Theorizing "Exercise Book" Through the Perspectives of Three Translation Theorists Jakobson, Derrida and Benjamin

Abstract

A noble translator uncovers a text for the target language readers. An amateur translator, on the other hand, may destroy the prospect, beauty, and liveliness of the text. Therefore, while translating a text, a translator has to turn on his/her utmost possible creative aptitude along with a fanciful imagination of linguistic ability in context. The text “Exercise Book” is a short story, the translation of “Khata”, extracted from the collection of Rabindranath Tagore's short stories titled Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Short Stories, translated by William Radice. This analysis attempts to explore the emotional narrative and discovers if it interprets the subjectivity of Uma’s feelings and thoughts depicted in the short story “Khata” relatively. In addition, this paper is an exertion to understand and scrutinize which category of the translation does this story follow, while translating a text whether it is a sense-for-sense translation or word-for-word translation and whether it is a literary art form or not. For theorizing the translated short story three translation theories by Jakobson, Derrida and Benjamin have been reconnoitered in the paper. Keywords: Translator, creative, sense-for-sense, word-for-word, art, translation