Preservation and Promotion of an Indigenous Language through Translation by Bal Ram Adhikari

Introduction to the author:

1.     Bal Ram Adhikari was born on July 19, 1960 in Kaski.

2.     He teaches translation studies at Mahendra Ratna Campus, Tahachal, and Tribhuvan University and so on.

3.     He has written numerous sorts of articles and books on the different topics and he has given the significant contribution in the development of literary field.

4.     He is the son of Rudra Nath and Saraswati Adhikari.

 

Summary of the text:

1.     The present paper draws on Bal Ram Adhikari's own experience of working on "A Trilingual Dictionary of the Magar Language: Magar, Nepali and English."

2.     He enters on the project on the assumption that the source text lends itself to the interpretation.

3.     For the writer, Karna Bahadur Budha Magar has interpregted the Magar words.

4.     The second assumption is that what has been interpreted lends itself to rewriting in any language.

5.     This text focuses on the three broad areas of observation: how preservation through lexical codification creates a prestige-based hierarchy, how preservation and promotion of a language through translation leads to a cultural distortion and fragmentation and how translators can employ different strategies to ensure better cultural representation in the face of distortion and fragmentation.

6.     The Magar language is mostly in the oral form.

7.     The Magars constitute the majority of indigenous population of Nepal.

8.     Two-thirds of the Magars have lost their mother tongue.

9.     Magar settlements that lie east and west to the River Ridi are called Bahra Magarat and Athara Magarat region respectively.

10.  Diversity in religion and cultural practices has a bearing on the language the speak, especially its lexicon for it is mainly the lexicon that codifies and represents such diversity.

11.  Codification includes compiling dictionaries and writing grammar books.

12.  Each language awaits codification for it is the process that ensures its sustainability, elaboration and proliferation.

13.  Translation and culture seem incompatible: making the things globalized to share the ideas from one to another.

14.  Reading/interpretation of another culture is influenced and even shaped by the reader's own cultural world.

15.  Taken the various examples of Magar words and state that hundreds of Magar words overlap partially with those of Nepali.

16.  The writer focuses gradually on the Magar language which is losing its speakers.

17.  So, he has stated the joint efforts for the preservation and promotion by the given listed points.

18.  Preservation of indigenous words and promotion of all the Magar linguistic varieties.

19.  Ensuring higher accuracy in interpretation of cultural words and their translation in the target language.

20.  Syntactic fragmentation and preservation of meanings through:

·       paraphrasing-cum-borrowing

·       paraphrasing-cum-pictures

·       literal translation-cum-pictures

·       addition of cultural information

21.  Translation was for the preservation, for growth and for representation of the Magar language and its culture.

22.  Thus, the writer conclude his ideas by giving more emphasis on the promotion of Magar languages which is going to be extinct especially through codification as well as elaboration.

Source: Tapan Chhetri from Itahari