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Third DRS Seminar on Rabindranath Tagore and Translation
| Location: | India |
| Call for Papers Date: | 2011-12-31 (Archive) |
| Date Submitted: |
2011-11-19 |
| Announcement ID: |
189876 |
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The Department of English and Other Modern European Languages, Visva-Bharati, proposes
to hold its third DRS seminar on Rabindranath Tagore and Translation from 10 to 12
February 2012 at the departmental premises in Santiniketan. We invite papers from scholars
and translators interested in this area.
A Concept Note:
Translation is an important step towards dissemination of a text into other languages/cultures,
and Rabindranath’s international acclaim, to a certain extent, is due to his English
‘translations’. Though Rabindranath has claimed (in a letter to his niece) that the English
translations of the Bangla Gitanjali poems were more the fruits of his indolent mood during
convalescence from illness, it may be said that these translations were, perhaps in fact,
propelled by his increasing awareness of the fact that primarily through such English
translations his works would/could be made available to an international readership, which, in
turn, would determine his reception worldwide, particularly in the Western world. He was
not particularly happy with some of the English translations of his writings that had been
done already by some other translators (Jatindramohan Bagchi, Jadunath Sarkar, Sister
Nivedita, Ananda K. Coomaraswamy, Lokendranath Palit and Roby Dutt, among them). This
may well have prompted him to take up the task of translating his works himself, though in
the same letter mentioned above he explained that he never intended a lingual transposition of
the poems of the Bangla Gitanjali; his objective was to “recapture through the medium of
another language the feelings and sentiments which had created such a feast of joy within me
in the days gone by.” Can the rift between his Bangla and English writings that sometimes
startle his Bengali readers, then, be ascribed to his belief in, what Sujit Mukherjee calls
‘transcreation’, and not in translation as such?
Rabindranath, of course, has subsequently been translated into other non-Indian as well as
Indian languages, though often with translators taking recourse to the English ‘translations’.
This raises a question (among several others) as to how the mediation of English affects such
translations into other languages. The seminar would want to explore the world of Tagore
translations (both by the author and by others) from some of these perspectives. Among the
issues that the seminar would want to address are:
Rabindranath’s ‘translations’ of his own works from Bangla into English
Rabindranath’s translation of others’ works, for instance, One Hundred Poems of Kabir or Macbeth
Rabindranth and theory of translation
Rabindranath’s writings translated into other Indian languages
Rabindranath’s writings translated into non-Indian languages
Problems of translating Rabindranath
We invite papers from scholars and translators specialising in this field. The concept note is a
mere guide-line; contributors may please feel free to address the problem with their own
kinds of emphases. Confirmation of participation, along with brief abstracts (about 300
words), may please be communicated to any of the undersigned by 31 December 2011 for
expeditious consideration by the departmental seminar committee.
We would be happy to offer local hospitality to all speakers and chairpersons for the period
of their stay in Santiniketan between 10 and 12 February 2012. We also request contributors
to kindly explore possibilities of availing travel grants from their home
universities/institutions.
Seminar Co-ordinators: Abhijit Sen & Nilanjana Bhattacharya
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Professor Abhijit Sen (abhijitsen51@yahoo.co.in)
Dr Nilanjana Bhattacharya (nilanjanasubha@gmail.com)
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