A CRITIQUE OF THE HOLY WATER – A CULTURAL TRANSLATION OF THE WELL OF THE SAINTS TRANSLATED BY BASAVARAJ NAIKAR

Abstract

Dr. Basavaraj Naikar has made a unique attempt in retranslating his Kannada translation of J.M Synge’s The Well of the Saints into English. This retendering of this play again into English has enabled the Indian audience to value and relish the Irish play. The aesthetics and the rigidity of the theme are maintained with precision in the translated version. The retranslation has enabled to bridge the cultural in equivalence between the source text and the target text. The Indian audiences have gained the golden opportunity to enjoy the grandeur of the classics within the percepts of their native cultural context due to the yeomen services rendered by Dr. Basavaraj Naikar who has taken great pain to render the classics in simple language so that it would benefit multitudes of people with literary fervor. This paper attempts to analyze the play The Holy Water,as a unique example of retranslation and also as a case study of a cultural translation.