Untranslatability of

Partition Narratives
with focus on Toba Tek Singh (short story) by Manto

Image: Associated Press

Introduction: Partition 1947

Picture credits: Margaret Bourke-White, Associated Press

Sa’adat Hassan Manto
• Born in Ludhiana (British India, now in Pakistan)

• Wrote in Urdu and Hindi

• ‘became prone to excessive displays of emotion’

(Jalal 2013)

• ‘His later work progressively became stark in

portraying the darkness of the human psyche, as
humanist values progressively declined around the
Partition.’ (Wikipedia)
Toba Tek Singh
• Originally written in Urdu
• Story of Bishan Singh and other ‘lunatics’ in asylums after partition
• Set in post-partition years
• State of confusion and insanity portrayed through mental patients esp.
Bishan Singh who kept asking where Toba Tek Singh (his hometown)
was- India or Pakistan
• Finding no answer, he dies on the no man’s land
Toba Tek Singh- Translations

perfunctory

Urdu- original Hindi English

Khalid Hasan’s translation
‘Hasan commits all the errors of an inordinately adventurous translator.
He changes the titles of stories without any valid reason, leaves out
large portions of the original, summarizes descriptive paragraphs and
dialogues, changes the order of sentences, eliminates ellipses, flattens
out uneven contours and cultural angularities of the original, and
sometimes, though not as frequently, adds some copy of his own for the
benefit of readers not acquainted with Indo-Islamic culture and the
history of the Subcontinent.’ (Asaduddin, 1996)
Toba Tek Singh: Translatables

Urdu Hindi English

Moral offenders - Moral offenders - Inmates of Lunatic Asylum

Fair or unfair - Right or wrong - Reasonable or unreasonable

Interesting Talks - Interesting Talks - Heated discussions

Ignorant - Fool - Illiterate

Very upset - Very upset - Depressed

Toba Tek Singh: Untranslatables

Sardarj Maulvi Sahab Qaid-e-azam

i
Imagery Tone
Translation Theory: Walter Benjamin The
Task of the Translator
• Yet any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot
transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the
hallmark of bad translations.
• The "poetic;' something that a translator can reproduce only if he is also a poet?
• The task of the translator consists in finding that intended effect [Intention]
upon the language into which he is translating which produces in it the echo of
the original.
• A translation, instead of resembling the meaning of the original, must lovingly
and in detail incorporate the original's mode of signification

(Benjamin, 1923)
Loss and Gains

“The word ‘translation’ comes, etymologically, from the Latin for

‘bearing across’. Having been borne across the world, we are translated
men. It is normally supposed that something always gets lost in
translation; I cling obstinately to the notion that something can also be
gained”

(Rushdie, 1992)
Conclusion
Translatability of a text depends on various things. Partition Narratives
especially carry a heavy cultural, historical and political context that is
not easy to translate. The difficulties arise as the translator has to keep in
mind syntax, form, meaning and intention of the author as well as mass
sentiments. The count of untranslatables grows as one moves farther
from the setting of the original text: in this case, Hindi had a smaller
number of untranslatable terms in comparison to English which is far
from the setting of the text i.e., in pre-partition India.
References
• Primary Sources

- Manto, S.H., (1955) Toba Tek Singh.

- Manṭo, S.Ḥ. (1987) Toba Tek Singh. In: Kingdom's end and other stories. Translated by Hasan, K. London: Verso. 

• Secondary Sources

- Asaduddin, M. (1996) Manto Flattened: An Assessment of Khalid Hasan's Translations. In: Annual of Urdu Studies vol.
11. Center for South Asia, University of Wisconsin–Madiso.
- Saadat Hasan Manto. (2021) Wikipedia. Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saadat_Hasan_Manto (Accessed:
07th December 2021)
- Benjamin, W. (1968) The Task of the Translator. In: Illuminations. Translated by Zohn, H. New York: Harcourt, Brace
and World.
- Rushdie, S. ed. (1992) Essays and Criticism 1981-1991. In: Imaginary Homelands. Penguin Books.
- Jalal, A. (2013) The Pity of Partition: Manto's Life, Times, and Work across the India-Pakistan Divide. Princeton
University Press.