As anyone who has travelled in an alien country accompanied by a local guide knows, it is impossible to describe the mix of initial suspicion and subsequent relief experienced every time a transaction with the locals is successfully mediated. One tries hard to follow facial expressions, the force and tone of speech and perhaps the drop in decibel level… but to no avail. Is the go-between for or against the deal? Is he over-friendly? Is he ingratiating himself? Where is this leading?
Imagine then, if you will, the mix of awe and mistrust with which a bilingual go-between must have been viewed as he worked with two groups of monolinguals separated from each other by mutual ignorance of the other’s language. From Alexander to Timur, from Julius Caesar to Charlemagne, communication frontiers depended on information absorbed and relayed by a different sort of battalion—armed with words.
Their marches went unrecorded, their contributions unsung. Sometimes mandated to serve both sides, sometimes in the pay of one to the detriment of the other, interpreters and translators earned formidable reputations for their indispensability because visitors depended on the du-bhasha / dwi-bhashi , the bilingual. Whether they chose the profession or were chosen by it, these interpreters helped shape history. Karl Marx is said to have remarked that empires were built by sailors, thieves and translators.
Language brokers
In 17th century India, the senior-most dubash was given the title of ‘Chief Merchant, the East India Company’. This honorific drew a dip of the head as recognition for their role in developing local markets for the foreign traders. Bhavani Raman’s Document Raj beautifully describes how the tricky path to commercial success was lubricated by these du-bhashis . Today, a different kind of brokerage is under way. Enthusiasm, both commercial and cultural, accompanies the arrival of an Indian work clothed in English from one part of the country to the others. Indeed, there is much to-ing and fro-ing going on.
Over the past three months, thunderbolts have fallen repeatedly on publishers about translation of Indian works into English. Many people have been voicing a specific anxiety: have we locked ourselves into an English language prison and disabled thinking outside of it? Though this worry vaguely includes the vocabulary of academics and scientists, it is the particular concern of creative writers, translators, literary critics and the promoters of all three tribes. Not enough nativism was coming through, they said.
Bhavani Raman’s ‘Document Raj’ describes how the tricky path to commercial success was lubricated by du-bhashis during the British Raj.
Why? Let’s find someone to blame.
Where did it begin? The origin of English translations of Indian works lay in imperialistic imperatives to understand and control the immense complexities of the subcontinent. The British needed to oversee the work of their native employees who were tasked with handling the rest of their countrymen. For over a hundred years (1778-1899), translations of Indian texts to English, whether from legal, religious or literary sources, were carried out by Englishmen with the help of unknown Indian intermediaries. With a few exceptions, the results were unreadable but it set a strongly entrenched trend to use declamatory prosy English, starched into place by language professionals everywhere in the country.
Cultural import
Colonial education—designed with the cooperation of Indian munshis , all of who were bilingual—was a skilled introduction of one more language into a poly-lingual land. But with this language came the full cultural force of the country of its origin. It was a grand plan to superimpose England on the subcontinent.
The pattern of marks awarded for the Indian Civil Service examinations in the middle of the 19th century is a revelation. For English and English History: 1,500; for Greek and Latin: 1,500; for mathematics: 1,250; for the natural sciences: 500; for logic and philosophy: 500; for French,German, Italian, Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic: only 375 each.
Bookish English soon became the norm because Indians didn’t know how it was spoken in real life. English translations from Indian languages stooped under a double burden: the killing weight of the original and that brand of strenuous language called ‘fine’ or ‘standard’ English, never mind if no one knew whose “standard” it was. Buddhadev Bose expressed depression about this Anglomania and Gordon Bottomley said it was “Matthew Arnold in a sari”. V.K. Gokak added that it was “Shakuntala in skirts”. Who would have thought that a language would strike deeper roots than a conquest which looked unshakeable for nearly 200 years?
In our 70th year of Independence, surrounded by inescapable influences all of which are reaching us too rapidly for literary health, we must find ways to recover. Meena Kandaswamy brings us home: “I dream of an English full of the words of my language.”
The writer edits translations for Oxford University Press, India.
