Translating Tagore in Serbia: Certain Inter-Cultural Perspectives (An Introduction)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18485/philologia.2016.14.13_14.10Keywords:
Rabindranath Tagore, translation studies, inter-cultural translation, literary receptionAbstract
Cultural narratives play an important role in translation practice. This essay picks up Rabindranath Tagore’s ideas of translation from his 1917 book Translation Practice (Anubad Charcha). Taking examples from his lectures in Serbia and Tagore texts translated in Serbia, the essay offers a place of cultural interaction of knowledge through the practice of translation. Tagore has said: “the collaboration between different language descents, races and Nations [is] crucial for a continuous existence of the mankind in this world”13. While interrogating Tagore’s views the essay problematises the politics of difference (of language − of dominant language and the marginal language, and of the ambiguous interplay of dominance and resistance in the complex whole of culture’s diversity), and attempts to address on the one hand the ‘impossibilities’ of pure language transfer14; on the other hand it suggests – it is only natural to perceive that the translation discourse approach facilitates the discursive space of interaction between cultures at the margins while it opens up the process of decolonisation. The essay also briefly considers the effects of bipolar culture on the translator’s position, suggesting any feeling of ‘otherness’ can only persist in problematic ways.
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