Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Translator 
A unique feature of translation in India lies with who the translators is. By general 
norms, often a person who is not the author translates the original. It is done so mainly as 
mark of recognition and respect for the author as well as to check the undue liberties the 
author may tend to take with the original. In the Indian scene there are many occasions when 
the author himself wears the mantle of the translator. The precedence was set by Tagore 
himself. Krishna Baldev Vaid, a fiction writer in Hindi translated his own work and the 
explanation he renders for his act is that, “I can do it better than anyone else. There are few 
competent professional translators from Hindi into English and even if there had been some I 
doubt if I’d let them to my work.” The problem with such self translators in that they take 
liberties with the original and tend to improve upon the original. Taking into consideration 
the unique nature of the TL as well as the author’s tendency to ‘improve’ upon the original in 
the Indian context, one could clearly see that a collaborative effort in translation would 
deliver the goods better. 
A typical example of such a collaborative success in Menon’s translation of 
Thakazhi’s Chemmen. This translation played a very important role. To put it in Mukherjee’s
words “the unprecedented success of Chemmeen in translation has fixed this in Indo English 
as Thakazhi’s best work in fiction”. While translating Chemmeen, Menon has brought in 
many changes. He has in fact abridged and edited the original but the has done it “with the 
full permission of the author with whom he was in regular consultation while the work was in 
progress” (Mukherjee, 136). Menon’s work had clearly illustrated that “A living and 
accessible author ought to be consulted whenever he is in an opposition to read and comment 
on the translated manuscript” (Mukherjee, 136). When the translator seeks the collaboration 
of the author he has to be careful about two kinds of authors. The first is the kind of authors 
who do not take much interest in the translation of their work. The other is the kind of authors 
who take undue care in getting their works translated to catch the eye of the world readership, 
so much so that they even ‘exhort or sponsor’ translators. 

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Collaboration with author is possible only when he is alive. Translators of the works 
of the earlier centuries are at a drawback, then. Such translators could take the help of 
eminent men who have specialized in the author of the translator’s choice.