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Note on Translations This book presents many translations of Hindi literary texts in the literary dialect of Braj Bhå∑å, and in other varieties of spoken and textual modern Hindi, sometimes in the spoken standard of Kha®¥ Bol¥, and sometimes highly Sanskritized. Many of these translations are of poetry, much of which was written in meter. These facts present several quandaries for translation which I will address here briefly. Some translators believe in translating rhyme into rhyme; some have attempted to capture the flavor of Braj Bhå∑å poetry in particular by producing rhyme and using antiquated English (K. P. Bahadur’s translations of Keßav Dås and Bihår¥lål come to mind). I do not produce rhyme in translation (except fortuitously on occasion), and I use modern American English norms at all times. While in the case of Braj especially, a literary dialect distinct from normal standard speech, this may create a false sense of linguistic immediacy, we can solace ourselves with the fact that until at least circa 1910 most of the Hindi literary audience would have understood Braj quite easily. Its “flavor” may be lost in translation, but its devotion and often courtly refinement will hopefully remain in my renderings. Poetry in modern Hindi presents a more straightforward translation problem. Here I have had to dispense with rhyme, but when possible tried to retain assonance and alliteration, with an unselfconscious conception of “how poetry sounds.” Certain turns of phrase will undoubtedly seem infelicitous and strange in American English; such is a symptom of poetry’s singular opacity-in-clarity among the genres. Especially for the highly referential poetry of South Asia, steeped in multiple poetic systems and mythologies, translation will often present a trope utterly foreign to a Western audience. I see no point in naturalizing myth, especially—e.g., making Kåma, the god of love, into Cupid (although they both carry bow and arrow, this equation obscures too much). There will remain an element of foreignness that should only buttress my claims of the power of Hindi poetics in colonial India. xxiii In sum, my translations are generally rather literal, but also more than merely literal. While avoiding the theoretical problem of how to translate the poetic qualities of poetry, suffice it to say that what is not literal has to do with presuppositions of poetics. In the words of Michael Riffaterre, “No literary translation . . . can ever be successful unless it finds equivalencies for . . . literariness-inducing presuppositions. . . . [T]he translator must transpose presuppositions.”1 Indeed, the project of this book is to analyze some of the presuppositions that comprise the base poetics of the modern Hindi world. xxiv  Note on Translations ...

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