Susan Bassnett - Post-colonial translation : theory and practice

Post-colonial Translation

This outstanding collection brings together eminent contributors to examine some crucial interconnections between post-colonial theory and translation studies.

As English becomes an increasingly global language, so more people become multilingual and translation becomes a crucial communicative activity. Whereas traditional thinking about translation saw it as a poor copy of an original, today translation is viewed as an act of invention that produces a new original in another language. The essays in this book, by contributors from Britain, the US, Brazil, India and Canada, explore new perspectives on translation in relation to post-colonial societies. The essay topics include: links between centre and margins in the intellectual domain; shifts in translation practice from colonial to post-colonial societies; translation and power relations among Indian languages; Brazilian cannibalistic theories of literary transfer.

Examining the relationships between language and power across cultural boundaries, this collection reveals the vital role of translation in redefining the meanings of cultural and ethnic identity.

Susan Bassnett is Professor at the Centre for British and Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Warwick. She has published extensively in the fields of Translation Studies and Comparative Literature. She is author of Translation Studies (Routledge 1991) and of Studying British Cultures (Routledge 1997).

Harish Trivedi is Professor of English at the University of Delhi. He is author of Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India, and co-editor of Interrogating Post-colonialism. He has also published English translations of Hindi poetry and short fiction.

Translation Studies

General editors: Susan Bassnett and Andr Lefevere

In the same series:

Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame

Andr Lefevere

Translation/History/Culture

Edited by Andr Lefevere

Translation, Poetics and the Stage

Six French Hamlets

Romy Heylen

Contemporary Translation Theories

Edwin Gentzler

The Translators Invisibility

Lawrence Venuti

Gender in Translation

Cultural identity and the politics of transmission Sherry Simon

Post-colonial Translation

Theory and practice

Edited by Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi

First published 1999

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN

Transferred to Digital Printing 2005

Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada

by Routledge

270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016

1999 Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, collection and editorial matter; the contributors, individual contributions

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Post-colonial translation: theory & practice / [edited by]

Susan Bassnett & Harish Trivedi.

(Translation studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Translating and interpretingSocial aspects.

2. Postcolonialism. 3. Intercultural communication. I. Bassnett, Susan. II. Trivedi, Harish. III. Title: Post-colonial translation theory IV. Series: Translation studies (London, England)

P306.2.P67 1998

418.02dc21 9812969

CIP

ISBN 041514744I (hbk)

ISBN 041514745x (pbk)

To Andr Lefevere (19451996), who was a dear friend to many of us and an inspiration to all.

Acknowledgements

The editors wish to thank all those friends and colleagues who have helped in the production of this book. A number of the papers have been tried out with students in different parts of the world and their responses have been gratefully noted. We would like particularly to thank Talia Rogers and Sophie Powell for their forbearance, patience and wise editorial advice. Grateful thanks to Mrs Maureen Tustin who has kept the lines of communication between editors and contributors open throughout.

Contributors

Rosemary Arrojo is Associate Professor of Translation Studies at the Universidade Estadual de Campinas in Brazil. She has published two books in Portuguese: Oficina de Traduo: A Teoria na Prtica (1986) and Traduo, Desconstruo e Psicanlise (1993). In recent years, samples of her work have been published in English and in German.

Ganesh Devy is the author of After Amnesia: Tradition and Change in Indian Literary Criticism (1992), In Another Tongue (1993) and Of Many Heroes (1998), and is engaged in the documentation and study of the languages and literature of tribal communities in India. He was formerly Professor of English at the Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda. At present he is the Chairman of Bhasha Research and Publication Centre, Baroda, and Director of National Literary Academys Project on Tribal Literature and Oral Traditions.

Vinay Dharwadker is Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of Oklahoma. He is the author of Sunday at the Lodi Gardens (1994), a book of poems; and the editor, with A.K. Ramanujan, of The Oxford Anthology of Modern Indian Poetry (1994). He has co-edited The Collected Poems of A.K. Ramanujan (1995), and is the general editor of The Collected Essays of A.K. Ramanujan (1998). He is currently completing The Columbia Book of Indian Poetry (forthcoming, 2000). His recent essays have appeared or are forthcoming in New National and Post-Colonial Literatures (1996), Language Machines (1997) and Self as Image in Asian Theory and Practice (1998).

Andr Lefevere (19451996) was one of the leading figures in translation studies. His books include Translating Poetry (1975), Translating Literature: The German Tradition (1977), Translation, History, Culture (1992) and Translation, Rewriting and the Manipulation of Literary Fame (1993). He began his academic career in Belgium, taught in many countries including Hong Kong and South Africa and was Professor of Germanic Languages at the University of Texas at Austin from 1984. His final essays are included in Constructing Cultures (1998), written jointly with Susan Bassnett.

G.J.V. Prasad is Assistant Professor at the Centre of Linguistics and English, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India. He is also a writer and has published a novel, A Clean Breast (1993), and a book of poems, In Delhi Without a Visa (1996).

Sherry Simon directs the Humanities Doctoral Programme and teaches in the French Department of Concordia University in Montreal. She is the author of Le Trafic des langues: traduction et culture dans la littrature Qubecoise (1994) and Gender in Translation: Cultural Identity and the Politics of Transmission (1996), and editor of Culture in Transit: Translating the Literature of Quebec (1995). She is currently preparing a volume provisionally entitled After Translation: The Esthetics of Cultural Hybridity.