தினசெய்தி – 26 3 2023
பக்கம் எண் : 4
அருந்தமிழும் அன்றாட வழக்கும் – 154
ஷேக்ஸ்பியர் நாடகங்களின் தமிழாக்கம் !
முனைவர் ஔவை அருள்
தில்லிப் பல்கலைக்கழகத்தில் நான் வழங்கிய முனைவர் பட்ட ஆய்வின் ஐந்தாம் பகுதி வருமாறு :
There are some who seem to suggest that citing an author’s literary debt diminishes his originality.
But originality should not be understood only in terms of innovation or invention.
The original author is not necessarily the innovator or the most inventive, but rather the one who succeeds in subordinating what he takes from others to new heights through his own artistic interpretation.
For example, with the advent of Shakespeare in India, many Tamil playwrights took to Shakespeare and they must be given due credit for identifying what was fine and elegant in him and manipulating it with their own genius and perception.
Direct inter-relationship between literatures exists in a context of the reception and popularity of an author or authors, of one country, in another.
The reception of foreign authors in a particular literature forms a direct and integral part of the literary taste.
For example, an author could be quite popular in one country, but produce no noteworthy effect on the literature of another.
But Shakespeare, as an individual and as an influencer, has exercised a great impact on the Indian Literary scene, especially in Tamil.
Imitation came in the form of translations, and influence, in the form of new dramatic types in Indian literature.
Translations play a special role in the transmission of literary influences and often has direct influence than the original work.
When it comes to comparative literature, Shakespeare studies have already been made and these studies fall in to three broad categories – limiting to Tamil here.
1. Works of a general nature tracing Western or English influence on the literature of the Tamils in which Shakespeare’s influence is included as one among many influences
2. Works of a comparative nature tracing the influence of Shakespeare on a particular author or works
3. Works dealing with Shakespeare translations.
While these are already available, a fresh look to assess the characteristics of the translations and adaptations of the works of Shakespeare in Tamil will always add to the body of works available and it would be interesting to evaluate their influence on the development of modern Tamil language and literature, on the stage and the screen.
A judicious blend of the methodology of both, translation studies and influence studies, the two major aspects of comparative literature will make the study of influence of the Bard that much more interesting.
2
SHAKESPEARE IN TAMIL TRANSLATIONS
( The early days )
Once planted on the Indian soil, Shakespeare went on gaining ground and became quite popular.
His plays were performed on the stage and introduced in the school and college curricula as a compulsory subject when the British introduced the English education.
From the middle of 20th century, film versions of his plays have also been made.
Most of the English educated Indians became familiar with the plays in the original.
And as a natural outcome, they enthusiastically wished to impart their knowledge of Shakespeare to those who were ignorant of English, through translations and adaptations.
Translation is a worthwhile literary exercise, since to some extent comparative work depends on translations.
It is also important to be aware of the methods and limitations of translations, to help in assessing the merits of a translated piece, whether it is in verse or prose.
It is first important to understand translations.
The translator may distort the original in several ways. Ideological curtains, political& economic barriers and racial prejudices may interfere with the task of the translator.
He may distort a literary work and present an idea not originally expressed by the author.
The duty of the translator is to trace the movement and not part with that.
A successful translation is a rare sympathy between two poets, something of an imitation, a controlled surrender of the translator who respects the pattern, coherence, and texture of the original.
In so doing, an extraordinary translator may add a new dimension to the mother tongue and push the frontiers of perception a little farther by setting the language to other tasks.
It is only through encounters of translation and competition that a language gains flexibility.
The question then arises as to what one demands from a translator.
The first law is that nothing can be taken as final.
Every age views literature through the prism of its own pre occupations.
Changes are made in line with the changes in human history.
The second law is that translation, however impressive, cannot truly reflect the original. The degree of emphasis is different.
Recent Views:
The primary intent of the present-day English and American translations can be briefly summarised as follows:
• It should be modern, which simply means readable and intelligible
• A good translation should reconcile faithfulness with contemporary language
• It should be idiomatic
• It should be easy to understand and appreciated
• It should reflect the cultural sensibilities of the language
While it is generally said that the duty of the translator is to reproduce the effect that the original had upon its readers when it was published, there are differing views on what constitutes a good translation.
The different views on what constitutes a good translation can be summarized as:
1. The translator can translate a work only in one way, his best way.
2. His best way is a via media between the precise idiom of the original and the personal idiom of the translator.
In short, the loving rivalry between the original and the new idiom, imitation and reproduction, closeness and naturalness, form and meaning, poetry and prose, can never be eliminated.
Thus translation is a matter of compromise and the translator must bring sympathy and understanding to the work he is to translate.
If one takes the example of the translation of the Bible in Tamil, there has been a movement from colloquial Tamil to a more literary and scholarly language and then to a more exact and scholarly translation and finally to something more contemporary and in sync with the times, as necessitated by the linguistic changes taking place over time.
The fundamental point is that “The Bible” was written in one particular cultural and geographical area and translators have used a corresponding custom familiar to that area and culture. Idiomatic and metaphorical terms may however, be difficult to translate.
There seems to be a widespread belief that translation is possible only when two languages are equivalent in point of expressiveness and have a competent wealth of vocabulary economized by good taste and is thus a challenge to the translator’s mental resources.
Taking Shakespeare, when his work has to be translated into verse, the translator is confronted with the problem of metre.
While the metre in most of the Indian languages is quantitative, it is accentual in Shakespeare’s tongue.
That is why most of the efforts of translating Shakespeare’s blank verse into rhyming couplet form or some other metre,
for example, in Hindi have proved ineffectual.
Only Harivanshrai Bachchan has devised a kind of free unrhymed verse for his translations of Macbeth and Othello.
It is equally difficult to render Shakespeare’s puns, quibbles and allusions, and hence, the translator has to look to render them imaginatively in terms of his own real experience.
Given this, the Tamil translators of Shakespeare’s plays had/have an arduous job to do, because of the puns and imagery and it is no wonder that most of the translations are in prose.
The supreme task of the translator is to see that he does not mutilate the original and that his translation itself reads like a piece of original composition.
The first baby steps taken to accommodate Shakespeare within the structure of the Tamil world of letters, was a translation of “The Merchant of Venice”, which appeared in 1870 in the then Madras.
It has been observed that even as early as 1788, attempts were made to put Shakespeare on the Indian stage and since then there has been a spate of Shakespearean productions in Bengal.
And in 1883, the first translation of “The Merchant of Venice” into Bengali also appeared under the title “Bhanumati Chittavitas”.
But it is a matter of pride for the Tamils that as early as 1870, the first translated work of the same play in Tamil was published in the then Madras.
Since then not less than fifty translations and adaptations have appeared in South India and Sri Lanka.
Tragedy, as Shakespeare seems to have expressed, is alien to the Tamil World.
Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar, the founding father of Tamil stage, records on more than one occasion in his Nadaka Medai Ninaivukal, that sometimes, even after having written plays in Tamil with a tragic ending, he has been compelled to alter the ending and give the impression of ‘lived happily ever after’.
The inflexibility of the Tamils in admitting the possibility of tragedy in the Shakesperean sense has been a major limiting factor and this explains the absence of sustained tragic intensity in most translations.
வளரும் . . . .
– முனைவர் ஔவை அருள்
தொடர்புக்கு dr.n.arul@gmail.com
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