Wooing the Mistress of Translation

In the male-dominated Renaissance society, critics and artists comapred translation with a woman : faithful when they are homely and unfaithful when they are unfaithful. And i am surprised to learn that even in the allegedly post-modern society the pretenders to art and criticism does not seem to have altered their opinion diametrically. Actually translation and woman analogy obviously enough unearths the conspiracy towards summarily marginalizing this dynamic and challenging activity, one which sissies maintain an arms length from. Such patriarchal sissies prefer to have a homely, faithful wife who can heaten up his bed every night irrespective of the fact that she is ugly and offputting to begin with and secondly he does not love her at all. The only theoretical premise which facilitated their coitus is the idea of her faithfulness to him (the source text). On the other hand, the transcendeantal singnified of the source turns immemsely displeaased with the curvacious beauty of the mistress as there is no guarantee that she will remains faithful to him all his life.

Interestingly enough, this chauvinistic attitude of the source texts accurately represents the mindsets of the self-styled evaluators or proofreaders of translations which include publishers and their sidekicks. Quite ignorant about the complexities invovled on the act of translation, these machos become custodians of the source texts and whine their lungs out if the mistress avatar is presented to them. No doubt, they can't help leering at buxom beauty and wish that they would possess and ravish her. However, they keep up the moral facade of promoting faithful wife archetype and banish unfaithful mistresses from the domain of readable literature.

Idiom, or what these asses call diction (of poetry?), and semantic ambiguity are a few of the reasons that they memorize by keeping awake all night and cite in the morning as a character certificate to the translation. In so far as poetry is concerened maintenance of semantic ambiguity in the original is looked upon as a positive trait in the translation. Post structural theory has established it very clearly that any attempts at arriving at the right or definite, determinate meaning in a text are self-defeating, futile and political in nature. Thus if a translator cliams to know the meaning of intentional or unintentional ambiguity in the source text, he is either a fool or a seasoned politician. Further, if he tries to simplify or lucidify the ambiguity, he is perfoming nothing short of a rape on the translation. Secondly, the problem of idiom, or what they call diction, is certainly unsolvable to the best of my knowledge. What a translator can aspire for in such matters is the closest possible approximation of sorts. When i say closests, it can even be a thousand miles in terms of linguistic idenitcalities. These baffoons easily forget the fact that languages are located in space and time and operate in the socio-cultural exclusive globe that they formulate around them.

Well in face of such fancies and literary fantasies of my dear friends, the ghost of a seminal poet is waiting on the threshold of Gujarati Literature. And i am surprised to learn that my friendly excorcists are already on the way to welcome a fresh ghost from the same language into their literary slaughterhouse. May god bless the ghost who would already be rolling over in his grave.