Manto's "Toba Tek Singh" and the Politics of Translation
Abstract
translating a source text into a target language. Furthermore, the current study compares three English translations of the short story “Toba Tek Singh” by Saadat Hasan Manto by three translators from three different countries: Khalid Hasan, Khushwant Singh, and Frances W. Pritchett. These three translations are analyzed from three different geo-cultural perspectives, that is, Pakistani, Indian, and Anglo-American. In our research, we have combined the general conventions of translation with the insights emerging from CDA, particularly Van Dijk’s notion of media discourse. The translations are examined with regard to such aspects as addition, omission, modulation, and faithfulness. This study reveals serious compromises on faithfulness in Hasan’s and Singh’s translations. This can possibly be attributed to the geopolitically volatile climate in which both of these translators must have conceptualized their target text. However, Pritchett appears to be largely successful in maintaining faithfulness to the source text and her translation is by and large more skilled and is only negligibly marked by ideological inventions.
Keywords: CDA, faithfulness, manipulation, political ideology, translation
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