“This incident raises questions about the role of the
translator in relation to the author and what [Feng Tang's] motives were,” said
Radha Chakravarty, a Tagore scholar who teaches in the Ambedkar
University in New
Delhi. “Was it about marketability? Was it to push its
sales? Or was it an attempt at satire, at lampooning Tagore?”
“It also raises questions about authorship authority and
where does liberty end and where does license begin when we talk of creative
freedom and creative expression,” the scholar said....
“History and literature will make their judgments,”
Feng Tang told the state-owned digital media The Paper. “Let time speak.
Let the work itself speak.”
If words themselves cannot reach, how are new words to fare much better?
Well, translating “The world takes off its mask of vastness for its lover” as “The world unzipped his pants in front of his lover.” seemed off the mark to me.
ReplyDeleteBut i remember a tale, true or not, that in negotiations with the ruskies an american diplomat used the dismissive phrase "out of sight, out of mind", that was translated as "invisible crazy". One can only imagine the expressions of "WTF" that followed.