Reviewing Sohini Sen’s A Drop of Golden Sun: Re-presenting Tagore’s Gitanjali

Abstract

The enterprise of translation is loaded and problematic. It is simultaneously a technical act or a skill, a linguistic process, a semiotic and cultural activity as well as a philosophy. The translator is in a constant tug of war between their responsibility to the source text and its author as well as to the readership. Susan Bassnett in an interview with Nazry Bahrawi vouches that “the primary duty of the translator is to create a text in the target language that can be appreciated by readers and at the same time demonstrates respect for the source. But how to interpret respect is an interesting question. I do not see that a translator has to follow an original slavishly. Indeed, I believe that it is the duty of the translator to rewrite and to recontextualise whatever it is that he or she is rendering.” The challenge is to reconcile the complex dynamics involved in translation through a delicate balance required between fidelity to the original language and the stubbornness of the target language. It is the elan in negotiating that precise synapse that decides whether the creative act of translation has been successful. The endeavour becomes exceptionally onerous when there is an available, celebrated, Nobel-acclaimed – no less – translation by the author of the source text. And that is the task that Sohini Sen courts in her new A Drop of Golden Sun: Re-presenting Tagore’s Gitanjali.

Keywords

• sohini sen
• gitanjali
• penprints