தினசெய்தி – 18 6 2023
பக்கம் எண் : 4
அருந்தமிழும் அன்றாட வழக்கும் – 166
பம்மலாட்டத்தின் பொற்காலம் !
முனைவர் ஔவை அருள்
தில்லிப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் யான் 28 ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்பு வழங்கிய
முனைவர் பட்ட ஆய்வின் பதினாறாம் பகுதி வருமாறு:
He began to understand the difficulties after he finished reading the text and started wondering how he could translate it into Tamil.
While fear seized him on the one side, he was also not inclined to confess this inability on the other.
He realized that he can never achieve the excellence of a scholar, but his belief in the reward of labor made him plunge into the task of translating the text.
Like Achilles in war, he had to be reminded of his challenge to display his valour in translating Shakespeare.
What began as a challenge, assumed the shape of a literary endeavor and to took more than six years for him to complete the task.
The opening scene itself could be translated only after a few months.
Again, the long speech of Claudius in Act I, scene two, proved tough and could not be translated to his satisfaction.
As someone who would normally proceed only after he was fully satisfied with the work undertaken, his translation of Hamlet had come to a grinding halt.
His bosom friend Ranga vadivelu on coming to know about it suggested that Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar undertake the translation work of an easier play first and thus he began the translation of “As You like It”.
Even the translation of “As You like It” could be completed only after five months and when it was published, he called it not a translation, but an adaptation.
There were two reasons.
First of all, he was of the opinion that no play of Shakespeare could satisfactorily be translated into any other language.
Secondly, he had given Tamil names for the characters, towns and rivers of the English play.
The main reason for this was that while staging the play, the English names would only evoke laughter among the Tamil audience.
Tamil names, in consonance with the English names were given to the Shakesperean characters.
One could say that Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar’s five decades of theatrical experience qualified him to render Shakespeare’s plays into Tamil.
Like Shakespeare, he entered the stage as an amateur actor and dramatist.
He was a lawyer by profession, who developed an interest in dramatics.
The problems that he discussed are of a practical nature.
He introduced Shakespeare to an audience that knew no English writer.
He localized not only the names of Shakespeare’s characters, but also mythological and classical allusions.
In other words, he reoriented the plays of Shakespeare to suit the tastes of the Tamil theatergoers ensuring that it did not lead to any serious distortion of the plays, whose plot and characterisation were kept intact.
The problems that he faced and the methodology he adopted fit in with what has already been stated – that no foreigner can ever visualize the said and unsaid of a language and that a translated work should stand in modern vocabulary and word, in synch with the idiom of the time and should not read like a translation.
In general, it can be seen that despite the problems posed by translation as an art, Tamil writers have made bold experiments.
The reason is that the Tamils as a race have a sensibility and an affinity to Shakespeare’s texts.
Some of the Tamil classics, especially the epics, are great historical artefacts and have specific sources in Sanskrit that have been transformed.
The Tamils have had in them, a mythic sensibility down the ages and it is this that drew them close to Shakespeare.
Historically, the period from 1870-1930 was a productive period in terms of kindling the interest of Shakespeare among the Tamils.
There was a revival of interest in Tamil theatre and literature on the one hand, and Shakespeare’s influence on the other.
Most of what survives under a quickened effort to translate Shakespeare is to be found under a trio of influence in Tamil during the late 19th century and a consequent blooming of Shakespearean sensibility around 1925 in Swamy Vibulanandhas’s work.
Prof. Sundaram Pillai’s Manonmaneyam, Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar’s Nataka Medai Ninaivugal and V.G. Suryanarayana Sastriyar’s Natakaviyal mean a great deal to Tamil theatre.
The classical inheritance of the Tamils, the intelligence of the Tamil audience, the scholar’s love for English as well as proficiency in Tamil, have all been major contributing factors.
In Prof. Sundaram Pillai’s Manonmaneyam (1891), the editor alludes to an instance of the remarkable inclination towards research of a Shakespeare scholar of the day, Justice K.G.Seshaiyer of Trivandrum High Court, famed for his research article on Shakespeare plays.
The editor K.N.Sivaraja Pillai observes that he (Prof. Sundaram Pillai) appears to have been attracted by the great central luminary in literary firmament of Modern Europe, Shakespeare.
K.N. Sivaraja Pillai is of the opinion that the philosophy of Manonmaneyam is an expanded homily on the Shakesperean text.
He says that Prof. Sundaram Pillai waded into newer waters with his exposure to western culture, and no student of Tamil will be sorry that he did so.
He has enriched his mother tongue with new turns of expressions, new figures of speech and new ideas and sentiments borrowed from Western literature.
– முனைவர் ஔவை அருள்
தொடர்புக்கு dr.n.arul@gmail.com
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