Cross-Cultural Translation and Untranslatability: A Critical Study of The Infinite as a Translation of Dhruv Bhatt’s Akoopar

Abstract

The 21st century is undoubtedly a century of knowledge and translation of knowledge for its better transmission. The first two decades of the century have witnessed a plethora of works, not only from the regional literatures but also world literature, being translated from English into regional languages and vice versa. This paper aims at critically evaluating the translation of Dhruv Bhatt’s Gujarati travelogue-cum-novel Akoopar, translated into English as Akoopar – The Infinite by Piyush Joshi and Suresh Gadhavi. Evaluating the translation of this work is significant because of three reasons: 1) The text, being an extensive anthropological study of Gir region of Saurashtra (Gujarat), is highly culture-specific therefore the translation becomes an instance of Cross-cultural translation; 2) The text itself is a blend of Gujarati and Kathiawadi dialect and so how this colloquial language has been handled becomes a matter of study; and 3) The text highlights the issue of ‘untranslatability’ at many places and consequently, the evaluation of the translated work would throw some light upon the question of loss in translation and untranslatability.