Translation&Indian Literature

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Translation and Indian Literature: Some Reflections Abstract The paper attempts to lay out the role of translation on interhuman space at various times and places in the world in general and in the Indian situation in particular. Renaissances in various parts of the world were a function of translation into those languages. Translation has an undoubted place in the history of ideas and the history of translation is the history of human civilization and (mis) understanding.The paper goes on to talk about the Indian situation in particular, both endotropic (=one Indian language into another) and exotropic(= Indian language into English).It elucidates the originary moments of translation in Indian history and concludes that translation, the impressionable interface that it is of cultural traffic, is a great tool of intercultural synergy. The history of translation is the history of human civilization and understanding, and sometimes of misunderstanding. Stories travel from culture to culture, and their transmission through translation takes innumerable forms. The classic case is said to be that of our own Panchatantra. In an evocative essay, Amitav Ghosh (1994) has the following to say about Panchatantra: “These stories too have no settings to speak of, except the notion of a forest. Yet the Panchatantra is reckoned by some to be second only to the Bible in the extent of its global diffusion. Compiled in India early in the first millennium, it passed into Arabic through a sixth century Persian translation, engendering some of the best known Translation Today Vol. 3 Nos. 1 & 2, 2006 © CIIL 2006 2 M. Asaduddin of middle eastern fables, including parts of the Thousand and One Nights. The stories were handed on to the Slavic languages through Greek, then from Hebrew to Latin, a version in the latter appearing in 1270. Through

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