Three Translations in English of Rabindranath Tagore’s Three Short Stories: A Comparative Study

By Arijit Ghosh

Rabindranath Tagore’s Short Stories, Kshudito Pashan, Kabuliwala and Jibito O.Mrito, have been translated thrice in a span of around one hundred years from the original Bengali into English. Various authors have translated each of the stories in the pre-independence and post-independence era. Some of the translations remarkably vary from the original Bengali. This is a comparative study of it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arijit Ghosh
• Release date: Sep 8, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301135837

Book preview

Three Translations in English

Of

Rabindranath Tagore’s

Three Short Stories:

A Comparative Study

By

Arijit Ghosh

SMASHWORDS EDITION

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PUBLISHED BY

Arijit Ghosh on Smashwords

Three Translations in English Of Rabindranath Tagore’s Three Short Stories: A Comparative Study

Copyright © 2012 by Arijit Ghosh

Thank you for purchasing this eBook. This book may not be reproduced, copied and distributed in any form without the prior permission of the author.

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FOREWORD

Rabinddranath Tagore’s Short Stories, Kshudito Pashan, Kabuliwala and Jibito O Mrito, have been translated thrice in a span of around one hundred years from the original Bengali into English. Various authors have translated each of the stories in the pre-independence and post-independence era. Some of the translations remarkably vary from the original Bengali. Often for the sake of convenience or mediated by colonial influence the translators seem to have compromised the intended meaning of the text. This book presents a comparative study of these translations along with the original in Bengali and show how meaning has changed diachronically in the hands of the translators. The study thereby also facilitates an evaluation of all the versions of the translated texts.

This book is an outcome of my postgraduate project in 2009 in the Department of English, Pondicherry University, Pondicherry. I express my gratitude to my supervisor, Professor Sujatha Vijayaraghavan, Head of the Department of English, Pondicherry University, for all her support and care. Many thanks to Dr Susanta Kr. Bardhan, Suri Vidyasagar College, Suri, West Bengal for his valuable feedbacks. I am grateful to my family for their good wishes, and my friends who made my stay in Pondicherry memorable.

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

English makes the most fruitful contribution to the field of comparative literature, because being a global language it mediates and bridges the socio-cultural and linguistic barriers of authors and their texts by means of translation. Translation is a process by which a text in the source language is produced as the text in the target language with the intention of transferring the same meaning and message. The word translation has originated from Latin ‘translatum’ which means ‘bringing across’ or ‘carrying across’. This book attempts to study three English translations of Rabindranath Tagore’s short stories in comparison to his original Bengali work. The three translations vary remarkably from one another and as such merit fruitful analysis. The three short stories in translation taken for study are:

1. Kshudito Pashan entitled (a)The Hungry Stones, (b)The Hungry Stone and (c) Hungry Stone in three respective translations.

2. Kabuliwala entitled (a) The Cabuliwallah (The Fruitseller from Cabul), (b) Kabuliwallah and (c) Kabuliwala in three respective translations

3. Jibito O Mrito entitled (a) Living or Dead?, (b) The Living and the Dead and (c) The Living and the Dead in three respective translations.

The three translations have been compared to the original Bengali source text. The study is prefaced by an introduction to the life and work of Rabindranath Tagore.

LIFE AND WORKS OF RABINDRANATH TAGORE

Rabindranath Tagore was born in 1861, into one of the foremost families of Bengal, at Jorasanko in Kolkata. He was the fourteenth child of Debendranath Tagore, wealthy land owner and a leader of Brahmo Samaj, which was a new religious sect in nineteenth century Bengal and which attempted a revival of the ultimate monistic basis of Hinduism as laid down by the Upanishads. The family house of Jorasanko was a hive of cultural and intellectual activity; they often hosted theatrical and musical performances in their mansion. Devendranath traveled widely during his career. Rabindranath Tagore did not enjoy the bliss of parental company because his father traveled widely and his mother died when he was thirteen. Although there were times spent swimming in the Ganges River and hiking, Tagore’s life was somewhat hectic confined to the family estate under watchful eye of, sometimes abusive, servants, though there; but this would not confine his imagination. Tagore was a failure of conventional schooling system. He was educated by private tutors with who he studied wide array of subjects as: art, history, science, mathematics, Bengali, Sanskrit, and English, Upanishads, Romantic and and classical poetry.

He started writing poems at