BY AHSAN UL HAQ
The skills of Translation Studies are becoming ever more desirable and important. Due to fantastic features of translation one may have the choice of reading a great number of writings composed in diverse languages of the world.
From now and then researchers across the world are putting their efforts to translate the literature written in different languages like Arabic, German, Persian, Egyptian, Hindi, Urdu and other major and minor languages of the world.
Translation Trails published in April 2022 by GAP (Grand Academic Portal) is one of the few contributions to the academic circles where one could locate a number of critical issues pertaining to the arena of Translation.
An edited book by Aejaz Mohammad Sheikh (Professor in the Linguistic Department of Kashmir University) co-authored by Shalini Raina (Professor at Cluster University of Jammu).
Prof. Lily Want in preface of the book had introduced the subject of translation, its theory from dynamic perspective and through her scholarship; this sets the stage for the project.
Prof. Aejaz, himself a well-equipped scholar in linguistics and literature, in his introduction part introduces Translation, its theory, praxis and history. While briefly introducing all the papers his introduction serves as a gateway for whatever one expects to read in the forthcoming chapters.
Linguistics and Translation and its impact on different branches of linguistic, its theory and practices have been given due care in the book. It covers a wide range of subjects ranging from micro to macro perspectives of Translation Studies.
The book is divided into four sections: Introducing Translation Studies; Fundamental and Prospectus, Translation in Linguistic Perspective, Literary Translation: Applying Theory and Theorizing practice and translation: Miscellaneous Dimensions. The book comprises twenty-one chapter written by multiple scholar within and outside country.
A plethora and a rich contribution to the field of translation, and a way out for many issues faced by linguistic and literature scholars alike, the book in many of its papers had raised some of the critical issues pertaining to the field of Translation viz a viz different approaches to tackle the phenomenal task of translating one text from source language into target language.
The book covers diverse subjects related to translation studies like its history, development, linguistic and translation, theories of translation, literary, religious, and legal texts, and many kinds of translation like machine translation to name a few.
These chapters cover a great number of emerging topics that scholars across multiple disciplines are undertaking for their research. Comparative Literature, where scholars take different writers from different cultures and languages primarily translated in English is given due consideration.
The translation gaps like lexical/semantic, grammatical/synaptic, stylistics, pragmatic to name a few are some of the core issues that book deals with. Linguistics and Translation, and their impact on different branches of linguistic, its theory and practices have been highlighted in the book.
One could easily locate some of the deep-rooted dynamics of translation that must a be novel thing to explore. There are chapter that talks about from micro and macro issues pertaining to translation, from poetry, fiction and nonfiction, religious texts as well.
Concluding, with the exception of some erratum at some places, it is well crafted and argued scholarly work.
A successful attempt to theorize the subject of translation. A must read.
(Author teaches English at GDC Dangiwacha and can be reached at: ahsanulhaq045@gmail.com)
