Translation as Process and Protest: Reading the Tradition of Malayalam Dalit Writing in Translation

Abstract

The proposed paper attempts to situate the layered stakes involved in translating Dalit literature from Malayalam to English. Dalit writers while envisioning their literature as a mode to establish their visibility and dissent have also observed how language itself has limitations in conveying their radical politics. Their counterhegemonic writings are often ignored or labeled “uncouth” for the literary public. Through a reading of Pulayathara (1962), we examine the following questions – Do errors in the English translations of Dalit literature always result in what Venuti calls, the “ethnocentric violence” of a culture? How does the lack of cohesive readership, given the fact that the target audience can be both foreigners and a wide cross-section of heterogeneous Indians, complicate the translator’s job? We argue that translations of Dalit literature from Malayalam to English contest caste-determined regimes of writing and reading, making the project a subversive force that challenges established power structures.

Keywords:

• Caste
• English
• Translation
• Subversive force
• Cohesive readership

Notes

1 Poet Chandramohan Sathyanathan has written a poem ‘On the Need of Common Language’ (2019) – he sees English as a shared linguistic space that can defile notions of caste purity.

2 Certainly ‘ethnocentric violences’ in translations have occurred. Edward Fitzgerald’s translation of Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat was one such.