Translation as ‘Reported’ Verbalization: An Extension of the Theoretical Postulates of ‘the Bakhtin Circle’

Abstract

This paper seeks to critically investigate the notion of “reported speech” as envisaged by members of ‘the Bakhtin Circle’, especially Valentin Voloshinov, and attempts to understand the process of interlingual translation of creative literatures in the light of their specifications. The paper aims to understand the activity of translation metaphorically as transforming a source-text into a reported speech/indirect discourse. The central concern is to exemplify how Bakhtin Circle’s observations on indirect discourse can prove to be effective strategies for a translator in communicating the semantic liveliness of the source-text. The paper is divided into three parts: the first part seeks to elucidate the Bakhtin Circle’s views on indirect discourse; in the second, the purport is to provide a theoretical framework for understanding the activity of translation as composing an indirect discourse; and the third part seeks to exemplify the theoretical position with the help of a few examples from the translations of Marathi poetry and Hindi prose into English. Keywords : the Bakhtin circle, Voloshinov, Indirect discourse, word-with-quotation marks, Saadat Hasan Manto