Paper No.

: 05 翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Module : 02 翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)

Development Team

Principal Investigator: Prof. Anita Khanna

and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Paper Coordinator: Dr. Ashok Chawla

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Content Writer: Dr. Ashok Chawla

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

Content Reviewer: Prof. P.A. George

Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
Description of Module

Subject Name Japanese

Paper Name 翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Module title 翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)

Module ID JPN_P05_M02

E-Text

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
 Component-I (A) – Personal Details:
Role Name Affiliation

Principal Investigator Anita Khanna JNU

Paper Coordinator, if any Ashok K. Chawla CSIR-

NISCAIR,
JNU &
APU

Content Writer/Author (CW) Ashok K. Chawla CSIR-

NISCAIR
& JNU &
APU

Content Reviewer (CR) <CR Name>

Language Editor (LE) <LE Name>

Component-I (B) Description of Module:

Items Description of Module

Subject Name e-PG Programme in Japanese

Paper Name Communication through Translation

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション
Module Name/Title Translation Traditions (1)
翻訳伝統
Module ID JPN_P05_M02

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
 Pre-requisites 1. Bi-lingual Skills
2. History of Translation
3. Willingness to understand the traditions
Objectives 1. To understand few more traditions to link
trans-culture communication process
2. To seek the way-forward
Keywords Literary translation, science translation, theory of
translation, adaptation, standardization, source text
1. At
the
Beginning & Introduction

In the Module-01, it was understood that learning about the history and traditions in the domain of
translation is very important and it was translation that helped cross-culture communication, which
in turn led to exchange of human beings, cultures, customs, practices, techniques and technology.
It was also observed that more concerted efforts are required to trace the theories, practices,
corpuses, expertise and the tools used in translation centuries before. Certain processes and phases
that were mostly state sponsored were identified. For example, word-to-word translation to
meaningful value-added translation is one such case. Though, mostly it began with translation of
religious texts, state sponsored activities usually had a certain design, may it be import of
technology or knowledge, trade or war compulsions or religion for peace and harmony. In the last
module, only Chinese and Japanese traditions could be covered, besides a brief history of
translation. Let us look at some other traditions also.

2. Traditions of Translation

2.1. French Traditions

According to the French Traditions, initially translation was carried out from French to Latin,
wherein documents were translated from French in monasteries. In the 9th Century, the first
documents seen in old French were literal translations of Latin. 13th century gave boost to French
translation, and Renaissance led to the decline of great Latin tradition, as King Charles V
encouraged translation into French.

Subsequently, various translators gave the field a new dimension. For instance, Nicolas Oresme
introduced new French terms and several science translations were done; Etienne Dolet introduced
the term 'traduction' in French and created, what is called the first translation theory 'La maniere de

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
 bien traduire d'une langue en l'autre' (The way of translating from one language to the other). He
cited rules for translation, which only few could apply to translation.

The print technology of the 16th Century led to the development of translation of the classics and
specific terms, such as ‘traduire’ (translate) and ‘traducteur’ (translator) were coined. Translation
was partly perceived as a mean of spreading knowledge to a larger number of people making the
translator a dual task performer of not only providing access to writings to more people but also of
taking part in developing the nascent French language.

The 17th and 18th Century saw the advent of 'Les belles infideles' (The unfaithful beauties) where
the motive was to produce translations, which appeared pleasant to the readers. Perrot
D'Ablancourt corrected factual errors of translations and Monsieur de la Valerie in 1681 spoke of
faithfulness to the author who did not intend to offend the reader.

In the 18th century, French translation lost popularity due to German and English Gothic novels.
English translation became popular and adaptation was seen as means of adjusting foreign work to
suit contemporary tastes and grammar was stressed upon.

The Romantic era made translation a literary activity, where literalism was in fashion and parallel
translations in verse and prose evolved. The contemporary period gave a push to translation, via
literary journals and standardization was emphasized to curb influx of foreigners and translation
started appearing almost simultaneously, with the originals.

Research theories were given. French theorists that include Jean-Rene Ladmiral, Henri
Meschonnic and Antoine Berman did translations. They have given numerous publications, which
explore didactics and practices of translation and interpretations. France continues to be an
important centre of research and training, where translation represents 6% of 36000 titles made.

2.2. Russian Traditions

Russian comes under the east Slavonic family of languages. Russia adopted Christianity in 988 AD
and the translation of the New Testament, the Psalter and the Prayer book were among the first
translations. During this period the translator's name was not mentioned as a rule, so people were
unaware whether the translation was done within the country or outside. Translations of non-
religious material also started gradually.
翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)
Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
 Translation in 16th century saw a trend, where the grand Prince of Moscow asked a translator to be
sent to Russia from a Greek monastery. Mikhail Trevoles (a. k. a Maxime the Greek), who was
also a well learned person, writer, educator, philosopher worked on the art of translation, which is
the first recorded exposition on the subject in Russia. He emphasized on the careful analysis of the
source text and extensive knowledge of language. During this period there were four categories of
translators-staff translators, monks, part-time translators, free translators and different fields
targeted for translation included astrology, astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, anatomy, medicine.

Russia's economic and cultural contacts expanded in 18th century and this demanded translations
of scientific and technical texts as well as works of fiction. Translation began to be
institutionalized, and was carried out systematically. First academy was setup, whose language
school graduates usually became official translators. This period also saw emergence of poetry
translation in Russia. Translator began to be regarded as a rival of the author as the translated text
could reach higher standards and surpass source text in terms of artistic quality.

If the previous age had made translation a professional activity, in 19th century this activity rose to
a level of high art. During Soviet Period, unparalleled boom in translation was observed, majority
of which were social, political, scientific material. After the soviet period, due to abolition of
censorship, many texts, which were not published, were translated.

Translation has been the object of scholarly discussions in Russia, in the second half of 20th
century theories on translation were written. These theories are largely based on the assumption
that translation can be studied and described in an objective and consistent way, using various
methods of observation and analysis. The main method of research used by Russian translation
theorists is the comparative analysis of the source and target texts. Linguistic theory of translation
is regarded as an important branch of linguistic Science, along with other branches. Most of the
translation theorists in Russia are professional translators, who help maintain a close link between
theory and practice. Russia always pays attention to the practical training of future translators and
interpreters.

2.3. Indian Traditions

India has a long history of translation. Aryans came to India from Central Asia and settled in Indus
area in 2nd millennium BC. They compiled Rigveda and three other Vedas in Sanskrit. Around third
century BC, translations became an important part of the transmission of the Buddha’s teachings.

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
 Two of the most important source texts for subsequent translation in history - The Mahabharata and
The Ramayana were consolidated during 100 and 1000 AD. The University of Nalanda in India was
particularly renowned for training the translators, who came from various parts of the world. Chinese
scholars, such as Hsuan Tsang are said to have translated several Indian texts into Chinese, which
they took back to China.

Translation activity kept flourishing under the Mughals as Sanskrit manuscripts on Hinduism were
translated into Persian and Arabic. Later when British ruled over India, many English texts, including
the Holy Bible were translated into Bengali, Oriya, Marathi, Hindi, Assamese and Sanskrit.
Rabindranath Tagore, who translated his own work from Bengali to English, was awarded Nobel
Prize for Literature.

Though in recent years, national level projects in translation have been initiated, the fact remains that
post-independence regional language academies have not been able to do much to encourage
translation work. Funding and publication are left to individual initiative and choice in most of the
cases. Some western publishing houses, such as Penguin are playing their part in the translation of
modern Indian writing into English.

Despite being a multilingual country and having a long tradition of translation, it has been observed
that translation and translation studies have not made progress up to its full potential. This situation
can only improve with the help of training programs run by universities and institutes established in
New Delhi, Hyderabad and a few other cities.

Certain efforts in creation of institutions, where translation activity is being carried out, include
National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (erstwhile INSDOC; with a
legacy of over six decades) under the umbrella of CSIR, The Centre for Applied Linguistics and
Translation Studies (CALTS), created as a research centre in 1988 at the University of Hyderabad. A
Centre for Literary Translation was set up in New Delhi, with an academic campus in Goa in 1993.
The Indian Scientific Translators Association, based in New Delhi has been a member of FIT. The
Sahitya Akademi, also in Delhi, has published a directory of translators and offers awards for
translations.

National Translation Mission (NTM) is a Government of India initiative to make knowledge texts
accessible, in all Indian languages listed in the VIII schedule of the Constitution, through translation.
NTM was set up as per National Knowledge Commission's recommendation. The Ministry of Human
Resource Development has designated Central Institute of Indian Languages, Mysore as the nodal
organization for the operationalization of NTM.
翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)
Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
 Department of Electronics and Information Technology, runs a project on language computing,
primarily dealing with fonts, dictionary, translation and transliteration of Indian languages.

3. At the End

- The flow of French Tradition indicates that the focus shifted from religious texts to literature
and also from quantity to quality in 16th to 17th century.
- Though, some more detailed study of traditions and history of other countries must be made
first, it cannot be denied that a scientific approach of mass production to quality production of
works started happening.
- Further, the flow also indicates that translation has been a major activity since the past and the
language experts must study further the history of French Tradition and its ramifications, over
the centuries.
- Russian tradition shows that translation did start with religious texts, very soon it spreaded to
literature and other domains.
- Further, different categories of translators (staff, monks, part-time and free lance) clearly
indicate the vast and diversified needs of the society and the government were being met.
- In fact, what could not be seen here is the translation in medieval times in the area.
- As in the case of India, Russia had been a conglomeration of multilingual communities and
translation must have been an obvious option as well as the necessity, though its form and
methodology might have been different.
- Further, in the USSR days, Soviet Union had been a driving force behind the technology
transfer through multilingual means, especially in the eastern world. The obvious role of
translator and translation is visible from the Russian literature available in different languages.
- Translators seen as rival to the authors is sign of excellence in translation and its rank up in
quality, what was termed as art of translation.
- In Indian Tradions, trans-culture communication since very long time is obviously attributable
to translation also. However, it may not be appropriate to limit the Indian tradition to the age of
even Ramayana and Rigveda, as there is every possibility of multilingual environment
persisiting much before as well.
- Summing up the Module 1 also together with Module 2, it can be said that pre-war translation
efforts are not well documented; war-period works are largely classified still, while the post
war period clearly shows major momentum in traditions both literary and commercial.
- It is yet to be established if there was communication among the nations in the past vis-à-vis
the translation domain per se, even though the activity might have progressed in different
nations in response to local needs. French Tradition shows the work on theory of translation

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)
 and standardization, Chinese going step-by-step from word-to-word to value-added translation,
Japanese did succeed in manualization of process of translation.
- History of translation will probably remain a myth for time to come. Mythological documents
indicate the use of advanced Science & Technology. For example, Pushpak Vimaan in
Ramayan is an example of Air Ship sailing smoothly between the two nations and instant rain
caused by release of a special purpose arrow could have nuclear element in some form.
Therefore, it may be difficult to rule out translation in the field of S & T also in ancient times.
- History has an inherent element of infinity. History of translation too may be tracked as back
as to 7000 BC. Preserving human bodies as mummies in different cultural locations is the
possible illustration of communication and transfer of techniques through translation, though
parallel development of techniques with no communication among different cultural
communities cannot be ruled out completely.
- Scope of history of translation is vast and many important literary translations cannot be traced
(Transfer of Ramayan from India to Malaysia, Transfer of Buddhist text from India to China,
Korea, Japan and so on). Therefore, only few important milestones of history of translation
have been covered in this chapter.
- Further, state sponsored translation, especially during communist regime also needs to be
probed further, because the translators and interpreters in Chinese Language, who accompany
official delegations and those who are available in Hong-Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, USA, etc.,
clearly indicate that the profession is well established for quite some time.

4. Acknowledgment

I would like to acknowledge the contribution made by Neha Manshramani, Ashish Kumar and
Brijesh Gambhir in data collection and preliminary study.

Though it is only a beginning of the understanding about Translation Traditions, it is hoped that
learners will make efforts to gather more information and do further self-study, while we move to
the other aspects of Translation.

翻訳を通じてのコミュニケーション (Communication through Translation)

Japanese
翻訳伝統 ２(Translation Traditions 2)