ABSTRACT
In this chapter, Uddipana Goswami discusses translation as an act of ‘carrying over’ from one context to another, be it from the realm of intangible experiences to the tangible realm of words and letters or from one cultural context to another. She discusses Indira Goswami’s translation of her Axamiya novel Datal Hatir Uye Khuwa Hawda (1997) into English as A Saga of South Kamrup (1993). She further analyses whether Goswami is successful in retaining the cultural world of the original Axamiya text in English or whether she has been able to do with her translation what she so brilliantly did in the original text: to recreate a bygone era, relive a dead past, a way of life. Uddipana Goswami asks whether it is possible to find a one-to-one correspondence when we take the unfamiliar and substitute it with an approximate familiar in the process of translation. This is translation at its most common, and sadly, also at its most irresponsible according to Uddipana Goswami. But this is how, Uddipana Goswami remarks, most intercultural translations have been done and continue to be done, and knowledge about the dangers inherent in practicing such a simplistic methodology of translation continues to evade most translators.
