Translating Women: Indian Interventions

While women’s language, women’s writings, and women’s views about the world we live in have all been the focus of much debate and study, this book explores the translation of these experiences and these writings in the context of India, with its multifaceted, multilingual character. If women’s language is different from the patriarchal language that forms the basis of communication in most language communities, what has been the impact of writings from the women’s perspective and how have these writings been translated? Indian women writers have been translated into English in the Indian context as well as into other western languages. What are the linguistic and cultural specificities of these literary productions? What is foregrounded and what is erased in these translations? What are the politics that inform the choices of the authors to be translated? What is the agency of the translators, and of the archivist, in these cultural productions? What is the role of women translators? These are some of the questions that this book explores. The book contains insightful essays by some of the best translation scholars in India with an in-depth Introduction by the editor N Kamala.

N KAMALA is Professor of French at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and specializes in translation studies. She was awarded the Katha prize for translation in 1998, and was a French Language Expert in the Project Advisory Committee for Indian Literature Abroad (2011–2013) undertaken by the Indian Ministry of Culture. Her English translation of Toru Dutt’s French novel The Diary of Mademoiselle d’Arvers was published in 2005.