The influence of an English mediating translation in translating the Malayalam novel Chemmeen into French / Shyla Thomas

• Main Author: Shyla , Thomas
• Format: Thesis
• Published: 2023
• Subjects: P Philology. Linguistics; PE English
• Online Access: http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15486/2/Shyla_Thomas.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15486/1/Shyla_Thomas.pdf; http://studentsrepo.um.edu.my/15486/

The classic Malayalam novel Chemmeen written by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai in 1956 was a best seller of its period and hence was translated into about 25 different languages. Its English translation was done by Narayana Menon (1962) during the post-colonial period and a French translation, Un amour indien (1965) was produced based on the English version. Menon’s English version which was not a close translation of the original thus served as the mediating text (MT) for the French translation. The French version therefore reveals a range of pragmatic differences in comparison with the original novel in Malayalam. The first objective was to study how far has the MT influenced the French TT. For this purpose, first a comparison of the French translation of Chemmeen vis-à-vis the original Malayalam source text (ST) was carried out in an effort to study the extent of deviation in the French version and to identify to what extent these deviations were affected by Menon’s MT. Theories of equivalence by Koller (1989) and the techniques of translation proposed by Nida (1964) and Vinay and Darbelnet (1995) formed the basis of the study. The study proved that the English MT had influenced the French target text (TT) almost entirely. This study does not criticise Menon’s MT as it understands that Menon’s work was offered to the English-speaking audience during the post-colonial period and therefore the adopted style. The second objective of this study was to test out the supposition that if the MT was a more faithful translation of the original, then the French text would also have been more reflective of the finer nuances expressed in Chemmeen. To do this, another English translation of Chemmeen, done by Nair in 2011 was compared to the Malayalam ST to show how Nair’s English version, if it were considered as the MT would offer a greater possibility of a more effective subsequent translation in French or any other foreign language as Nair’s MT provides a closer resemblance to the ST than does Menon’s English MT. To answer this inquiry, French native speakers’ translations of Nair’s MT were sought together with interviews with them on their choices of strategy of translation. Nida’s (1964) and Vinay and Darbelnet’s (1995) translation techniques were employed to analyse the translation. The equivalences achieved / not achieved, as the case may be, was studied based on Koller’s (1989) five types/levels of equivalence. The high values of denotative, connotative and pragmatic equivalences demonstrated that as much as the semantic meaning of the text was faithfully represented, the implied or associated meanings, emotions and cultural connotations of words and expressions were preserved as well. The native speakers who have had considerable experience in translation work, were from different backgrounds and hence their choices of terms and expressions that were employed in the translation were different from each other’s. The subjectivity of translators, that is influenced by their aesthetic sense, creative style of writing and their perception of the socio-cognitive status of the characters in the novel, that was at play confirmed that translation is essentially, a rewriting of the text.