Microsoft Word Revised Syllabus Ver doc

Respecting the Genius of a Language
Understanding the genius of a language and giving due share to it in translation will 
help in accomplishing the translation work satisfactorily. A translator may be posed with the 
problem of not getting a suitable and appropriate equivalent in the target language to a feature 
which is very specific to the source language. How to find an equivalent word to refer to an 
idea or a concept that is not at all prevalent in the target language? How can a translation be 
perfect in this situation? These questions and similar such other questions should not perplex 
a translator. A translator, rather, should focus his attention to understand the genius of the 
target language and must exploit it to the maximum profitably. This, eventually, would pave 
way for better translation. Whereas there are so many peculiar features in the source language 
and there are no such features in the target language, how could translation be successful? 
This should not be a problem at all to an able translator .
Instead of complaining that the source language has a number of peculiar syntactic 
constructions which are not available in the target language, a successful translator exploits 
the available syntactic patterns in the target language in the appropriate place in the 
appropriate manner.
It is unfortunate that most of the translators do not follow this principle. They simply 
follow the syntactic pattern of the source language and fail miserably in their job. For 
instance, though the usage of passive constructions is relatively new to the Dravidian family 
of languages, there is difference in the degree to which these constructions are accepted in 
different languages of this family. In Tamil, passive constructions are used in all the styles. 
But Kannada has certain restrictions in this regard, though it has not totally rejected the 
passive constructions. In this context, using more passive constructions in Kannada 
translation will not be a welcome feature and hence as far as possible they have to be used 
sparingly. In conclusion, a successful translator instead of imposing the structure of the 
source language on the target language tries to modify it either partially or completely in 
accordance with the structure of the target language.