Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Translation as Creative Process 
Translation by definition is the rendering of a text from the source language to the 
target language. Many scholars consider it as secondary activity for it is based on the original 
writing in the source language. But it would not be correct to take translation as a mere 
rendering of an SL text to a TL text. Sometimes translation appears to be as original writing. 
Until the advent of western culture in our country we have always regarded translation as 
New Writing.
New Writing
It is rather interesting that, in the literary tradition of India, translation has been 
considered mostly as 'New Writing' rather than an imitation of the original work. This may be 
partly due to our literary tradition of writing commentaries on the Gita, the Upanishadas or 
the translation of tales from the Mahabharat and the Ramayan in the languages of India. For 
example, Pampa's Mahabharat, in Kannada or Kamba's Ramayan in Tamil are known as 
original works, and not renderings, though they contain thematic or narrative imitations of the 
original writing. This remarkable Indian literary tradition provides translation an almost 
autonomous standard of original creative writing. Recently two collections of translation into 
English New Writing in India (1974) edited by Adil Jussawalla and Another India (1990) 
edited by Nissim Ezekiel and Meenakshi Mukherjee bear testimony to how translations read 
like New Writings. The concept of translation as 'new writing' may be indigenous but the idea 
of translation as a faithful rendering of the original is borrowed from the west.
Rules for Translation
Though in many cases the rules underlying Bible translating are only partially 
recognized by those engaged in such work, nevertheless the results of any accurate translating 
show some basic rules as stated by E. A. Nida in the following words:
(1) Language consists of a systematically organized set of oral-aural symbols. By 
oral-aural we are simply emphasizing the fact that such symbols not only are uttered by the 
vocal apparatus of the speaker but are also received and interpreted by the listener. The 

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writing system of any language is a dependent symbolic system and only imperfectly ref1ects 
the 'spoken-heard' form of language.
(2) Associations between symbols and referents are essentially arbitrary. Even 
onomatopoetic forms bear only a 'culturally conditioned' resemblance to the sounds which 
they are designed to imitate.
(3) The segmentation of experience by speech symbols is essentially arbitrary. The 
different sets of words for colour in various languages are perhaps the best ready evidence for 
such essential arbitrariness. For example, in a high percentage of African languages there are 
only three 'color words', corresponding to our white, black and red, which nevertheless divide 
the entire spectrum.
(4) No two languages exhibit identical systems of organizing symbols into 
meaningful expressions. In all grammatical features, that is, order of words, types of 
dependencies, markers of such dependency relationships, and so on, each language exhibits a 
distinctive system.
The cardinal principles of translation reveal that no translation in the target language 
can be an exact equivalent of the model in the source language. That leads us to believe that 
all types of translation are an inadequate representation of the original composition.