt to limit their

cultural space by restricting the access to their texts to

escape persecution from the upper-caste Hindus in the

thirteenth and fourteenth century, consequently pushing

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themselves into the margins of Marathi cultural memory only to

be retrieved in the mid twentieth century when the script was

decoded.

In the light of this framework, one can read Dnyaneshwar’s

celebrated commentary on the Bhagwad Gita in the late

thirteenth century as constituting the text as the core text

in the memory of Marathi speaking community that had no access

to the older Sanskrit text, and thereby constructing cultural

memory. Simultaneously, Dnyaneshwar is forging a new language

for literary composition in Marathi which becomes a model for

later ‘bhashya -teeka’ of the Gita. In Lotman’s terminology

Dnyaneshwari can be seen as introducing ‘explosive’ changes

i.e. unanticipated and abrupt changes in the language of

Marathi poetry. Creativity and innovation in the cultural

semiotics models are products of translational mechanism.

Dnyanadeva’s use of the folk ovi genre for his bhashya ofof

the Sanskrit text can be simultaneous read as Brahmanization

or sanskritization of the folk or as democratization of the

spiritual canon. Eknath’s famous experiment of using folk

genre of bharuds to propagate Vaishnavism and Vedanta could be

seen as translation of the philosophical discourse in Marathi

into the folk idiom and language of the bharuds and

consequently making inroads into marginal cultural spaces made

up of different audience.

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Likewise, the school of narrative poetry ‘akhyana tradition’

that flourished in the sixteenth century with Eknath’s

influential retelling of the Puranas and the Itihasa in

Marathi can be seen as constituting the memory of the

community through its dialogic and translational interaction

with the older texts on the one hand, as well as developing

newer language of the genre of narrative poetry on the other.

Eknath, Dasopanta,RamaJanardan, JaniJanardana and

VithaJanardan are known as ‘ NathaPanchayatan.

The framework help us understand why in Mukteshwar’s

Mahabharata, a product of the seventeenth century Marathi

semiosphere, the Pandavas are shown at war not just with the

Kauravas but also with the Muslims and the Europeans.

Dasopanta, wrote Geetarnava a long commentary on Geeta in

about 1 lakh and quarter ovees. Vishnudas Nama wrote lives of

the saints and is probably the first poet to render all the

eighteen parvas of the Mahabharata into Marathi.

WamanPandit (1608-1695) and AkhyaanKavya Translated

JagannathGangalahiri and Bhartihari’s Vairagya Shatak, His

Samashloki translation of Bhagwat Gita known as

YatharthaDeepika.He claims to be more precise than

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JnaneshwaraDasopanta and others,Yatarthadeepika is three times

the length of Jnaneshwari and emphasizes Knowledge instead of

Bhakti

Father Stephens (1549-1619) composes Christa Purana in Marathi

deeply influenced by Jnaneshwari some other Christian poets

also wrote in Marathi.

The Marathi prose genre of the Bakhars (inversion of ‘khabar’)

which give accounts of battles, orders and instructions of

political and administrative kind can be seen as innovation

brought about by translation of ‘tawarikh’ genre used in the

Muslim courts and also an attempt to constitute cultural

memory by recounting significant historical events and

personages.

Muslim Devotional Poetry, Shaikh Mohammed Shaikh Sultan or

DaduPinjari Hussain, and Ambar who wrote Ambar Hussaini a

commentary on Gita

1800 Fort William College in Kolkata for training British

officers in the Indian languages and learning.The Royal

Asiatic Society was established in Kolkata.Missionaries at The

Serampore Mission near Kolkata want to acquaint themselves

with Indian languages and use them.They establish a press and

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under the guidance of Dr William Carey and they start working

vigourously on a Marathi dictionary with help of pundits. Dr

Carey publishes A Grammar of the Marhatta Language 1805. The

Gospel of St Mathew 1805 the Bible in 1807 SinhasanBattishi

1814, Panchatantra 1815

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In Mumbai The American Mission starts 1815 and the Scottish

Mission 1822 brought out many books in Marathi on various

topics and many of them often directed against Hindu ideas of

worship and superstitions and sowing seeds of Christianity.

1827 The Bombay Native Education Society formed under Capt

Jarvis. They published a Marathi Dictionary in 1829 which was

followed up by the great Molesworth dictionaries. The society

offered rewards and prizes for books on educational and

scientific subjects.TheGovt discontinues spending money on

Indian languages in 1840

BalshashtriJambekar (1812-1846) influenced by the Bengal

Renaissance starts, Darpan 1832 a daily, Prabhakar (1840) a

weekly. PandurangaBapu Joshi starts the Jnanachandrodaya

(1840) mainly for printing extracts from Marathi classical

poetry, KrishnashashtriChiplunkar (1824-1878) writes satire

and on literature. He translates Samuel Johnson’s Rasselas his

book of essays Aneka VidyaMulTatvaSangraha on various branches

of learning.

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ParshuramtatyaGodbole sought to revive old Marathi poetry by

starting a periodical named Sarvasangraha and brought out an

anthology of such old Marathi poems called Navneet (1854)He

also translated from Sanskrit drama. KrishnashashtriChiplunkar

translates Kalidasa and JagannathPandit’sKarunavila

1841 Hari Keshavji translated Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress as

YatrikKraman. Translations of Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson

Crusoe, Paul and Virginia, Arabian Nights etcet appear

KK DamleKeshavsut (1866-1905) a contemporary of Apte

translated from Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and indigenized

sonnet form. Keshavasuta’s rendering of many poems from

Palgrave’s Golden Treasury towards the end of the nineteenth

century can be studied as an attempt to establish and develop

the language of modern Marathi poetry by establishing what

Lotman calls ‘ text-code’ or texts which function as codes in

cultures that don’t have such codes.

Turning to fiction of this period, a helpful survey shows that

between 1874 to 1920, the figures of novels translated from

other languages into Marathi are: Tamil-1; Urdu-2; Gujarati-5;

Hindi 13; Bengali-59; English-98. This analysis is indeed

significant. It shows that Bengali novels enjoyed a popularity

only next to English.

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BV Warerkar or Mama Warerkar (1883-1964) is a major

translator, novelist and playwright. He wrote 28 Novels and 40

translations , mostly from Bengali and largely the novels of

Sarat Chandra Chatterjee influenced the development of Marathi

fiction.Varerkar too displayed the same when it came to

translating Saratchandra. He translated Baradidi, Biraj Bow,

Parineeta, Panditmashay, Pallisamaj, Chandranath, Arakshaniya,

Shrikant, Devdas, Niskriti, Charitraheen, Grihdaha—almost all

Saratchandra'sworks.A novel called Jeevan-Swapna has been

brought out in Marathi. Written by SumatiKshetramade, it deals

with the life of Saratchandra. Great influence on the later

novelists like GN Dandekar and SN Pendse.

The credit for introducing the earlier Bengali novelists goes

to a number of writers like Kashinath R. Mitra,

VitthalSeetaramGurjar and VasudeoGovindApte but specially to

Apte; for, he translated the entire Bankimchandra with almost

a missionary zeal.

Hari Narayan Apte (1864-1919) wrote his first novel is

MadhliSthiti in 1885 it is an adaptation of WM Reynold’s

Mysteries of London where he depicts the paradox of western

notions of modernity and the depravity of orthodoxy in Pune of

his times,His first historical novel MysorechaWagh (1890) is a

translation of Meadows Taylor’s English novel on Tipu Sultan

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KR Mitra (1871-1920) translations from Bengali ran a highly

reputed periodical called Manoranjan 1895-1935). His love for

Bengali can be understood by the fact that he changed his

surname from Ajgaonkar to Mitra. There was a trend to have

Bengali surnames.

About sixty-five of translations from Shakespeare appeared

between 1867 and 1915, and they transformed Marathi stage. In

the same period, plenty of Sanskrit plays were also

translated. The impact of Shakespearean characterization ,

poetry , plot construction, stage craft was immense.

Shakespeare translations along with translations from Sanskrit

played a formative role in development of the language of

theatre in Marathi as in many other languages. Thus cultural

innovation goes hand in hand with constitution of cultural

memory or tradition. Both these processes are produced by

translational mechanism.

The noted Marathi essayist, scholar, and translator

VishnushashtriChiploonkar (1850-1882). His essay` Bhashantar'

appeared in Nibandhmala, book 1, and twelfth issue in December

1874. This essay is one of the earliest theoretical writings

on translation in Indian languages and so of immense

importance to the historian of translation in our country.

Chiploonkar's chief concern is to defend of Marathi language

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against unjust comparisons with English as was common during

the period and to plead for developing Marathi into language

of knowledge. He knew that in order to emerge as a language of

knowledge it should be equipped with technical vocabulary.

Hence, he gives as much importance to technical translations

as to the translation of literary texts. Chiploonkar believes

that technical texts are easier to translate than the literary

ones. He comments on a very important aspect of translation

of technical texts: finding Marathi equivalents for technical

terms in English. He recommends generous use of Sanskrit and

cautions that the technical equivalents in Marathi should not

be too familiar and colloquial. On the other hand, while

discussing literary translation he presents rather

conventional ideas about translation. Enumerating qualities of

a good translator, Chiploonkar says that apart from having

bilingual competence, the translator should be able to fully

comprehend the content of the source language and pour it into

another and he should be of same temperament as that of the

writer of the original Classifying poetry into two distinct

types, namely, hathkavita `obstinate poetry' or poetry written

with artificial violence to language and prasadikkavita or the

one with spontaneity, naturalness and beauty, Chiploonkar

states that the latter is more difficult to translate as it

has come from heightened inspiration and hence it cannot

happen again. He compares Sir William Jones' efforts to

translate Shakuntala with transferring of perfume from one

sealed bottle to another without letting it evaporate. It

echoes Sir John Denham's statement that `Poesie into Poesie;

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and Poesie is of so subtile a spirit, that in pouring out of

one Language into another, it will all evaporate; and if a new

spirit is not added in the transfusion, there will remain

nothing but caput mortuum' (Susan Bassnet, 1980:59). Whether

this intertextual link is a conscious allusion or otherwise is

not clear. However, such intertextual connections characterize

colonial and postcolonial discourses. Chiploonkar goes on to

defend Marathi against the criticism that it is a poorer

language compared to English by saying, `just as the fact that

some food items grow there (in the West) and do not grow here

(in India) does not make our country pauper, in same way the

fact that certain ideas and thoughts are unknown here does not

make our country a poorer one.' It is interesting to note how

the nationalistic resistance to cultural domination during

colonial rule manifests itself in the attitude of translation.

Chiploonkar's poetics is very much romantic in extolling the

virtues of uniqueness, spontaneity and naturalness in a poem

and his politics is nationalistic in the face of colonial

oppression. Elsewhere, Chiploonkar has remarked that the

dearth of translations into Sanskrit was due to the fact that

it was extremely rich and had no need to take anything from

other languages and that the word bhashantar did not exist in

classical Sanskrit simply because Indians then had all the

knowledge available in Sanskrit and did not have any need for

translations (Vasant Bapat, 48). The glorification of Sanskrit

and Sanskritic heritage and discrediting other languages

exposes the casteist outlook of a certain form of nationalism

represented by Chiploonkar. Chiploonkar is considered among

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the more orthodox, or to use a Marathi term `Sanatani' (staus-

quoist opposing fundamental transformation of Indian society)

of the renaissance intellectuals. Nevertheless, Chiploonkar

remains one of the most important among early translation

theorists and interestingly he does not emphasize the idea of

faithful vs. free translation as some later theorists.

M.T. PatwardhanMadhav Julian (1894-1939) wrote in heavily

Persian/Arabic vocabulary and established Ghazal as a form in

Marathi. In later years ran a movement for purifying Marathi

from Arabic and Persian vocabulary. He translated The Rubaiyat

of Omar Khayyam thrice: first from Persian then from

Fitzgerald’s english version and then a free composition.

In the same way, DilipChitre’s influential ‘apabranhshas’ of

major Western modernist poets like Baudelaire, Rilke, Eliot,

Stevens, Neruda, Paz and Vallejo into Marathi along with

critical commentaries in the beginning of the nineteen sixties

can be interpreted as an attempt to establish and develop

modernist language by establishing modernist ‘text-codes’ in

the altered semiosphere of Marathi which has indigenized the

western poetics.

DilipChitre's remark, ` Why I felt compelled to translate his

(Tukaram’s) poetry: as a bilingual poet, I had little choice,

if any. There were two parts of me, like two linguistic and

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cultural hemispheres, and, as per theory, they were not

destined to cohere..(2003:307)’ and ` I have been working in a

haunted workshop rattled and shaken by the spirits of other

literatures unknown to my ancestors….I have to build a bridge

within myself between India or Europe or else I become a

fragmented person (2003:311-312).’

Apart from discussion on Dilip Chitre as translator from

cultural semiotics , I will also focus on interesting

theorization of translation by Vilas Sarang, especially his

ideas about translation and modernity and even more

interestingly, his reflections on the poetics and the politics

of ‘ self translation’. I will attempt to read Sarang’s

reflections on self-translation in the light of Lotman’s

discussion on the cultural semiotics of ‘auto-communication’

where though the addressor and the address remains the same,

in the process of auto-communication a subtle shift is brought

about in constitution of addressor’s personality and identity

which is made up of set of historical codes.

Cultural semiotics thus can provide newer ways of

conceptualizing cultural history by analyzing the underlying

translational mechanisms of generation of meaning, memory as

well as cultural innovation in a given culture, and

consequently the questions of constructions of identity. As

there would be numerous parallels to the above cited examples

in other Indian languages, cultural semiotics can also be a

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valuable methodological framework for comparative Indian

literatures that could be used to study the dynamics of ‘

Indian semiosphere’ with its internal heterogeneity,

boundaries and asymmetries. While other metalanguages of

cultural studies would limit themselves to studying

translation as a cultural process or as a product, cultural

semiotics would focus on translation as a mechanism underlying

not just communication between the self and the other, but

also communication with oneself.

WORKS CITED

Lotman, Juri “The place of art among other modelling systems.”(1967). Translated by TanelPern. Sign Systems Studies 39(2/4), 2011

__________ The Structure of the Artistic Text. Michigan SlavicContributions. 2008

.____________“On the semiosphere.” Translated by Wilma Clark.. SignSystems Studies 33.1, 2005

___________ Culture and Explosion.Edited by MarinaGrishakova.Translated by Wilma Clark.Mouton de Gruyter.Berlin · NewYork, 2004. Print.

_______________ Universe of the Mind.A Semiotic Theory of Culture.Bloomington/ Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. 1990. Print.

Sarang, V. VangmaiyeenSauskrutianiSamajikVastav, Mumbai: MaujPublication, 2011. Print

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----Seven Critical Essays, Self Published, ?. Print.

----,’Confessions of a Marathi Writer’ World Literature Today, Vol.68, No. 2, Indian Literatures: In the Fifth Decade of Independence(Spring, 1994), pp. 309-312 Published by: University of OklahomaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40150157

Shakespeare in Marathi Author(s): M. V. Rajadhyaksha Source: IndianLiterature, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1964), pp. 83-94 Published by:SahityaAkademi

Saratchandra and the Marathi Novel Author(s): Vasant Bapat Source:Indian Literature, Vol. 22, No. 4, The Indian Novel Today (July-August 1979), pp. 5-11 Published by: SahityaAkademi

VishnushashtriChiploonkar ` Bhashantar' Nibandhmala, book 1, andtwelfth issue in December 1874

Y D Phadke, VK Chiploonkar, National Book Trust, New Delhi, 1982

DilipChitre, `Life on the Bridge’ Text of the Third Ajneya MemorialLecture delivered by DilipChitre under the auspicies of the SouthAsia Institute at the University of Heidelberg, Germany, in 1988, in`Says Tuka-1’ Selected poems of Tukaram, Translated from the Marathiwith an Introduction by DilipChitre, the Sontheimer CulturalAssociation, Pune. 2003

A BIBLIOGRAPHY OF MODERN MARATHI LITERATURE IN ENGLISH TRANSLATIONAND CRITICAL LITERATURE IN ENGLISH Author(s): Eleanor ZelliotSource: Journal of South Asian Literature, Vol. 17, No. 1, A MARATHISAMPLER: Varied Voices in Contemporary Marathi Short Stories andPoetry (Winter, Spring 1982), pp. 133-163 Published by: AsianStudies Center, Michigan State University

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Philip Engblom Marathi Poetry in English Translation in the sameissue