The Theme of Concealment in William Jones' Sacontala

Socontala is a play translated by William Jones in English.

Abhijnanasakuntalam, a play written by Kalidasa, is one of the masterpieces of world literature. It is thrilling love story of the exquisitely beautiful Shakuntala and the mighty king Dushyanta. Dushyanta is the hero of the play. He possesses almost all the qualities of a brave and nobel minded hero. Dushyanta was the founder of the Puru Dynasty. He was the ruler of a great empire. He was a powerful king and his subjects were happy and prosperous under his rule. King Dushyanta loved hunting. Once, while hunting in a forest , Dushyanta happens to meet Shakuntala, a beautiful young lady living in a hermitage. He falls in love with Shakuntala, and is enthralled to find that she is attracted to him in the same manner.

The first Act begins with the description of the summer season by the narrator (Sutradhar). He also introduces king Dushyanta. Then king Dushyanta chasing a deer, enters the ashram of the sage Kanva in his Chariot. The king aims at the deer but a monk restricts him to hunt in the premises of sage Kanva.

 In Sacontala, the theme of concealment becomes evident in Act 1 itself when Duhsyanta takes off his royal garments and weapons on entering the Hermitage of Kanva. Even

though he undertakes this action as a sign of respect for the sacred space,

it allows him to take off the mask of a king and conceal his real identity. He

introduces himself to Shakuntala as a court official out inspecting the penance

grooves. This deception makes space for a much more relaxed interaction

between Duhsyanta and Shakuntala and her companions, without the strict rules

of engagement mandated for royals. Literally throwing off the mantle of his

kingship, Duhsyanta presents himself as a man first and Shakuntala is attracted

to this noble court official at first. When Duhsyanta comes again to woo her,

he can no longer hide his true identity as he is performing his kingly duty of

protecting the Hermitage from demons.

The second act of concealment occurs in Act II when Duhsyanta is urgently

called by his mother to the Royal Palace. He is torn between his duty towards

his mother and his kingdom, and his desire to see Shakuntala again. The dilemma

is solved when the ascetics’ request his help. As he sends Madhavya in his

stead to the capital city, he tells Madhavya that he is staying back to do his

duty towards these ascetics and not out of his desire for Shakuntala. He further

tells his friend to consider all he said about Shakuntala as a joke. Duhsyanta

therefore, conceals his true feelings for Shakuntala as well as his reason for

staying back at the Hermitage. This concealment creates a sense of foreboding

in the play as it allows their marriage to be a secret from everyone outside

the Hermitage and therefore, there are no witnesses who can support Shakuntala

when she comes to the Royal Court.

The next concealment takes place in Act III when a lovesick Shakuntala writes

a love letter to Duhsyanta. The problem, however, is its delivery since Duhsyanta

is busy protecting the ascetics in their ritual. It is Priyamvada who devices

a plan to disguise the letter with other offerings for the ritual, thus allowing her

to give it to Duhsyanta. Duhsanta’s timely appearance saves them from

actualising the plan. This event again points to the incongruity of love’s

actualisation in the hermitage, where such actions don’t sit well with a holy space

established on abstinence and austerity.

In the same act we see one of the most important scenes of concealment.

Shakuntala is so disheartened and distracted by the thoughts of Duhsyanta that

she unknowingly angers the sage Durvasa Rishi, who then curses her. She also

fails to register the curse and is oblivious of it. It is her companions who hear

the curse and on receiving the reprieve from the sage decide not to inform

Shakuntala about the curse. Thus, it is their concealment of the truth of the

curse that leads her to arrive at Duhsyanta’s court unaware of the reason why

he no longer remembers her. Had she been warned, perhaps Kanva would

have gone with his daughter to the court to help her or Shakuntala herself

would have been more careful with the ring and not lost it in the river. With

the ring as a token that would break the curse, Duhsyanta and Shakuntala’s

union would have occurred much earlier and without so much pain on both

sides.

The final concealment occurs in Act VI, where Misrakesi hides herself to observe

the repenting king. She observes how deeply Duhsyanta regrets not juts his

rejection of Shakuntala but also the loss of the son who could have continued

the Puru clan. Even as Misrakesi feels sad for both the suffering lovers, she

does not intervene because the gods have a plan for Duhsyanta and have devised

their reunion in accordance to Indra’s wishes. Here we see how the events

of the story are not completely in the hands of the two protagonists. The reunion

only occurs according to the plans of the gods. Even the curse and the subsequent

loss of memory cannot be controlled by either of the two, as both are unaware

of it. This makes the audience aware of the ambiguous and complex nature

of Fate.

Challenges and Problems in Translating Poetry, Prose and Drama

  The impediments to translating poems are i) Lexical obstacles ii) Structual obstacles and 

iii) Phonological obstacles.

i) Lexical Obstacles: They arise out of the rich mosaic of allusion in the poem. The allusions may be historical and spiritual as in Spenser's .Faerie Queene Milton's Paradise Lost is replete with mythological be allusions. These allusions cannot be translated. They will have to be explained in foot-notes only. Devaram and Thiruvasakam contain profound religious insights. Only a seer or a spiritually inclined translator can translate them at least with partial success. Similarly T.S.Eliot's Four Quartets with their multiple layers of allusions defy interpretation, leave alone translation.

i) Structural Obstacles: It is difficult to transfer the structure of a poem into the TL Text. Thiruvalluvar's Kural contains a world of meaning compressed within its couplets. It is a Himalayan task for the translator to achieve the same feat of compressing complex matters within the compass of the couplet. Similarly, the sonnet form of Shakespeare, with its rich involutions, cannot be easily translated into poems of similar size.

ii) Phonological Obstacles: Poetry is noted for its melody. The Poet uses devices like assonance, onamatopoeia, alliteration, rhyme, Phonological rhythm etc., to produce melody. Tennyson manipulates liquid consonants and long and short vowels to produce musical effects n

poems like The Lotos-Eaters and Tithonus. Hopkins’s poetry is highly alliterative. Milton uses subtle rhythmic patterns in his blank verse. Shelley’s poetry, as Symonds said, “music runs to drunken waste”. All these phonological effects are bound to elude translators.

1) Translating Prose:

      Translating prose is considered comparatively easier than translating poetry. But this field also bristles with difficulties. Prose comprises essays, theses and dissertations, dramas and novels. Prose is a vast field.

      2) Rules laid down by Hilaire Belloc for translating prose:

      Hilaire Belloc lays down six rules for translating prose. They are discussed below.

a)      The translator should avoid word-by-word and sentence-by-sentence translation.  The translator should undertake section or block-by-block translation. He should read the work as a whole and then divide it into blocks, to be translated one by one.

      b) The translator should pay special attention to idioms. Some idioms in the SL text have equivalent idioms in the TL Text. Belloc says that the Greek exclamation “By the dog!” can be translated as ‘By the God’ in English.

      c) The translator must seek to echo the implications and intentions of the original writer and not merely the achieved results and explicit and direct statements.

      d) Belloc warns the translator against less faux amis, that is, structures that seem to be similar in the SL and TL texts but are not really so.

     e) Belloc advises the translator to ‘transmute’ boldly. He says that the essence of translation is ‘the resurrection of an alien thing in a native body’.

      f) Finally, Belloc warns the translator against unnecessary embellishment and embroidery.

3) Difficulties in translating prose texts:

      There are many insurmountable difficulties in translating prose texts. They are discussed one by one below.

Catford on untranslatability:

     Catford has pinpointed two types of untranslatability, namely i) Lexical untranslatability and  ii) cultural untranslatability.

i) Lexical untranslatability: Lexical translatability is due to the non-availability of equivalent worlds in the target language.  Theodore Savory, Alan Duff and Eugene Nida have discussed this point at length.

      Savory points out that the English language, supposed to be one of the richest languages in the world, yet lacks some very ordinary words which other languages have.   He says that the French word ‘menue’ and the Latin word ‘auger’ have no equivalents in English’.

      In English, there are separate words such as legs, feet, etc.  But in Yugoslovian language the same word covers both the parts. Similarly there are no separate words in the latter language for arms and hands.

      Nida also points to the same problem. In English there is a large number of words for storms such as tempest, cyclone, hurricane, etc., But in Tamil we have only one word namely, ‘puyal’. In Tamil there are various words such as பேதை, பெதும்பை and many other words to describe the various states of a girl’s growth. There is no such rich vocabulary in English.

      ii) Untranslatability due to grammatical differences: In English, you is used to refer to both one person and more than one person.

     The verb is the same for both these pronouns. For example,

 You (Singular) speak English well.

You (Plural) speak English well.

      But in Tamil, the pronouns are different. The verbs are also different.

நீ (singular) ஆங்கிலம் நன்றாக பேசுகிறாய்.

நீங்கள் நன்றாக ஆங்கிலம் பேசுகிரிற்கள்.

In English there are dummy subjects, such as ‘It’ and ‘There’. For example, in the following sentences, ‘It’ and ‘there’ only introduce the sentences. They do not have any meaning:

    It is raining heavily

   There are many flower-plants in her garden.

It is stupid to translate these introductory words also into Tamil as:

அது பலமாக மழை பெய்து கொண்டிருகிறது.

அங்கே அவளுடைய தோட்டத்தில் பல மலர்செடிகள் உள்ளன.

In English, ‘may is used in formal contexts, as in

       May I sit by your side?

But in informal contexts ‘may’ is replaced by ‘can’ as in

     Can I sit by your side?

But in Tamil, we say the same thing in both the contexts:

நான் உன் அருகில் உட்காரலாமா?

      Another difficulty in translating from English into Tamil is due to the Passive Voice. In English, the passive voice is used profusely. But in Tamil, the passive voice has come into being Only in recent times, and that too because of the impact of English. Passive structures are rare in ancient Tamil literature. In English every other sentence is in the passive voice.

Cultural untranslatability:          Cultural untranslatability is due to the gap between the culture of thr SL language and that of the TL language. Modern American fiction dealing with sexual promiscuity with explicit erotic details will sound most revolting to an orthodox Indian.  Similarly, Tamil novel dealing with arranged marriages and the sour relationship between a girl and her in-laws will not be treated seriously by a Western reader because such values do not exist in Western countries.

    There is no equivalent Tamil word for widower because the man who loses his first wife usually remarries and does not remain a widower here.

Colloquial words in Tamil such ‘ஓய்’ , ‘எலே’, ‘ஏய்’ which express contempt, cannot be translated into English. Even if we manage to translate swear words such as ‘ஏ மூஞ்சி’,   ஏலே into English, they will not have the same flavour and the bite in the translation.

Translating Drama: There are difficulties in translating drama also. The drama usually presents many characters. Each character speaks in his or her own distinct style. The translator must bring out these stylistic variations. Another difficulty is that many dramas abound in colloquial expressions. These colloquial expressions must be translated into equivalent colloquial expressions in the TL text.

BIBLE TRANSLATION

 

TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE

Introduction: The Bible is viewed as the greatest English. Matthew Arnold said in the nineteenth century that even non-believers can read the Bible and enjoy the poetic passages in it. The Bible in the twentieth century does not cause any difficulties to readers because it has been rendered in modern English. Originally, the Bible was available only in Greek and Latin. Uneducated church - goers had to depend only on the priests’ interpretation of the Bible. Some spadework was done in the Old English period to translate the Bible into English.

         The Bible in old English: Bede was the first to make an attempt at translating the Bible into English. He translated a portion of the Gospel of St.John into Old English prose. The effort was continued by fit and starts throughout the Old English period. The outcome was i) the Lindisfarne Gospels (about 700). About 950, the Northumbrian priest Alfred added to the Latin Bible an interlinear gloss in the Northumbrian dialect. The Rushworth Gospels of the tenth century had glosses both in the Mercian and the South Northumbrian dialects. In the late tenth or early eleventh century a West Saxon version of the Bible was available.

      The Bible in Middle English: Thanks to the sustained efforts of Bible enthusiasts many English versions of the Gospels were brought out in the Middle English period. The following is a brief survey of this development.

i) Wycliffe ( 1320-84): Under Wycliffe’s influence, many scholars undertook to translate the Bible into English. It is not known whetDer Wycliffe did any translation himself.

ii) John Purvey (1388) : Purvey was an important Lollard leader. His translation is regarded as extremely simple.

William Tyndale (1536): For his uncompromising religious stand, Tyndale was persecuted very much and driven abroad. A fragment of his English New Testament was printed at Calogne. For his English version, Tyndale used the Hebrew and Greek originals rather than the Latin text called the Vulgate.

Miles Coverdale (1488-1568): Many beautiful expressions in the English version were the workmanship of Coverdale.

The Great Bible (1539): This was the first of the Authorized Version. It was carried out by a group of translators working under the command of Henry VIll.

The Geneva Bible (1560): It was considerably coloured by Calvinistic thinking. This Bible was also called Breeches Bible because the naked Adam and Eve are described as sewing fig leaves not to cover their private parts but to be used a 'breeches'. This is a euphemism used by the Calvinistic translators to refer indirectly to the couple's genitals.

The Bishops’ Bible (1568) : This version was brought out by a committee of bishops under the supervision of no less a person than Queen Elizabeth. This Bible was intended as a counterblast to the Breeches Bible which was becoming more and more popular.

King James I's version of the Bible (1611): This version is regarded as an authentic translation of the Bible. The Puritans convened a conference at Hampton Court in 1604 and pressurized James I to arrange to translate the Bible into English. To enlist the support of the Puritans, James decided to fulfil their wishes. He appointed forty-seven scholars. They were divided into six groups, each translating a certain portion of the Bible. The task was begun in 1607 and completed in 1611. The outcome is the Authorized Version or King James's Version of the Bible.

Prominent features of the Authorized Version: First, the Authorized Version is endowed from beginning to end with a staunch faith in the Divine Spirit. It has the strength of Tyndale's Bible and the beautiful rhythms of Coverdale's version.

The Authorized Version has three portions, the expository portions the narrative portions and the lyrical portions. The expository part has three aspects namely, exhortation, information and advice. The Deuteronomy and the Pauline epistles come under this part.  They are marked by clarity, dignity and precision.

The narrative portion of the Authorized Version consists of the Pentateuch and the Gospels of all the Apostles in the New Testament. The Old Testament is very harsh whereas the New Testament is liberal in tone.

The lyrical portion is the most readable and enjoyable part of the Authorized Version. The Psalms, The Song of Solomon, and The Book of Job constitute the lyrical part of the Authorized Version. The emotional nature of the Jews as well as their rhythms are fully revealed in this part. At the same time, the soar and swing of ecstatic English prose is also reflected in the translation. The images in the lyrical portions are associated with such everyday objects as the sky, the stars, the running water and birds and beasts. For example, in The Book of Psalms the soul is described as panting after God just as the hart pants after brooks.

The influence of the Authorized Version: The Authorized Version has influenced readers as well as writers. Many expressions used in everyday life are from the Authorized Version. The eleventh hour, a thorn in the flesh, a good Samaritan, sweat of the brow - these are some commonly used Biblical expressions.

      The other influence of the Authorized Version is on writers. Bunyan, Ruskin, Milton, Tennyson, Browning, Hopkins and T.S.Eliot are some of the English writers whose thoughts and language have been moulded by the English Bible.

Value Education 60 MCQ Unit III -V

VE Unit III 60 MCQ

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