Module description
This course explores the significance of processes of translation in colonial and postcolonial India. Drawing on the field of translation studies, it aims to equip graduate students with the critical tools that are required to analyse a variety of texts within the frameworks and methodologies of translation and postcolonial studies.
Assessment details
1 x 4,000 word essay
Educational aims & objectives
The module aims to equip graduate students with the critical tools that are required to analyse a variety of texts within the frameworks and methodologies of translation and postcolonial studies.
Learning outcomes
By the end of the module students will have developed the critical skills to analyse issues of translation in relation to the historical and political processes of colonialism and postcolonialism, particularly with regard to the constitution and interrogation of different forms of authority, the development of different concepts of language, and the relationships between meaning, value and the anxious instabilities of power. They will also be able to draw on a range of critical and theoretical writings to illuminate the analysis of primary texts in their own research.
Teaching pattern
One two hour seminar weekly
Suggested reading list
Ideal preparation for this module would include the following reading:
- Emily Apter, The Translation Zone. A new Comparative Literature (Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 2006).
- Susan Bassnett-McGuire, Translation Studies (London & New York: Metheun 1980) 2nd edition 1991, 3rd edition 2002.
- Susan Bassnett & Andre Lefevere, Translation, history, and culture (London & New York: Pinter Publishers, 1990).
- Susan Bassnett and Harish Trivedi, Post-Colonial translation. Theory & Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).
- Walter Benjamin, ‘Task of the translator’, in Illuminations, edited with an introduction by Hannah Arendt, translated by Harry Zohn (London: Fontana Press 1973 and subsequent impressions).
- Joseph F. Graham ed., Difference in translation (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1985).
- Edwin Gentzler, Contemporary translation theories (London: Routledge, 1993).
- Theo Hermans, The Manipulation of Literature. Studies in Literary Translation (London and Sydney: Croom & Helm, 1985).
- Lawrence Venuti ed., Rethinking translation. Discourse, subjectivity, ideology (London and New York: Routledge 1992).
- Sherry Simon and Paul St. Pierre, Changing the Terms: Translating in the Postcolonial Era (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2000).
Core reading
- Sir William Jones, ‘On the Poetry of the Eastern Nations’ (1772) and ‘Third Anniversary Discourse’ (1786)
- Arthur Coke Burnell and Henry Yule, Hobson-Jobson: Being a glossary of Anglo-Indian colloquial words and of kindred terms (1886)
- Rudyard Kipling, Kim (1901)
- M. K. Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (1909) and other writings, ed. Anthony J. Parel, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009, Centenary Edition).
- R.K. Narayan, The English Teacher (1945)
- Salman Rushdie, Shame (1983)
- Omar Khayyam / Edward Fitzgerald, The Rubaiyat (1859)