Translation as a Bridge of Cultures: Tracing the Evolution of Translation and World Literature with Special Reference to India

Translation is a most important of the literature. It creates the platform for the readers and writers to share their feelings with each other through the written text. It performs the role of mediator for the languages, ideas, civilizations in the global literature. Translation has become the most an easy instrument of the cultural transmission in the todays globalized and digitalized age. It offers the most superior mode to understand the reality, movements, feelings, emotions, and other factors across the borders. Cultural transmission and intellectual dialogues takes place through the translation. Literary modernity is influenced due to the translation various sources are translated from original texts to other language. Digital age made it quite easy and accessible to reader and writer. Translated texts are reached across the borders within discourse of modernism, realism and postcolonial. It portrays the reality of the other nations and even motivates other nations’ writers and readers. Translation has prolonged history in the literature. It is the intellectual practice. Translation is not mere translation of the linguistic but it is more than it. Ancient civilizations and their literature are proving that translation is alienable part of the literature. For example, the great Indian epics like, Ramayana and Mahabharata originally written in Sanskrit language but later it translated into many languages through orally or written form. Various Sanskrit literature of India translated into the English in the pre-independence era but translation of the British authors and foreigners have the tone of superiority of the west. Translation is a cultural meditation. It is beyond the idea of the literal equivalence. Susan Bassnett and Andre Lefevere focused on the translation’s use in the system of power, ideology and patronage. It differentiates the domestic content and foreign content. It means translation guides the linguistic ability and cultural politics. Over the centuries, translation has not only maintained the folktales, myths and stories but it made available treasure of knowledge of various subjects to the mankind. In India, translation performs the pivot role for uniting the multilingual and multicultural identity. It is the lifeline of the India’s unity. It should be accepted that translation is not mere act of the linguistic equivalence. It is the process of transformation and interpretation which informs about the meaning, ideology and aesthetic value. Lawerence Venuti firmly asserts that translation includes the tension between ‘domestication’ and ‘foreignization’. It is difficult task for the translator to maintain original sense of the text while translating the text while presenting it to the other targeted audience. According to the Susan Bassnett translation as an act rewriting that reflects the cultural and political priorities of its time. In Short, translation performs the action at the global and local level.