Gap in the Translation from SL to TL: A Case Study of Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s The Lunatic and Other Poems

Abstract

This thesis analyzes Laxmi Prasad Devkota’s self-translated poetic collection The Lunatic and Other Poems from the perspectives of self-translation and issue of equivalence. The researcher had the hypothesis that the self-translator can render the equivalent sense better than the translation by the translator other than the writer.With that assumption, the research had been continued. The study included the examination of the cultural idioms and the onomatopoeic expressions. The rationale behind the analysis of the translation of the idiomatic and onomatopoeic expression is that they are considered the most complex translation alunits. While translating these units, the translator meets the void of the activity and has to resort to the difficult terrain. Laxmi Prasad Devkota, the great poet, is considered the accomplished hand in the act of writing and translating his own texts. For that reason, his collection-The Lunatic and Other Poems has been analyzed with some specific samples. The samples selected are from the representative sense and they can speak for the rest of the cases.The struggle Devkota went and faced the tiresome task can be easily felt while in the process of the examination of his translated text and the source text. Not all of the translated versions fail the sense of the equivalence; some of the translations are more acceptable and agreeable than the others.For instance,fyar fyar FFFF is translated as flutter and kalilo hat is translated as tender hand. The serenditions are more acceptable while a translation such as kaudiis translated as money instead the closer equivalence could be penny. Similarly, brahmanal is kept as it is-Brahmanal. Anexplanatory note could have been provided by the translator for more acceptable rendition.Whatever, this examination reestablishes the fact that the issue of untranslatability applies even in the case of the self-translation.