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#12 Postcolonial Approach - Spring 2010 - 筆譯研究方法專論

張貼者： NTNU GITI BLOG on 2010年2月22日 星期一
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#12 Postcolonial Approach
Tejaswini Niranjana, Siting Translation

3 意見:

charlotte wu 提到...

In these two chapters, Niranjana talks about the role and function that translation plays in the discourse of colonialism as well as nationalism/nativism in and after the British colonized India. Niranjana points out that in the colonial context, translation is often seen as a kind of ‘representation’, which may construct and fix the status of the colonized. These ‘translation participants’ are fixed, represented by the discourse used to describe them. In the cases that Niranjana mentioned in the article, such as the history of British India written by Mill, these translation participants are often endowed with the ‘decided inferiority’. That is, in these discourses, the colonized are described as under-developed, insincere, un-cultivated, while the colonizers are civilized and perfect. That is the reason why Niranjana would focus the discussion on ‘translation’. Because, in the colonial and post-colonial context, what translation does is not merely the exchange of information or knowledge, it reflects the politics of power. Whatever presented as ‘transparent’ in translation involves certain kind of manipulation to make the dispersed situations in the context to be simple and transparent. And by this kind of translation, which merges into the discursive practice of everyday life in the colonized, the colonial subjects are constituted.

It is because of the strong influence that translation may exert that Niranjana calls for ‘translation as interpellation’ as well as ‘translation as disruption’. In these cases, translation is used as the ‘double writing’ to challenge the dominant discourses in colonial histories as well as translations and reveal what has been ignored in the past. One interesting point I found in the reading is that last time when we were reading Lydia Liu and Liu RenPeng, I was not sure why nationalism has to be seen as the opposition of colonialism. But with Niranjana’s description of the Indian nationalism, I kind of grasp the idea. I think the reason why nationalism would be an index for opposing colonialism is because its discourses are focused around the lamentation for the pre-colonial past and the criticism of the colonizer. However, the nationalists are at the same time using the perspective of essentialism to access to their history. In this sense, translation is also used and restricted to reveal one flat, fixed dominant ‘image’ of the subjects, which is the same way of constructing/manipulating understanding as the colonizer. If viewing from this perspective, I can understand why these two notions are often compared and contrasted as oppositions.

I think what Niranjana urges in the articles is the re-reading and re-translation of the colonial history. Through re-translation, what used to be deemed as ‘the history’ can be opened up to the possibilities of ‘histories’. And these possibilities can re-represent what are represented in the colonial history. To sum, in these two chapters, translation is seen as an act that enables the ‘re-membering’ of the dismembered past and provide a way for de-constructing within, not destroying without, the discourses that we usually consider and accept as ‘natural’ and ‘normal’.

2010年5月10日 下午3:00
Craig 提到...

Niranjana sets the stage by cataloging vitriol hurled at India, Indian civilization and Indian people in the British Orientalist project. These representations, continually reproduced and backed by the power of empire, served the British as justification for the erasure of India's indigenous culture. Translation, history, the spread religious doctrine, as well as education all played roles in this institutionalized project. The homogenous quality of these representations reduced Indian culture to a uni-vocal stereotype in the eyes of the colonists while claiming a monopoly on truth. Niranjana states the imperialist claim to truth in its version of history is much like notions of translation that lay claim to an optimal version (most faithful or most equivalent), in that they both muffle other voices in the name of objective truth, rationality or efficiency, but are in fact primarily in service of authority and power. Nirajana's project promotes multivalent, a-linear conceptions of history that are derived from a variety of voices and continually in a state of becoming. Nirajana suggests that subsequent translations should bring new perspectives to texts and history, adding to previous points of view rather than superseding them.

In chapter 6 Nirajana puts her own spin on a classical Indian poem written in 12th century southern India. She offers detailed explanations of why her choices differ from previous translations, yet I am not sure how her reading “undoes” or “reorients” past, imperialist readings.

2010年5月11日 下午6:36
Unknown 提到...

In this week’s reading, Niranjana takes a look at the influence of translation in the context of colonialism, nationalism and post-colonialism. The discussion is focused on the case of India as the colonized nation and Britain as the colonizer. In particular, Niranjana explores issues relating to questions of representation, power, and historicity. As Niranjana explains, since the colonial ‘subject’ is constructed within the context of an asymmetrical power structure, the representation of this ‘subject’ in the translated literature becomes a sort of static, incomplete caricature of the actual colonial situation. This caricatural representation of the colonized is nowhere more evident than in the examples of 18th century Orientalist literature that Niranjana cites in this article. One possible way of dealing with this traditional representation of the colonial ‘subject’ as immutable is through the incorporation of historicity, or effective history as Niranjana explains it, into the practice of translation and translation studies. This notion leads to Niranjana’s idea of ‘translation as interpellation’. The basic idea, as Niranjana puts it, is for the reader/writer/translator to “disturb or displace history rather than to interpret it or ‘read’ it.” The defense for employing such a subversive approach is then found in Derrida’s notion that ‘origin is always already heterogeneous’ and therefore interpellation of history in this way is merely an attempt at understanding this heterogeneity. Of course, apart from unraveling the heterogeneity of history or of meaning, translation as interpellation also makes attempts at giving a voice to agents of this mix whose stories, as of yet, may not have seen the light of day. Derrida’s notion of heterogeneity of ‘origin’ (read: original) is a wonderful one, and one that translation studies would do well to do more than just give lip service to.
Another interesting point that Niranjana brings up in this article is the idea that translation is, for the most part, dependent upon Western philosophical notions of reality, representation, and knowledge. I realize that Niranjana is specifically referring to translation into English but I would be interested to know whether or not translation into, and between, other languages is necessarily constructed upon these same assumptions about reality, representation, and knowledge. My own feeling is that not only will these philosophical notions differ across cultures/nations but also that different groups of people have different 'uses' for translation and therefore different concepts of translation in general. This is something that I would be interested to learn more about.

2010年5月11日 晚上8:18

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