Published Paper Details:

By applying the concept of 'Negative Capability' by John Keats to the field of Translation Studies, this research paper examines how the praxis of this theory allows uncertainty to be born in the act of translation. The very concept of uncertainty underlined by suspicion makes the translator resist the limit of the stability of the meaning of the given text pulling it out of the narrow renderings. More often than not, Translation Studies have been offered as a battle ground between the opposites like loyalty and disloyalty, loss and gain, imitation and re-creation etc. This research paper argues that the best act of translation inhabits in ambiguity, uncertainty, indeterminacy and the suspension of interpretive finality due to the textual openness without "irritable reaching after the fact" (Keats 1962: 257). By making a comparative study between Translation Studies and Keats' concept of Negative Capability, this paper argues that the application of the negative capability by a translator can make the translation bear uncertainty which is not a weakness rather a required condition of translation process. Operating the concept of Keats, the Target Language Text is prepared to resist closure of the text situating translation between mimesis and originality. Making Keats to have a dialogue with certain contemporary theories of Translation Studies, it is attempted to project that translation is not an activity to solve problems but rather it is an intensive intentional condition to allow them to inhabit in the Target Language Text. This makes the translator a practising John Keats in the area of translated literature who is bound to resist the closure, to negotiate the multiplicity of meanings and to preserve alterity.