Sahityasetu

Godan in English Translations: A Semantic Perspective

1. Introduction ::

Godan, which was first published in 1936, is the best and last completed novel of Premchand, “the first major Hindi Novelist” (Bender, 162). It enjoys a “canonical status in modern India” (Jha, 931). Critics like Mahendra V. Desai also consider it “the finest of the century” (Desai, 268). Prabhakar Jha states that it is a novel, “expressing a Galilean perception of language, one that denies the absolutism of a single and unitary language, that is, that refuses to acknowledge its own language as the sole verbal and semantic centre of the ideological world (Bakhtin, 366)” (Jha, 933). Therefore, he suggests that the main concern in the reading of Godaan should be “the study of specific images of languages and the organization of these images into their dialogic interrelationships” (ibid).

Prabhakar Jha in this suggestion is not absolutely correct because it contradicts the very aim with which Premchand wrote his novels. In his presidential address to the first conference of the Progressive Writers’ Association, India in 1936, Premchand said that literature is “the criticism of life” and the language used in it “is a means, not an end” (Premchand, “Aim of Literature” n. pag.). In the speech, he also says that “the same event or situation does not leave the same impression on everyone. Every person has a different mentality and point of view” (ibid). Here it seems that he himself is explaining why there should be more than one translator of any single work.

There have been six English translations of Godaan. First translation of Godaan was done by Jai Ratan Singh and Purushottama Lal in 1957 while the second translation was accomplished by Gordon Charles Roadarmel in 1968 when it was commissioned by UNESCO. Between these two translations appeared an incomplete but scholarly translation by S. H. Vatsyayan ‘Ajneya’, himself a Hindi novelist. This unpublished version, informs Peter France, retains “only the strand of the plot set in a village while leaving out altogether the subplot set in a city—which constitutes nearly half of the novel” (461). Peter France also informs that this incomplete version was later used by Roadarmel in his translation of Godaan (ibid). Roadarmel, too, acknowledges this source in his introduction to The Gift of a Cow (“Introduction” xxv). In fact, Roadarmel “worked closely” with S. H. Vatsyayan ‘Ajneya’ in his translation of Godaan (Dalmia, xvi).

The fourth translation, an abridged one, of Godaan came out in 1996, produced by Dinesh Kumar and A.L. Madan. But this translation has not survived the test of time and is the least read by modern readers. It is also out of print. Despite its scholarly efforts, there is something in it which causes much loss of meaning in the translation, and also initiates readers’ disinterest.

2. Semantics ::

Semantics here denotes to the meaning of words and sentences in a text. This meaning is not only a dictionary meaning, the sense of the words and sentences, but also overall meaning in context which is at times transferred, other times referential (encyclopedia), subjective, intention, performative, inferential, cultural, code, connotative and semiotic. It is also the meaning which is at times created by ambiguities, other times by interplay among abstract and sensual images and feelings, narrative report of speech and free direct speech, colloquial and standard usages. It is also the meaning which is created by the use of proverbs, idioms and synonyms in a text. A discussion of the loss of these meanings in TLTs is as follows in three categories—lexical, culture specific, and transferred meanings.

2.1 Lexical Meaning

The narrator’s vocabulary in Godaan is vast. It includes Tatsam and Tadabhav words and phrases from Standard Hindi, their rural versions, and words from Hindi’s three dialects (Awadhi, Bhojpuri and Brij) as well as common words from Urdu, English and Persian. In fact, it is this complex arena of words and phrases which gives life to the characters, literary quality to the text. But Jai Ratan Singh and Purushottam Lal and Gordon Charles Roadarmel translate all of these words into Standard English where this variation and real-life effect is lost. Some examples of the lexical usages and their translations in Jai Ratan Singh and Purushottam Lal and Gordon Charles Roadarmel (in the format of Source Language Text— Jai Ratan Singh and Purushottam Lal - Gordon Charles Roadarmel) are as follows:

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Works Cited

1. Kumar, Suresh. Shailyvigyan Aur Premchand ki Bhasha. New Delhi: Macmillan, 1978. Print.
2. Newmark, Peter. Approaches to Translation. New York: Prentice Hall, 1988. Print.
3. Premchand, Munshi. Godaan. New Delhi: Bhartiya Jnanpith, 2011. Print.
4. Ratan, Jai and P. Lal, trans. Godan: A Novel of Peasant India. Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 2008. Print.
5. Roadarmel, Gordon C., trans. The Gift of a Cow: A Translation of the Classic Hindi Novel Godaan. Delhi: Permanent Black, 2007. Print.
6. Simpson, Paul. Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge, 2004. PDF.
7. Verdonk, Peter. Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2002. Print