TRANSCREATING THE SOURCE TEXT: OSCAR WILDE’S "THE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ROSE AS KETEKI" BY JATINDRANATH DUWERAH

Translation of a literary text is more than a bilingual transfer of the source
text. A translator has to not only render the ST (Source Text) content in the target
text/language, but also needs to work as a mediator to fix complicated issues
generated in the process of translation. Often, the translator has to shift from the
original for rendering the ST as receptor-friendly. This paper attempts to investigate
how Jatindranath Duwerah makes a departure from Wilde’s story while rendering it
as a prose-poem in Assamese. Moreover, it looks at how literary conventions of
different literature groups have boundaries which makes establishing a foreign text
‘as it is’ a challenging task. Literature is considered as a product of the socio-cultural
construct of a definite geographical location. Hence, apart from the linguistic
factors, social and cultural variables also influence and direct translation. As a result,
the ideological set-up of both the source language and the target language should
be equally considered. However, to meet the target reader’s (target culture) needs,
many a times the translator may have to sacrifice or omit segments of the original
text.