The Rhetorical Uneasiness: A Study of Rebecca Whittington’s Translation of Jibanananda Das’s Malloban

This paper aims to explore the translation of socio-cultural and rhetorical nuances of language between Bangla and English with a case of the translation of Jibanananda Das’s 1973 novel Malloban by Rebecca Whittington in 2022. The act of translating such a rich and culturally nuanced text poses substantial challenges, as it involves the delicate balance of preserving the essence of the source text while making it accessible to a new linguistic and cultural context. In the process, the translator, whose native language is American English, is led to straddle domestication and exoticism, thus creating linguistic, semiotic, and syntactic variations in her rendition of the source language text. This paper attempts to assess the fidelity of the translation to the original work while scrutinizing the translator’s choices in capturing the intricate wordplay, colloquial expressions, metaphors, and narrative subtleties that are hallmarks of Jibanananda Das’s writing. This paper also examines the instances where the translation may inadvertently alter or dilute the original text’s impact and the implications of such alterations for readers of the translated work. Furthermore, this study delves into the emotional and cognitive dimensions of bilingual reading.