Perspectives and Views on the Translations of Tirukkural

Pugazhendhi Kumarasamy

Assistant Professor

Centre for French and Francophone Studies

Jawaharlal Nehru University

Poetry, Phoenix of Translation

Perspectives and Views on the Translations of Tirukkural

Abstract

19th century French literary figures often depicted India as an exotic landscape, promising adventure and gold. If at all some real Indian thoughts and ideas were there, they were often concealed by stereotypes and images which pleased the French readership of that period.  However, curiosity gave way to real discovery, when the French East India Company posted some officers to serve in India, who were interested in the literatures of the sub-continent. Thus we observe two men among those French who came to Pondicherry, who were interested in communicating some Tamil literary works to the French readers. These two men are namely Pierre-Eugene Lamairesse and de Barrigue de Fontainieu who translated Tirukkural, a poetic and philosophical work of Tamil Sangam Literature.

Their translations of Tirukkural are fascinating for the way the translators have attempted to represent the work and also the way they have transferred the poetic elements of the source language. It is also remarkable to see how their religious and cultural background plays an important role in shaping their translations. Nevertheless, Tirukkural has been translated and retranslated again and again till date. Is it because such a work retains its entire flavour only in its language of origin? To find answer to this question, one needs to take a close look at the translations as much as at the paratextual elements of the translations.

This paper intends to present a comparative and analytical study of the two translations of Tirukkural into French as well as of an English version rendered by G. U Pope, through three different perspectives: linguistic, cultural and religious.

The experience of reading a poem is unquestionably different from that of reading prose; any poem may be recited aloud and every reading makes us discover it in a different way. A prose piece may also have that quality, but in such cases it is called poetic prose or a prose poem. Moreover, poetry as a literary genre is the most ancient form of writing. It therefore carries the primary deep roots of a language in such a complex manner that even a native speaker takes time to understand it. Poems are always written to be memorized and recited. It is indeed to help build memory that poems are written with those linguistic tools such as rhymes, metaphors, syllables, alliteration, assonance etc. Once read passionately, it is easy to remember a poem. But, prose is not written with the objective of being memorized, but mainly to communicate a message and its life is ephemeral in the memory of the one who reads it.

It is therefore possible to say that a poem is a condensed form of a message but esthetically drafted with a careful choice of words, thus pleasing the reader emotionally and easily staying in his memory. If one attempts to translate a poem, these qualities are generally expected to be transmitted into a different linguistic system i.e. the target language. But due to numerous reasons: linguistic, cultural, political, religious etc., such a transmission is not entirely feasible.

Because of these difficulties, apart from the inherent nature of poetry itself, implied in this enterprise, we can say that the translation of poetry is a different field to be considered, within literary translation in general. At the same time, despite always being considered as a difficult or even impossible task, there have been several translators who have attempted translating poems. When we read their renderings, we inevitably ask ourselves if they have actually translated or have written a new poem inspired by the original. Some have even spent their lifetime understanding and translating a poem. The French poet Chateaubriand speaks of his experience of translating Milton.

“Je peux dire que ce travail est l'ouvrage entier de ma vie, car il y a trente ans que je lis, relis et traduis Milton… J'en appelle au surplus aux hommes qui croient encore qu'écrire est un art : eux seuls pourront savoir ce que la traduction du Paradis perdu m'a coûté d’études et d’efforts.” ^[1][I can say that this work has been my lifetime achievement, because it has been thirty years that I have been reading again and again, and translating Milton…I call upon those who still believe that writing is an art: they alone can understand what it has cost me to translate Paradise Lost in terms of research and efforts.]

In this manner, we can illustrate, by borrowing several examples from the history of translation, that a work, poetic by nature is translated and retranslated several times without satisfying the translator himself. These retranslations done perpetually by one or different translators in different times and periods is not because of the defects that they found in the previous translations but rather because every translator is inspired to translate the poem in his or her own way.

“Voici une troisième traduction de Faust ; et ce qu’il y a de certain, c’est qu’aucune des trois ne pourra faire dire : Faust est traduit ! Non que je veuille jeter quelque défaveur sur le travail de mes prédécesseurs, afin de mieux cacher la faiblesse du mien, mais parce que je regarde comme impossible une traduction satisfaisante de cet étonnant ouvrage.” ^[2][Here is a third translation of Faust; and what is certain is that none of the three translations can make us say: Faust is translated! Not because I like to defame the work of my predecessors, in order to hide the defect in mine, but because I consider that translating this admirable work is impossible. ]

Achieving a satisfying translation of a poem is impossible, has always been the opinion of translators who were poets themselves and who attempted to translate other poets in the past. If a poetic text is one that is untranslatable, what factors cause this untranslatability? Is it the poetic value, rendered by the linguistic tools, we mentioned earlier, that deter the accomplishment of the translation? What is then this poetic value which remains unachievable in translation?

According to A. C. Bradely, an English literary scholar of the 20th century, “a poem is a series of feelings and experiences: thoughts, images, sounds, etc”. This overall experience may vary from reader to reader and from person to person and also according to the religious and cultural framework within which the reading takes place. In other words, the same reader may have a different experience every time he or she reads and rereads a poem.

Reproducing this whole set of experiences felt by the reader of the source language of the poem  in a different language necessitates the translator to recreate these effects by merely using the linguistic tools of the target language. These linguistic tools such as metaphors, comparisons, rhymes, syllables etc. vary undoubtedly from language to language and culture to culture and even religion to religion. Hence the task of a complete transmission is impossible. Besides, translating a poem is overcoming a double hindrance; the translator has to understand and take out the poetic value from the source text and restore it in a new linguistic code which may or may not be compatible to the meaning poetically conveyed in the original text.

For all the above mentioned reasons, the poetic text certainly goes through this inevitable deformation of which Antoine Berman speaks when being transferred into a new language. A deformation which destroys the original poetic value of the message, but this deformation may also prepare ground for a reformulation in terms of poetic value specific to the target language.

The poetic value gets destroyed, not for succumbing to the linguistic constraints, but for being reborn and raised again in a new form every time it has to go through the process of translation, attaining a new level in a new altitude. In this way, it’s capable of taking as many new variations in form as possible every time it goes through this hardship we call translation.

Once penned down, a poem never gets translated but gets reborn in several forms sometimes with more or less the same vigour. Besides, the translator’s cultural and religious framework also decides his understanding of the poem and thus influences the outcome of his translation attempt. A study of a certain number of couplets from the Tirukkural and its translations into French as well as in English, done a century ago, made me reach this assumption that any translation of a poem is nothing but another poem which shall be seen as a text inspired by the original. This paper will briefly present in the first place the work Tirukkural and the translations and then illustrate my hypothesis with the help of some couplets excerpted from both the French and the English translations. It will also attempt to understand the role of a cultural and religious framework by examining the paratextual elements found in the translations.