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Sanjukta Banerjee TRANSLATING MEDIATION IN TRAVEL WRITING: INDIA IN PIERRE SONNERAT’S VOYAGE AUX INDES ORIENTALES ET A LA CHINE (1782) SANJUKTA BANERJEE A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY GRADUATE PROGRAM IN HUMANITIES YORK UNIVERSITY TORONTO, ONTARIO January 2021 © Sanjukta Banerjee, 2021 ii Abstract In recent decades, a growing number of studies have focused on the parallels and interconnections between travel writing and translation to examine the ways in which both practices can be understood to represent the foreign, particularly in colonial contexts. Scholarship on non-Anglophone European accounts of India, however, has remained indifferent to this nexus. This dissertation addresses this gap through an exploration of the discursive strategies of representation at play in eighteenth-century French travel writing on India, a mostly neglected body of work in translation studies. Approaching early colonial India as a triangular colonial space and a site of pliable, competing colonialisms between France and Britain, I examine the plurality of mediations readable in a specific account, to underscore translation not only as an interlingual process but an entire problematic. To this end, I provide an annotated English translation of excerpts from French naturalist traveller Pierre Sonnerat’s Voyage aux Indes orientales et à la Chine (1782), an example of interlingual travel notable for its ethnographic account of India. My focus is on the assumptions and mechanisms at play in translating difference into commensurability, particularly in relation to the traveller’s located understanding of language and its entwining with other categories of knowledge. Beginning with an exploration of the co-constitutive nature of Anglo-French relations in early colonial India and in the knowledge networks of the “global eighteenth century,” inflected and sustained by the local, I examine translation and travel (writing) as connected practices and concepts, their connections with the ethnographic and scientific, and the ethical implications of knowledge construction through travel and translation in contexts of empire. The annotated translation is based on an analytical apparatus bringing together science, religion, and language—grounded in specific histories— to go beyond the perspective of the traveller and include the “travellee,” to consider both as socialized subjects linked to networks of other social agents. iii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without the support of many people. My heartfelt thanks to Maria Constanza Guzmán for being unfailingly generous with ideas, insight, and time, for her enthusiasm and empathy throughout the planning and writing of this dissertation. I thank Victor Shea for his unflagging support and for being an exacting critic throughout the process. I am indebted to Susan Ingram for her generosity and for the insightful and detailed feedback that helped me sharpen my arguments. I thank Shobna Nijhawan for her comments and suggestions during the planning stages of this project. Thanks also to Markus Reisenleitner for his invaluable help during my doctoral studies, and to Dominique Scheffel-Dunand for her feedback as member of the examination committee. I also wish to thank Rita Kothari for her critical engagement with my work as the external examiner. Many thanks, scholarly and personal, to my mentors, colleagues and friends in Translation Studies and Humanities across the York University community, who provided much intellectual sustenance and whose support and camaraderie kept me encouraged through the writing process. Thanks to Subrata for always keeping the laughter alive. iv Table of Contents Abstract .................................................................................................................................................................. ii Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................................................... iii Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................1 DESCRIPTION OF PROJECT ....................................................................................................................................1 NEGOTIATING THE DESCRIPTIVE AND THE EXPLANATORY ...................................................................................4 INCLUDING THE LOCAL ........................................................................................................................................6 PIERRE SONNERAT: AUTHOR OF VOYAGE AUX INDES ORIENTALES ET À LA CHINE ................................................10 SCOPE OF PROJECT AND DESCRIPTION OF SECTIONS ...........................................................................................15 TRANSLATING VOYAGE: NOTES ON METHODOLOGY ...........................................................................................21 NOTE ON THE CHOICE OF EDITION ......................................................................................................................23 1 Anatomy of a Triangle ...............................................................................................................................25 1.1 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................................25 1.2 CONTEXT OF FRENCH PRESENCE IN INDIA ...........................................................................................28 1.3 THE ANGLO-FRENCH NETWORK IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY INDIA ......................................................36 1.4 CONNECTED DISCOURSES ....................................................................................................................40 1.5 SOME IMPLICATIONS OF A TRIANGULAR APPROACH ............................................................................43 1.6 ON “GO-BETWEENS” ............................................................................................................................45 2 Travel Writing and Translation: Theories and Implications .................................................................48 2.1 CONNECTED PRACTICES.......................................................................................................................49 2.2 TRAVEL AND ITS WRITING: OBSERVATIONS ON GENRE ........................................................................57 2.3 TRANSLATION AND / IN TRAVEL ..........................................................................................................67 2.4 TRANSLATING CULTURE / CULTURE AS TEXT .......................................................................................78 2.5 ON ETHNOGRAPHY...............................................................................................................................84 2.6 ON INTERTEXTUALITY .........................................................................................................................90 2.7 ON SCIENCE .......................................................................................................................................102 2.7.1 The scientific gaze ........................................................................................................................107 2.7.2 Science and translation ................................................................................................................107 2.8 TRAVEL WRITING, TRANSLATION, AND ETHICS ..................................................................................112 3 Why Translate and How ..........................................................................................................................125 3.1 UNDERSTANDING “REGIMES OF DESCRIPTION” ..................................................................................125 3.2 SCIENTIFICITY OF DISCOURSE ............................................................................................................128 3.3 THICK DESCRIPTION, THICK TRANSLATION ........................................................................................133 4 Translating Pierre Sonnerat’s Voyage aux Indes Orientales (1782) .....................................................141 INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................................................141 4.1 SITUATING VOYAGE ...........................................................................................................................142 4.2 ON THE PARATEXTS ...........................................................................................................................143 4.2.1 On the Foreword ..........................................................................................................................150 4.3 TRANSLATING RELIGION ....................................................................................................................163 4.3.1 On pseudo-translation ..................................................................................................................169 4.4 TRANSLATING TIME ...........................................................................................................................171 4.5 TRANSLATING LANGUAGE .................................................................................................................177
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