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 André Lefevere In the same series: Translation, Rewriting, and the Manipulation of Literary Fame André Lefevere Translation/History/Culture Edited by André Lefevere Translation, Poetics and the Stage Six French Hamlets Romy Heylen Contemporary Translation Theories Edwin Gentzler The Translator’s 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 London and New York First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2002. Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 © 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 interpreting–Social 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’.02–dc21 98–12969 CIP ISBN 0-415-14744-1 (hbk) ISBN 0-415-14745-x (pbk) ISBN 0-203-06887-4 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-21254-1 (Glassbook Format) To André Lefevere (1945–1996), who was a dear friend to many of us and an inspiration to all. Contents Acknowledgements ix Notes on contributors x Introduction: of colonies, cannibals and vernaculars 1 SUSAN BASSNETT AND HARISH TRIVEDI 1 Post-colonial writing and literary translation 19 MARIA TYMOCZKO 2 Writing translation: the strange case of the Indian English novel 41 G.J.V. PRASAD 3 Translating and interlingual creation in the contact zone: borderwriting in Quebec 58 SHERRY SIMON 4 Composing the other 75 ANDRÉ LEFEVERE 5 Liberating Calibans: readings of Antropofagia and Haroldo de Campos’ poetics of transcreation 95 ELSE RIBEIRO PIRES VIEIRA viii Contents 6 A.K. Ramanujan’s theory and practice of translation 114 VINAY DHARWADKER 7 Interpretation as possessive love: Hélène Cixous, Clarice Lispector and the ambivalence of fidelity 141 ROSEMARY ARROJO 8 Shifting grounds of exchange: B.M. Srikantaiah and Kannada translation 162 VANAMALA VISWANATHA AND SHERRY SIMON 9 Translation and literary history – an Indian view 182 GANESH DEVY Bibliography 189 Name Index 199 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 Tradução: A Teoria na Prática (1986) and Tradução, Desconstrução e Psicanálise (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 Academy’s 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). André Lefevere (1945–1996) was one of the leading figures in translation studies. His books include Translating Poetry (1975), Contributors xi 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 littérature Québecoise (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. Maria Tymoczko is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She has published extensively on Irish literature and on translation studies. She is the author of The Irish ‘Ulysses’ and writes about James Joyce as a post-colonial writer. Her most recent book, Translation in a Postcolonial Context: Early Irish Literature in English Translation, is in press. Else Ribeiro Pires Vieira is an Associate Professor of the Post-graduate School of Comparative Literature and of the Department of Anglo-Germanic Languages at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, where she is also the Convener of Postgraduate Studies in Literature and Linguistics. Her major field of interest is translation as intercultural transfer on which she has published widely in many countries. At present, she is the co-ordinator in Brazil of an international project on the interface between critical and cultural studies. Her most recent book is Teorizando e Contextualizando a Tradução (1996). Vanamala Viswanatha teaches translation studies, Indian literatures and English language teaching in the Department of English, xii Contributors Bangalore University, India. Winner of the KATHA award for Best Translator from Kannada into English in 1994, Vanamala Viswanatha is currently translating into English a novel by Sara Aboobakkar, a Muslim woman writer, for Macmillan (India)