TRANSLATING (?) INDIA AND THE SEDUCTION OF 'ELSEWHERE'

Audio podcasts by Prof Harish Trivedi, University of Delhi, and Prof Vita Fortunati, University of Bologna

The Literature, Travel, Translation symposium was organised to celebrate the important contribution that Warwick scholar Prof Susan Bassnett has made to the field of translation studies. At the event visiting lecturers Prof Harish Trivedi and Prof Vita Fortunati gave their own perspectives on translation studies, speaking on the subject of translation in the novels of Kipling, Forster and Rushdie, and the seduction of 'elsewhere' in travel and utopian literature.

Translating (?) India

Can cultural translation really be called translation? Are we in danger of “killing the golden goose” by overusing the term ‘translation’? Professor Harish Trivedi shared his concerns for translation studies saying that we need to take the subject more seriously. Cultural translation, a popular phrase at the moment, all happens in just one language, unlike ‘real’ literary translation for which you need to know two languages at least. According to Prof Trivedi, cultural translation encourages “smug monolingualism” and does danger to all languages in the world other than English.

Rudyard Kipling used translation in his novel Kim to relate to the whole imperial enterprise. “Kim is a highly hybridised character, a person of pure white blood who was brought up in native streets and is more Indian than British when the novel picks him up at the age of 13.” Kipling’s use of hybridised English is, according to Prof Trivedi, more effective than many other kinds of translation we hear about. For example Kim’s retort to an attacker “you have hit me kicks all over my body” is flawed English but a perfect translation from the Hindi in which Kim is fluent.

Prof Trivedi goes on to discuss the representation of India in the novels of E.M. Forster and Salman Rushdie. He concludes that “language constitutes us in a way in which not many other things do and that’s why interaction between languages in the process of translation is something that is almost unequalled among our human activities”.

Listen to the full podcast below:

The Seduction of 'Elsewhere' in Travel and Utopian Literature

There’s a seduction and fascination for other countries that brings an idea of change, Professor Vita Fortunati affirmed in her lecture on the theme of travel and utopian studies. We can distance ourselves from our own language and culture when coming into contact with another. Travel literature is a means of knowledge and exchange with other languages in that it implies translation between two cultures and languages.

Utopian studies covers the planning of an alternative reality. “There are intimate connections that exist between utopia as a literary genre, travel literature, and the imaginary voyage.” From her very first studies Prof Fortunati has striven to highlight “how the voyage to utopia was not simply a technical device to allow the discovery from the familiar to the unknown”. The genres of utopia and imaginary travel have intertwined from the 17th century onwards.

“There exists at the heart of utopia”, says Prof Fortunati, “an interesting tension between two tendencies, on the one hand the movement and opening embodied in travelling, on the other, closure from the mental elements for the protection of the utopian construction”.

Hear more about travel and utopia in the podcast below:

A summary of the Literature, Travel, Translation symposium is now available.

Harish Trivedi is Professor of English, University of Delhi. He is the author of Colonial Transactions: English Literature and India (Calcutta 1993; Manchester 1995), and has co-edited The Nation across the World: Postcolonial Literary Representations (New Delhi 2007), Literature and Nation: Britain and India 1800-1990 (London 2000), Post-colonial Translation: Theory and Practice (London 1999), and Interrogating Post-colonialism: Theory, Text and Context (Shimla 1996; rpt. 2000).

Vita Fortunati is Professor in the University of Bologna's Department of English. She is Director of the Centro Interdipartimentale di Ricerca sull’Utopia (Interdepartmental Centre for Utopian Studies) of the University of Bologna.

By Penelope Jenkins