On Translating the Postmodern Novel The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco into Bangla

Abstract

Abstract: It all started, according to the Italian author Umberto Eco, with the simple idea of writing a novel about poisoning a monk, and the ultimate produce II nome della rosa (1980) was the first attempt of his in the genre that became a literary phenomenon almost as soon as it was published. In William Weaver’s exquisite translation, the novel turned into The Name of the Rose (1983), from which it was rendered into Bangla, by the writer of the present essay, as গোলাপের নাম (Golaper Nam, a calque of the English title). Simple as the germinating idea of the novel was, the voluminous tome that it flowered into is not an easy read at all. A murder mystery set in a Benedictine monastery in north Italy in the 14 th century, in 1327 to be very specific, and replete not only with events concerning politics and religion in the beginning of the late Middle Ages, but also with topics related to aesthetics, medieval philosophy, language, poetics, semiotics, skepticism, as well as with innumerable allusions to fictional, mythical, and historical characters, the novel in its scope becomes an erudite postmodernist one without losing its highly enjoyable readability. This paper tries to put forward not only the experience the Bangla translator had while translating the novel of this grand stature, an experience that can best be described as a trial by fire, but also some of his observations regarding the very complex phenomenon called translation.