The natural
protocol within the scholarly community when it comes to translating key terms of
passages (in any source language e.g. Sanskrit, Assamese) is first to associate
them with their commonly held meanings and then proceed to replace them with their
most appropriate English (or target language) equivalents. And this is how it
should be because in no other way can we be assured of the fidelity of the
translation. The resulting translation is very faithful and literal.
But if our
primary obsession is not with the literal meaning of the words but rather with
the meaning that their authors wished them to convey—or, rather, really wished them to convey—then there
would be an additional layer of protocol that a translator would need to
incorporate. Before associating them with their commonly held meanings, the
translator must seek to identify the universe of discourse. He must know
which universe to enter. In no other field perhaps this extended protocol
applies with so much imperativeness as in the field of Puranic literature. No
other field is so cryptic, no other so coded. Unless the translator—and here,
we talk about the seeker of meaning
rather than the literal translator—succeeds at the outset in determining the sense in which a term (or a set of words)
is being used, he will never be able to grasp. Proceeding straightway to
associating the terms with their common meanings would not be okay because
there is no guarantee that these meanings would be in line with their implied
meanings. Even the scholars of former times may have committed the same
mistake. Therefore, before a real
translation that lays bare the real meaning of words takes place, one must
expend time and energy—and from personal experience, I would say that this can
be considerable— in trying to determine
the universe of discourse. The real
translator must be ready to do this; otherwise, the translation may only be
literal but bereft of meaning.
