What is translated; what is not translated: studying the translation process of select Bengali Dalit short stories. (2nd January 2022) - Pal, Bidisha
ABSTRACT: The present study addresses the translation process of select Bengali Dalit short stories from two anthologies: Survival and Other Stories: Bangla Dalit Fiction in Translation (2012) and Stories of Social Awakening: Reflections of Dalit Refugee Lives of Bengal (2017). The translators of the marginalised texts have to grapple with the socio-political and cultural dimensions of the texts. The above anthologies are translated from original Bengali stories that are enriched in both dialects of rural speech communities and standard written form of Bengali with culturally and socio-politically loaded terms. Notably, in some translated stories, some terms and expressions of the originals lack proper equivalents and these cause cultural and linguistic gaps in understanding. Conversely, there are some expressions where both the rural and marginal ethos gains a novel aestheticism and the translation process becomes a 'transcreation'. The article, through analysing and comparing both the original and translated stories, aims to study the nature and aspects of translation and transcreation processes.