Abhinav Mishra
Independent Researcher
Uttar Pradesh, India
Abstract
This study conducts an in‐depth examination of translation loss in three major Hindi renditions of Sant Tukaram’s seventeenth‐century Marathi abhangs—the devotional poems at the heart of the Varkari tradition. By combining a rigorous corpus‐based comparison with qualitative interviews of the translators, the research illuminates semantic, cultural, syntactic, and pragmatic shifts that occur when moving from Marathi into Hindi. Using a parallel corpus of fifteen abhangs (five in each translation), we apply a four‐fold loss taxonomy—semantic loss (e.g., metaphor dilution), cultural loss (e.g., omission of pilgrimage imagery), syntactic loss (e.g., meter disruption), and pragmatic loss (e.g., loss of performative cues)—to identify and quantify instances of translation shifts. Inter‐coder reliability (Cohen’s κ = 0.82) confirms the robustness of our coding scheme. Findings reveal that literalist approaches yield high semantic fidelity but often produce stilted language that undermines emotional resonance. Poetic‐oriented translations succeed in preserving musicality yet frequently generalize or omit culturally specific references, thereby weakening the bhakti ethos. Adaptive, community‐informed translations best balance fidelity and fluency but sometimes introduce anachronistic influences from North Indian devotional contexts. Translator interviews highlight the competing imperatives of “word‐for‐word” versus “sense‐for‐sense” rendering, the challenge of untranslatable Marathi religious terms, and the role of audience expectations. The results underscore the need for translator training in bhakti poetics and participatory translation frameworks that engage both scholars and practitioner communities. We conclude by proposing concrete guidelines—such as bilingual glossaries, paratextual notes, and collaborative workshops—to mitigate translation loss and preserve both the devotional impact and literary artistry of Tukaram’s abhangs in Hindi.
Keywords
Bhakti, Translation Loss, Sant Tukaram, Hindi Translation, Literary Fidelity
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