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Siting Translation: History, Post-Structuralism, and the Colonial Context
The act of translation, Tejaswini Niranjana maintains, is a political action. Niranjana draws on Benjamin, Derrida, and de Man to show that translation has long been a site for perpetuating the unequal power relations among peoples, races, and languages. The traditional view of translation underwritten by Western philosophy helped colonialism to construct the exotic "other" as unchanging and outside history, and thus easier both to appropriate and control.
Scholars, administrators, and missionaries in colonial India translated the colonized people's literature in order to extend the bounds of empire. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Niranjana urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation.
Scholars, administrators, and missionaries in colonial India translated the colonized people's literature in order to extend the bounds of empire. Examining translations of Indian texts from the eighteenth century to the present, Niranjana urges post-colonial peoples to reconceive translation as a site for resistance and transformation.
216 pages, Paperback
First published December 9, 1991
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September 16, 2013
An academic book (going by the reasons people usually read it) but important for those who wish to understand the politics of ethnic psychology, and how the art of translation sub-consciously turns into the politics of culture and beliefs.
The book examines the process of translation as a site for exploring the nuances of colonialism handed down to us by the British and portrays how the traditional norms of translation as put into effect by the British now act as tools of neo-colonization and perpetuating the unequal power-struggles between cultures and languages.
Drawing on the post-structuralist theories of Jacques Derrida, Paul De Man and Walter Benjamin, Niranjana opens up the hidden battles of culture and power that are manifest in the act of translation.
This book is especially important since we all read translated works, without being even nominally aware of prejudices and the pre-conceived notions that drive the translator to pick a word or a phrase in order to translate.
(Translation as an activity in India was first undertaken by the British, and the first books to be translated were the ancient classic Sanskrit literature and Hindu scriptures, with the explicit aim of exposing their supposed 'lowliness' of content and style and inferiority in contrast to the Western works, and these were the texts that became the staple, standard opinions of the British about The Orient, and later, were incorporated officially as Standard History - which is why a study like this is all the more important today.)
Detailed review later.
The book examines the process of translation as a site for exploring the nuances of colonialism handed down to us by the British and portrays how the traditional norms of translation as put into effect by the British now act as tools of neo-colonization and perpetuating the unequal power-struggles between cultures and languages.
Drawing on the post-structuralist theories of Jacques Derrida, Paul De Man and Walter Benjamin, Niranjana opens up the hidden battles of culture and power that are manifest in the act of translation.
This book is especially important since we all read translated works, without being even nominally aware of prejudices and the pre-conceived notions that drive the translator to pick a word or a phrase in order to translate.
(Translation as an activity in India was first undertaken by the British, and the first books to be translated were the ancient classic Sanskrit literature and Hindu scriptures, with the explicit aim of exposing their supposed 'lowliness' of content and style and inferiority in contrast to the Western works, and these were the texts that became the staple, standard opinions of the British about The Orient, and later, were incorporated officially as Standard History - which is why a study like this is all the more important today.)
Detailed review later.
Displaying 1 of 1 review