BETWEEN FIDELITY AND FOREIGNNESS: SOCIO-CULTURAL AND RHETORICAL CHALLENGES IN REBECCA WHITTINGTON’S ENGLISH TRANSLATION OF JIBANANANDA DAS’S MALLOBAN

ABSTRACT:
This paper seeks to investigate the rendition of socio-cultural and rhetorical subtleties of language between Bangla and English, taking as its focal point the translation of Jibanananda Das’s 1973 fiction Malloban by Rebecca Whittington in 2022. The endeavour of rendering such a profound and culturally layered text presents considerable difficulties, as it necessitates the precarious equilibrium of retaining the spirit of the source text while simultaneously making it comprehensible to a new linguistic and cultural milieu. In the course of this undertaking, the interpreter, whose primary language is American English, is compelled to negotiate between domestication and exoticism, thereby generating lexical, semiotic, and syntactic divergences in her version of the source language text. This paper endeavours to evaluate the fidelity of the rendition to the original composition while scrutinising the interpreter’s decisions in capturing the intricate wordplay, idiomatic expressions, metaphors, and narrative nuances that are distinguishing features of Jibanananda Das’s literary craft. This paper further examines the instances where the rendition may inadvertently modify or diminish the original text’s resonance, along with the ramifications of such alterations for readers of the translated composition. Moreover, this study ventures into the affective and cognitive dimensions of bilingual reading.

摘要：本文旨在探究孟加拉语（Bangla）与英语之间语言的社会文化与修辞精妙之处的传译，以丽贝卡·惠廷顿（Rebecca Whittington）于2022年译出的吉巴南南达·达斯（Jibanananda Das）1973年小说《Malloban》为研究焦点。传译这类意蕴深厚且文化积淀丰厚的文本，面临诸多挑战，因其需在保留源文本（source text）精神内核与使其适配全新语言文化语境之间达成微妙的平衡。在本次研究过程中，以美式英语为母语的译者不得不在归化翻译（domestication）与异化翻译（exoticism）之间进行权衡，由此在其译版的源语言文本中产生了词汇、符号与句法层面的差异。本文旨在评估该译本对原作的忠实程度，同时审视译者在捕捉吉巴南南达·达斯文学创作标志性特征——精巧文字游戏、习语表达、隐喻及叙事细微之处——时所做出的抉择。本文还将考察译本中无意修改或削弱原作感染力的案例，以及此类改动对译本读者所产生的影响。此外，本研究还探讨了双语阅读的情感与认知维度。