Language Appropriation as Resistance in Manto’s The New Constitution and the Limits of AI Translation

Abstract

The aim of this research is to reveal the textual strategies of language abrogation and language appropriation in the translated version of a short story The New Constitution by Manto and to unearth the strategies employed by the translator that create and express resistance of the colonized towards the colonizers. The textual strategies presented by Ashcroft, Griffith and Tiffin (2002) provides the model on which this research is framed. These strategies of appropriation can be categorized into three main types: code-switching, inter-language and syntactic fusion. Code-switching in turn has two further sub-categories: glossing and un-translated words. By the application of this framework, it is established that the two most common techniques of language appropriation employed in the short story are the use of syntactic fusion and un-translated words. These findings are paradigmatic of what Aschcroft calls a colonial encounter between the colonies and the colonial empire. It submits each marker to a large language model (LLM) a Google translator and records the output. The analysis shows that untranslated words and syntactic fusion dominate the story. It also shows that AI translation flattens most markers into standard English. This flattening removes the cultural distance that carries the resistance. The study therefore links postcolonial appropriation with Venuti’s idea of domestication and argues that fluent AI translation repeats the colonial erasure of difference. The findings extend appropriation theory into the field of machine translation and also suggest against uncritical AI translation of postcolonial literary texts.