ABSTRACT
Despite the presence of many languages, there was in India no ‘translation’ in the Western sense throughout the first three thousand years of its literary history, until the colonial impact in the nineteenth century. This was for the good reason that literary production in India was seen as a collaborative and collective activity with little value placed on either individuality or originality. Of the terms now current in the modern Indian languages for translation, notably anuvad, rupantar, tarjuma, molipeyarttall and vivartanam, some derive from Sanskrit where they were used in a substantially different sense. Several Indian languages have more than one term for translation, used fairly interchangeably, with all their various connotations serving to reflect the Indian view of translation, unlike in English where the word ‘translation’ seems to have no synonym. Finally (and self-reflexively), is a discussion such as this one of the history of ‘translation’ in India and of Indian terms for ‘translation’ really a useful and valid extension of the scope of translation studies, or merely an outsourced sound-bite for the resource-hungry West?
