Fifty Years of the Song of the Road: A 2018;Good2019; Translation or a 2018;Successful2019; One?

Abstract

What is a translation a product or a process For us who are in the field of academics and who try to engage often with the activity called translation it is a process But for the reader it is a product and products can either be good or bad Yet when we were taught Translation Studies as part of our curriculum at the Department of Comparative Literature at Jadavpur University we were told that there is nothing called a good translation or a bad translation translations can only be either successful or unsuccessful Translations have a sociology of their own more so in case of Indian texts being translated into English and or other foreign languages One may be reminded of Andre Lefevere s Introduction to Translation History Culture A Source Book which says translations are made by people who do not need them for people who cannot read the originals It complies with the age-old Italian concept of posing the traduttore translator as a traditore traitor The imposition of one language and culture considered to be superior on an inferior one is an old colonial practice How do we then determine the success of a translation One sure-shot way of determining lies in the reception and survival of the text