Translation, Nation and Knowledge Society: A Special Issue of the Translation Today (Volume 13, Issue 1, 2019)

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Though translation plays an important role in the building of nation and knowledge society, neither the discipline nor the process have got their due. However, recent years have seen an enormous change in the positive direction, and the overall scenario seems to be improving with time. At this juncture, there is a need for quick and continuous addition to the academic resources and research initiatives in fields related to Translation Studies. Realizing this pertinent demand, the National Translation Mission organized a conference on Translation and Knowledge Society and a seminar on Translation and Nation in March 2018 and September 2018 respectively. Both the programmes were successful with a good number of participation deliberations on issues that are pertinent to Translation Studies and its allied disciplines. I am glad to know that the Mission is now bringing out Translation, Nation and Knowledge Society, a special issue of its flagship journal, Translation Today, with select papers from the two programmes.

On this endeavour, I congratulate the NTM for both organizing the relevant programmes and bringing out the proceedings in a special issue of the journal. I hope Translation, Nation and Knowledge Society will serve as a document and resource for students and scholars of Translation Studies on the one hand and the practitioners of translation on the other. As translation is establishing new fields of inquiries and thereby diversifying its vast expanse, the Mission is becoming successful in achieving its national goals which are trans-national in its character. I appreciate the initiative and congratulate the team that has been working hard for the Mission to achieve its goals. Wishing NTM more success ahead quantitatively and qualitatively.

Translation is an exquisite phenomenon that is capable of intellectual creativity as well as social change. In diverse communities, it acts as a unifying bond among and between seemingly distinct cultures and identities. With such characteristics, translation has been bridging the communication gaps, bringing people together, and fostering peace and understanding among them. In its nature, translation has qualities of linking people, helping them to understand different ways of life and provide a base for looking at each other as fellow beings of an endless universe of variations. The connections it creates can end up in the evolution of nationhoods or in the evoking of the emotions that question the nationalities. Many a time, translations bring in transnational identities too. Translation immensely contributes to the growth and integration of a nation. However, its significance emanates from its role in nation-building as well as from its role in creating, sustaining, and transmitting knowledge. The story of a 'globalized national' can also be a case study in the papers here provided that translation has affected the formation of that identity. The recycling of these identities as new connections emerge through translations can also be an area that is probed. The intervention of mass media and the electronic space of exchanges between individuals and groups could also be the subjects of discussions. Forces that subjugate, responses that liberate, mediations that make the two meet can all be part of the presentation under the rubric of translations that helped these equations of 'greater or lesser than', or, 'equal to' emerge. Scholars within and beyond Translation Studies converge on the above views and the idea that translation plays a contributory role in the creation of knowledge society.

A knowledge society is one that engages knowledge as its prime resource to drive all spheres of its everyday life, ranging from economy to education to history to spirituality, and so forth. Translation is a vital instrument in shaping and sustaining such a society. Access to information and knowledge, for instance, becomes education here, recording the interaction with them is its history; they end up as a tool for capacity building and enabling a workforce that strengthens the economy. According to a UNESCO statement, 'knowledge societies can be envisaged on the following pillars: (a) freedom of expression; (b) universal access to information and knowledge; (c) respect for cultural and linguistic diversity; and (d) quality education for all. The National Translation Mission (NTM) is committed to the development of knowledge society. In the above pillars, universal access and quality education constitute the core objectives of NTM.

The National Translation Mission envisaged achieving the above-stated objectives through translation. In this pursuit, the Mission organized a conference in March 2018 and a seminar in September 2018. These events saw a good turn out with interesting presentations and considerable deliberations. The proceedings of these events are an important resource for the discourse of translation and the discipline of Translation Studies. Therefore, it was decided to bring out a special issue of Translation Today titled Translation, Nation and Knowledge Society comprising select papers from the two events mentioned above. The editorial team and the contributing authors are glad to make it available for open access after investing a year's time, formatting, editing, revising the papers. This special issue contains 23 research articles contributed by an equal number of authors from various institutions and disciplinary affiliations. The articles are arranged in such a way that the ones focusing theories do not appear in isolation from the ones concentrating on practice. Here is a bird's eye view of the contents of Translation, Nation and Knowledge Society. In the first paper, Autochthony and Deracination: Knowledge and Translation Sushant Kumar Mishra describes the concept of autochthony, and how the knowledge of a particular culture is transmitted to another culture. The next paper titled Translations, Illustration and Adaptation by Alain Désoulières analyses the difference between technical and literary translation while differentiating literary translation from adaptation and creative writing. The paper makes a significant effort in tracing late 19th-century French translations of Urdu literary classics, especially, the pioneering works of Garcin de Tassy, first-ever professor of Hindustani (mostly Urdu) in Paris Royal School of Oriental Languages. Miki Nishioka in Genre Effects of Compound Verbs in Hindi-Urdu: A Comparative Study of Jänä with Japanese Verb Shimau in Translations studies how certain second verbs (V2) in compound verbs behave in Hindi-Urdu as compared to Japanese while doing a comparative study of the Hindi-Urdu verb jānā and Japanese verb shimau in Japanese translations of two short stories and a screenplay from Hindi-Urdu. Umesh Kumar in The Question of Regional Indian Languages in the English Classroom: Towards a Heterographic Pedagogy of Translation puts forth the classroom experience to argue that the relationship between regional languages and English translation is not completely opposing but also complementing each other. In Problems and Challenges in Hindi to Bangla Translation: Some Empirical Observation and Workable Solutions Niladri Sekhar Dash discusses the methods and strategies adopted for translating Hindi texts into Bangla and particularly deals with some translation problems and solutions. This paper examines the issues at lexical and sentential levels and makes some interesting points e.g. how the syntactic divergence (i.e. the difference in conceptual divergence) outweighs the structural proximity at the sentence level. Rajendran Sankaravelayuthan in Lessons from Translation of a Historical Novel from Tamil to English writes about the translation strategies followed in the translation of a historical novel Ponniyin Selvan. His paper enumerates the basic criteria for such translations and proceeds in a methodical way and provides examples from the text. Deepa V. in Translating Gender in to the Governmental Discourse: An Analysis of 'Unarthupattu' (The song of Awakening) probes into how gender gets translated into governmental discourses while considering 'Unarthupattu' as a case study, particularly she deals with the politics of identity and representation. The paper titled "You May Say I'm A Dreamer": Dara Shikoh's Dream of Translating Prince to Philosopher by Amit Ranjan explores the world of Dara Shikoh's translation and describes the socio-cultural and political contexts of the same. This paper tries to put forth the recent studies on Dara Shikoh's life and works while comparing him with the modern researcher. Alka Vishwakarma's paper titled Is there a Feminist Way of Studying Translation? Gender, Translation, Language and Identity Politics discusses translation from the feminist perspectives by giving a brief account of existing literature in the field. Sahdev Luhar in Reinvigorating Community Literature through Translating Orality and Culture tries to give a solution to prevent the extinction of languages and communities through documentation and translation. Rūpāntar as Ropona: Forming a Third Meaning of Rüpäntar by Comparing it with the Biological Metaphor of 'Adaptation' by Rindon Kundu introduces the concept of Darwinian principle of adaptation and natural selection in the field of Translation Studies and studies the organic metaphor in the term adaptation with rūpāntar. Ramesh Malik in Translation Strategies of the Non-Native Odia Translators (1807-1874) discusses various translation strategies of the non-native Odia translators like William Carey, Amos Sutton, and others during the colonial times. This paper pointed out that these translation strategies were to preserve the religious and pedagogical fidelity rather than textual fidelity. Sanju Thomas in The Writer as Translator: Self-Translation in O. V. Vijayan's The Legends of Khasak explores the process and the politics of self-translation as rewriting with special reference to the first chapter of The Legends of Khasak, the English translation of O. V. Vijayan's Malayalam novel Khasakkinte Ithihasam by the writer himself. In Truth or Treachery? Questioning Authenticity and Invisibility in Travel and Translation, Saswati Saha explains how the narrative becomes a space for the traveller-translator by deploying language while dealing with the issue of authenticity and invisibility. Her paper deals with a translation of Gulliver's Travels in Bengali titled Apūrba Deś Bhraman to show how a traveller-translator deals with the issue of visibility and language. Shashi Kumar GK in Translation as Cultural Revitalization: Translation of a Classical Text Pygmalion into Kannada Language and Culture focuses on the translation strategies by analyzing the translation of Pygmalion, the English drama by G B Shaw into Kannada. The study also shows how the ideals of Navodaya movement in Kannada literary history seeps into the translation that even the very selection of the title for translation has social reformation as its primary objective. The paper titled To Be or Not to be? Dilemmas and their Resolution in Literary Translation of Shanta Kumar's Lajjo by Suman Sharma discusses the English translation of Shanta Kumar's Lajjo and analyzes its problematic aspects and their solutions.