The Interplay of Invisibility and Appropriation in the Translated Text of Oscar Wilde’s Play

Abstract

This paper explores the appropriation process in the classical Urdu translation of Oscar Wilde's play, particularly around the concept of invisibility. Appropriation essentially refers to the act of taking ownership of the original text and elevating target culture and language. The research explores how appropriation influences translation, which often presents itself at various levels, including the removal of words, phrases, sentences, expressions, the central message of the original, and even the presence of the translators themselves. The source and target texts were meta-textually analyzed in order to assess how appropriation gives rise to invisibility. Antoine Berman's model of textual deformation formed the basis for identifying elements of appropriation. Additionally, Eugene Nida’s principles of correspondence, particularly formal and dynamic equivalence, were applied to explain translation extracts at the word and sentence levels. Gerard Genette's concept of paratext helped to examine promotional materials, reviews, prefaces, and copyright information in both the source and target texts the analysis shows that translators have used different deforming strategies of omission, rationalization, clarification, ennoblement, expansion, quantitative impoverishment, adjustments, and destruction of the original's structure. The findings indicate that the combined forces of invisibility and appropriation often result in the domestication of the source text, causing shifts in its linguistic and cultural nuances. This study theorizes different concepts in the field of translation studies and provides an angle to the translators to improve the process of translation.